Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Business Card Runs Linux

thirtythreeforty.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 415 posts

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#201

Post by TkTech »

zimmertr wrote: post #188
nabla9 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling this embedded system feels like insult to the spirit of 'running light without overbyte', because it's so comically capable. My first PC had 66/33 MHz 80486 processor and 8 MB ram, 320 MB HDD. You could run AutoCAD, play Doom, Civilization, have dual boot for Linux, Windows 3.11 etc. It could compile Linux from source.

Oh geez I can't imagine how long it would take to compile Linux on that slow of a processor.

Remember there was a lot less to the Linux kernel at the time. Wasn't too bad. The single-threaded compile time for Linux has stayed fairly consistent for awhile, since the tree grows about as fast as the average desktop improves. The big improvement in compile time has come from being able to compile with 8-32+ threads.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#202

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

truth_be_told wrote: post #200
hombre_fatal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but a sad fact of life and just the way supply and demand works It's only hubris that makes us discount the importance and difficulty of, say, web client design and implementation. How many developers on HN poo-poo "UX" yet don't even have a single fleshed out README on any of their products because it's "not important"? Turns out raw low-level tech skills aren't the be-all of software and business.

I am sorry, you are very wrong. A complete "Embedded System" (HW+SW) is orders of magnitude more complex than "Web Client Design and Implementation" (unless you approach Google/Facebook scale). The malleability of SW means you can quickly try out various techniques without too much "learning overhead". With all the existing Frameworks/Libraries/etc it becomes more of a "plug & play" proposition. Not so with Embedded…

Be careful with that statement.

An "embedded system" can be as simple as "when this button is pressed for 3-5 seconds, turn on this light for 30 seconds." That hardly requires much of a skillset.

And as far as having all the things you mention in "one head," every member of my team can handle that easily and we're not particularly noteworthy!

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#203

Post by cyphar »

lisper wrote: post #197
CreRecombinase wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read somewhere that the time to compile Linux from source on high-end desktop hardware has remained remarkably stable over the years.

Yes, that's true. It has been O(1 hour) for pretty much the entire history of Linux. And if you think about it, this makes sense. If it were significantly less than that, the development cycle would speed up so it would be easier to add capabilities, which would slow down the build. If it were significantly longer, the addition of new features would slow down until the hardware started to catch up. So the compile tim…

I'm not sure that is the primary reason -- many other projects have had their compile times explode over many years, even though the same logic should apply.

Not to mention if you build the kernel regularly, you benefit from incremental compilation. If you change a few non-header files the rebuild time can be as little as 2-3 minutes. Oh, and "make localdefconfig" will reduce your from-scratch compile times to the 5-15 minute mark. I highly doubt most kernel devs are building a distro configuration when testing (especially since they'd be testing either in a VM or on their local machine).

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#204

Post by ww520 »

This is pretty cool.

What's the time spent on bootup? Hardware POST? I remember seeing some Linux can boot in under a second. It would be cool to see the business card come to life instantly.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#205

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

nrp wrote: post #56
glandium wrote: post #14

Waw, I wasn't expecting the components to be that cheap. That said I haven't bought such components in a very long while.

It is an unusually cheap system, and OP clearly did some thorough research on finding a really well integrated SoC that is available for super low piece part prices. I'd guess Allwinner targets that part at some ultra high volume application and some AliExpress sellers managed to capture some trays of excess parts to sell individually. I wouldn't be surprised if the unit price there is lower than what Allwinner quote…

Very good point.

And this one of the dangers of basing your supply chain on AliExpress. I've had to caution clients that just because they found some normally expensive component dirt cheap on Amazon or AliExpress, doesn't mean that they'll still be available in 6 months when you need 1000 more.

Base your BOM on a manufacturer-approved supplier. If you can find the same parts for less elsewhere (assuming they're not counterfeit), go for it.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#206

Post by lisper »

cyphar wrote: post #203
lisper wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's true. It has been O(1 hour) for pretty much the entire history of Linux. And if you think about it, this makes sense. If it were significantly less than that, the development cycle would speed up so it would be easier to add capabilities, which would slow down the build. If it were significantly longer, the addition of new features would slow down until the hardware started to catch up. So the compile tim…

I'm not sure that is the primary reason -- many other projects have had their compile times explode over many years, even though the same logic should apply. Not to mention if you build the kernel regularly, you benefit from incremental compilation. If you change a few non-header files the rebuild time can be as little as 2-3 minutes. Oh, and "make localdefconfig" will reduce your from-scratch compile times to the 5-…

> many other projects have had their compile times explode over many years

Like, for example?

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#207

Post by giancarlostoro »

CreRecombinase wrote: post #190
zimmertr wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh geez I can't imagine how long it would take to compile Linux on that slow of a processor.

I once read somewhere that the time to compile Linux from source on high-end desktop hardware has remained remarkably stable over the years.

I'm convinced that compiler speed is all a matter of how it was initially designed.

Take for example Delphi which can compile millions of lines of code in under a minute or something ridiculous. Then we have D, Go, Rust, and such, they compile rather large codebases that would take C++ a good 30 minutes on high end hardware of today in shorter spans of time (not as familiar with how fast Rust compiles, but I know Go and D do pretty nicely, especially if you enable concurrency for D), which probably takes those same 30 minutes on high end hardware from about a decade ago.

Sadly from what I have heard C / C++ has to run through source files numerous times before it finally compiles the darn thing into anything meaningful. Facebook made a preprocessor in D to speed things up for them, it technically didn't have to be coded in D, but Walter did write the preprocessor for them, so he gets to pick whatever language.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#208

Post by cerberusss »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #168
cerberusss wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absurd tragedy? Maybe for you. For me, it's been a good life since the 2016 MacBook Pro. I got a decent dock, and connect everything with a single cable.

I would assume you paid a good $150 for one, given that the others either don’t supply enough power or can’t do 4K@60.

More. I paid 250 euros for a CalDigit TS3 Plus. Thing is amazing.

When I first got my MacBook Pro, I just got USB-C cables for my external monitor and my (USB-A) hub. That was very cheap, but I love the convenience of Thunderbolt and shelled out the cash.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#209

Post by NohatCoder »

jasoneckert wrote: post #134

I love this! And while it's well suited to the person (embedded engineer), it could be realigned to someone else by changing the tagline. For example, "This card runs vim!" for developers, or "This card runs Linux containers!" for devops, etc.

It is a gimmick, the value is that he designed it himself and no one else does it. If you just buy a computer card and install your own software, it is just a really impractical waste of resources.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#210

Post by Uptrenda »

My first thought is that literally billions of people already do something similar every day. They use a card that runs its own small, programmable computer, that is portable, energy efficient, and can be powered 'wirelessly.' It's called a universal integrated circuit card (UICC) -- or the chip used in credit cards / sim / ID cards.

The OS these cards run is often referred to as the "Java Card Platform." The OS has many of the same features you would expect from a modern operating system like support for multiple programs, I/O, and very strong crypto primitives. It even has features you wouldn't expect (because some applets give you access to APIs that aren't currently open source available outside that environment.)

Post reply on HN