Ideal Boat Computer?

[conachair]

Originally Posted by markdj

If I had hours and hours of free time and programming skills to figure things out when things go wrong, I'd be happy to try Linux or the raspberry pi,

Why would you need hours and programming skills? Openpotter on the Pi is easy to install and rock solid. Which version did you try?

Seem a lot on anti linux might come from a decade ago, these days it just works.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by conachair

Why would you need hours and programming skills? Openpotter on the Pi is easy to install and rock solid. Which version did you try?

Seem a lot on anti linux might come from a decade ago, these days it just works.

Exactly. Getting a Windows box up to running as a chart plotter is more time consuming than installing OpenPlotter. Also, OpenCPN is not "more optimized" for Windows than it is for Linux. I may even think that the Raspberry Pi port is more optimized

[250224]

Originally Posted by conachair

Why would you need hours and programming skills? Openplotter on the Pi is easy to install and rock solid. Which version did you try?
Seem a lot on anti linux might come from a decade ago, these days it just works.

Agree, it just works.

I don't see 'anti linux'. If you know Windows then Linux, ppa's etc. is certainly much more complicated than just download a binary app and be done. With a new Linux system you may follow a recipe without understanding anything, but I wouldn't call this 'good practice'.

If you want to run certain commercial programs, Linux most likely won't have them. There is e.g. no Expedition or MaxSea (TZ Navigator). I think Windows is still by far the most flexible/broad system out there. Did you know that the next version will ship a Linux kernel? You will be able to run Ubuntu, Fedora, right from Windows (WSL2).

Openplotter on Raspberry Pies to me seems a (relatively) nice free alternative to plotters. But I don't think it can serve as a general purpose computer. And currently I lean towards wanting a boat computer that is powerful and can serve as a replacement of my notebook.

This thread has two parts: 'real computer vs. RaspberryPie' and 'OS' (with Raspberry the default is Raspbian with a real computer there is more choice (Windows/Linux)).

[olewsaa]

There are more powerful ARM based systems than the Raspberry Pi.
A nice alternative for a real computer is the rockpro64 from pine64,
6 cores, GPU and up to 4 GiB memory.

My laptop is a pine64, a bit smaller than rockpro64, but offer web and mail.
A nice alternative onboard and on travel.

At the extreme end of the ARM scale we have Thunder X2 and Kunpeng 920 which is for servers and supercomputer nodes.

Raspberry Pi has the advantage of a very large user group and a huge set of hats and software support.

Ole

[CarinaPDX]

Originally Posted by blu3534

Excuse me, can you back this up with data (tests)? I don't think such blanket statements are true. Of course there are lightweight Linux distributions. And of course if you use Win 10 Home with all 'default features' enabled instead of Pro and some sane config you can get a boost...

There are many examples on the web of Linux vs Win 10 comparisons, which you can readily find by searching for "Linux Windows performance comparison" or similar. Here is one such result: https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-pe...ux-vs-windows/ If you spend some time looking around you will find that a stock Linux install with a skin comparable to Windows (e.g. Linux Mint Cinnamon) will best stock Windows 10 by a modest amount on many speed tests, a lot on a few, and only a very few specific processes it will lose (cryptography I believe is one such area). Windows loses by a lot in initial boot times and app startup times, which is a multiple of the Linux times. (I have a dual-boot system, and the difference is just stunning - I hate having to boot into Windows.) Another Linux win is its lower use of resources, and especially memory, which can be a third of Windows requirements.

With some effort and research it is possible to cut away a lot of cruft from Windows to get better performance - just be careful not to break it. With Linux an easy way to improve performance is to install a version with a "lighter" desktop, such as XFCE or Mate, instead of a full-featured desktop such as Cinnamon - it is just a choice of which install image to download. I suspect most users wouldn't miss the frills...

I keep a stock Win 10 install, so the boot time is obscene. But worse is the time required to download both system updates and app updates. The games are continuously updated with new advertising (video clips???), so in spite of my desire to keep things stock I am going to have to remove them, one way or the other. Still, other updates probably run at a rate of 100-200MB downloads per week. EEEK! Linux updates are a fraction of that size. And then there is the issue of Windows "phoning home" to Redmond with tracking data. Initially Win 10 required connecting to M$ every month or it would drop down to a limited capability - a horrible idea that was quickly abandoned. Still the point is that M$ looks at Win 10 as an ongoing source of revenue, mostly through ads, and if that means consuming your computer's resources so be it.

For a small box computer Linux will work faster, with fewer resources, than Windows. If you doubt then do your own research.

Greg

[Reefmagnet]

One of the more obscure issues with Windows is it's constant access to the hard drive. I have no idea why, but every single version of Windows will always constantly access the hard disk. If you're at a Windows computer equipped with a hard disk activity light, look at it now. Within a few seconds it will most likely flicker. In fact, a common ploy of scammers is to use this normal Windows behaviour of the hard disk (usually in addition the the multitude of alerts and errors always present in the Event log) to convince the more gullible that nasties are on their system that need to be "fixed". Linux doesn't do this. Back in the old days, when hard disks were clunky and noisy, there was also a distinctive difference in sound between Linux and Windows when it accessed the hard disk. Linux always seemed to access the disk in one continuous operation, whereas Windows accessed it in a series of start and stop processes that resulted in a distinct sawing noise.


Now maybe it's harmless enough but I, for one, hate seeing the constant hard disk activity because to me it represents power consumption and wear.

[Opie91]

Originally Posted by blu3534

Thanks for the OCPN feedbacks, interesting. With sluggish I meant that the chart build-up was slow (but admittedly this was about 3 years ago with a low-spec old Labtop; and for lazyness reason I then went with a plotter -- chart ist still slow though... ).

If you are not preparing all your ENC charts with the button, you should.


Especially on a low power machine. It will speed up the chart loading dramatically.

[packeteer]

Atom or Raspberry Pi setups is where I'd look, but change software to match ie. Linux w/ OpenPlotter

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

. . .

For a small box computer Linux will work faster, with fewer resources, than Windows. If you doubt then do your own research.

Greg

You talked me into it, so I don't doubt!


For a dedicated nav computer I hardly need the GUI at all. Can I use Linux without it, just using the command line? Can OpenCPN, XyGrib, etc., be launched from the command line? Or what is the lightest and leanest front end for Linux? I don't need a simulated Windows experience; bleh!

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by olewsaa

There are more powerful ARM based systems than the Raspberry Pi.
A nice alternative for a real computer is the rockpro64 from pine64,
6 cores, GPU and up to 4 GiB memory.

My laptop is a pine64, a bit smaller than rockpro64, but offer web and mail.
A nice alternative onboard and on travel.

At the extreme end of the ARM scale we have Thunder X2 and Kunpeng 920 which is for servers and supercomputer nodes.

Raspberry Pi has the advantage of a very large user group and a huge set of hats and software support.

Ole

You can't buy anything with the Thunder X2 or Kunpeng 920 or even the A76 cpus yet though. Perhaps by the end of the year or early next year.

I'd love an A76 single board computer to play with. At the moment though I think something like the Nvidia Jetson or Odroid-N2 is as fast as you get.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

You talked me into it, so I don't doubt!


For a dedicated nav computer I hardly need the GUI at all. Can I use Linux without it, just using the command line? Can OpenCPN, XyGrib, etc., be launched from the command line? Or what is the lightest and leanest front end for Linux? I don't need a simulated Windows experience; bleh!

Graphic progs like opencpn need a graphical interface so not possible to run them with bog standard SSH into a machine. A VNC server works though so get oto the desktop over wifi from any machine, Openplotter has it preinstalled so works on first boot. OK for most stuff but a bit slow to run opencpn. Signalk is webpage based so anything which can use a web page can get on there.

[packeteer]

you can get very light weight window managers that will run fine on a Pi

things like i3 or OpenBox

[mikedefieslife]

Openplotter is great, but I think it carries a lot of unnecessary stuff. Especially as SignalK replicates many of the functions. With time you could set up your own super streamlined nav box. The only problem is, who has the time, and Openplotter work out of the box.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

Openplotter is great, but I think it carries a lot of unnecessary stuff. Especially as SignalK replicates many of the functions.

Less and less replication as time goes by, even less for V2 apparently with the creation of more bespoke things being taken care of with a node red creation prog. Node red now built into signalk as well. Can't be another system out there with so much capability out of the box.
http://forum.openmarine.net/showthread.php?tid=1704
ISTR something about a tool to create an image from your own openplotter setup to share.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by conachair

Graphic progs like opencpn need a graphical interface so not possible to run them with bog standard SSH into a machine. A VNC server works though so get oto the desktop over wifi from any machine, Openplotter has it preinstalled so works on first boot. OK for most stuff but a bit slow to run opencpn. Signalk is webpage based so anything which can use a web page can get on there.

OK, so what's the most elegant and lightest GUI for Linux, which will make OpenCPN work?