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Old 03-28-2018, 08:15 PM   #1
rksyeung
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Selecting Yocto Project Distro vs Others (e.g. CentOS) - embedded


I know (and have read) a sticky on the topic of selecting a distro. I'm wondering if anyone may have a strong opinion for/against use of Yocto distro vs. others, esp. CentOS, based on practical experience? Would the fact that CentOS is already in use in some existing products skew the analysis?

BTW, this is for embedded systems, rather than for server types.
 
Old 03-29-2018, 02:06 PM   #2
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Yocto is already ported to many embedded systems. With centos you have to start from scratch.
 
Old 03-29-2018, 02:53 PM   #3
michaelk
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Yocto is not a distribution.

Quote:
The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded and IOT products, regardless of the hardware architecture.
Your comparison of CentOS versus embedded linux based systems is apples to oranges. As stated CentOS and most distributions are specific to the 32/64 bit PC. Although linux was originally built for the x386 the list on what it can run today is fairly long. Here is a list of debian ports.

https://www.debian.org/ports/

The term embedded IMHO has become somewhat a fuzzy definition with modern hardware IMHO so without knowing if you are talking about embedded systems in general or have a specific embedded board picked out might help narrow the list.
 
Old 03-29-2018, 06:39 PM   #4
rksyeung
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Yocto is not a distribution.



Your comparison of CentOS versus embedded linux based systems is apples to oranges. As stated CentOS and most distributions are specific to the 32/64 bit PC. Although linux was originally built for the x386 the list on what it can run today is fairly long. Here is a list of debian ports.

https://www.debian.org/ports/

The term embedded IMHO has become somewhat a fuzzy definition with modern hardware IMHO so without knowing if you are talking about embedded systems in general or have a specific embedded board picked out might help narrow the list.
Okay, Michael, you've made some very good points. I've read/heard the Yocto isn't a distribution; they do offer reference builds, and I could find (and am using) a BSP for my evaluation platform. It's to be adopted to the final board. It's gonna be a x86_64 (Intel Xeon-D to be exact) board. We've also used CentOs on one of our embedded (networking) products, so it's not PC products we're talking about here.

Having said that, any pros/cons in adapting either one (Yocto as a means to generate our kernel/BSP, vs. CentOS bistro)?
 
Old 03-29-2018, 07:20 PM   #5
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It depends on your requirements. I would say that a x86_64 that runs CentOS is close enough to a PC but you would have to post the specifications of the board. If CentOS meets your needs then what do you expect to gain by building custom system.
 
Old 03-29-2018, 09:19 PM   #6
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The Xeon-D is a x86_64 cpu. In that case I would use centos and build your own operating system.
 
Old 03-30-2018, 02:26 AM   #7
rksyeung
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The Xeon-D is a x86_64 cpu. In that case I would use centos and build your own operating system.
Okay. But why? Or under what circumstance when the balance tips the other way, and make it desirable to use Yocto to build my own "combo"?
 
Old 03-31-2018, 02:23 AM   #8
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Yocto is good if you just want a firmware file to run the board. Other boards use all kinds of different processors, all of which are less supported on Linux than x86 processors. You're not going to use an embedded distro on an x86 processor, because you're needlessly limiting yourself to code that is less tested and more problematic than a distro made to run on x86 hardware.

There's no extremely technical reason. I just think it's intuitively obvious to use an x86 distro for an x86 processor. You get 1,000 times the software choice, way less problems in development. But if your use Yocto, you just have to load the BSP and you're done. It might not do everything you want. But it will do something at least.
 
  


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