OT – Lowest Power, Cheapest Python Interpreter

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I am searching for the cheapeat *nix SOC device with ethernet and wifi that can run Python 2.7. Ethernet should be 100mbit and hopefully supporting PXE.

OT because im doubting you can squeeze our bloaty friend onto such a device…. :)

14 thoughts on - OT – Lowest Power, Cheapest Python Interpreter

  • Raspberry Pi 3B ???? 35 bucks notincluding power supply or SD card.

    the only thing I’m not sure of is the PXE part.

  • Pi 3 supports PXE over ethernet without using an SD card… I don’t believe the older Pi’s do, unless you put the PXE bootloader on an SD card.

    I usually figure a Pi costs $50 + SD card, as I like to put them in a case, and they do need a decent 2 amp MicroUSB PSU, you can get a case +
    wallwart for $15 on top of the $35 board cost.

  • I don’t know what your device’s goal is, but you may think of running pfsense as a system on it:

    https://www.pfsense.org/download/

    , and you should be able to add to it FreeBSD packages, between which you can find almost anything:

    https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Installing_FreeBSD_Packages

    – just mentioning (much!) slimmer thing (once you mentioned “our bloaty friend”).

    Good luck!

    Valeri

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • I would have answered “CentOS 7 on armhfp board” but your last requirement is the one I’m not sure about : PXE boot

    But it seems possible :
    http://linux-sunxi.org/How_to_boot_the_A10_or_A20_over_the_network

    Never tried that, but it seems that you still need to at least have uboot on a microSD, as embedded firmware on such low cost armhfp boards have zero features for this

    Now if someone has interest in this , why not test it and report that on the dedicated “CentOS armhfp” wiki page ?
    https://wiki.CentOS.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/Arm32 :-)

  • I recommend the Cubieboards or Linkspirt. The advantage of both of these over a RaspberryPI:

    Mainline kernel. See what it takes for a special RPi kernel over on the CentOS-arm list. Sata interface. What are you going to run your stuff on? A slow SD card or a slow USB drive?

    See my install howto over at: http://www.htt-consult.com/CentOS7-armv7.html

    And in fact, I have a LinkSprite PCnano3 that I am not using and am willing to sell. I have run CentOS-arm7 on it, booting directly from a Sata drive.

    If interested, contact me privately.

  • Is Hans de Goede still over at Redhat? He stepped down from maintaining Sunxi, but did major work on uboot, and this looks like something that he had a hand in. He was the one to set up the Cubieboard uboot to look for other devices if no partitions on the mSD card.

    I don’t do any network booting. I prefer to have my local sata drive…

  • Oh, and it is arduino compatible, so if you put Fedora-arm on it, there are the development tools for arduino available. That is what I
    originally got this board for, but I have not really gotten into arduino development.

  • I run CentOS 7 on my rpi2 and rpi3 devices but probably my view is a little bit biased :-)
    I (obviously) prefer to run the same distro everywhere, from low end devices like raspberrypi to higher nodes like Power8 ppc64/ppc64le : you just feel “at home” :-)

  • Not only am I able to run CentOS on my Cubie armv7s (medon and onlo are outwardly facing), I have Redsleeve 7 running on an old Pogoplug Kirkwood armv5. I do have to use a Fedora-arm 18 kernel for armv5.

    Oh and ClearOS7 on my Windows file server.

    So I basically have the same OS on all my servers.

    Though I have been around *nix for 20+ years, it is not my business, and having one OS keeps my life simpler.