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391

answers:

4

Hi Friends,

I want to change linux distro my Development(Host) Machine which I use for embedded development.

I cross-compile applications for many different processors. It is required for me to download different different libraries to evaluate their functionality/Performance/Stability on different devices , as well as on PC.

So Is ubuntu 9.04 a good choice for me?

Thanks, Sunny.

+1  A: 

That will largely depend on your needs. For an embedded system, I'd go with any distribution that sports a very small footprint and supports the necessary hardware.

Depending on your hardware, Debian might work fine. You could create your image with debootstrap which allows for fairly small customized installs. It still includes apt and other things which might not be desirable, although that could be to your benefit if you need to push out updates.

If you did go with Debian, you could most likely do all your development on Ubuntu and then push to your embedded system.

Kaleb Pederson
Debian suits embedded projects quite well; http://emdebian.org/ squeezes it down even further.
ephemient
+1  A: 

i use ubuntu for my host system and a chrooted gentoo install for building apps for an embedded target. I found gentoo was a good choice as it is source distributed and easy to select what version of a particular library is installed.

Mark
+2  A: 

If you are using gcc or other source based compiler that runs on linux then I would say yes, you want a linux distro, and ubuntu is currently the most popular/best. I would try to avoid distro specific things, drive down the middle of the road and you should be able to use any distro equally well.

dwelch
+1  A: 

One thing that is good to know is that ubuntu and derivatives uses dash and not bash as /bin/sh. This confuses crosstools and can give you severe headaches.

e8johan