All i need is something that is decent performing to generate reports etc as well as perform calculations. im totally not worried about graphics
On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Renato Golin renato.golin@linaro.orgwrote:
On 15 April 2013 15:36, Jonathan Aquilina eagles051387@gmail.com wrote:
My goal is to provide affordable point of sales systems. I was also considering some of the linaro dev boards that are available.
Hi Jonathan,
It seems you won't be using fancy 3D graphics, so the video card is near irrelevant, here. You should be able to get accelerated 2D graphics with most SoCs, even if not using open source drivers. Wookie might know some boards that have decent OSS video drivers, but if you don't care (most people don't), you should be fine.
There are a number of v7 that you might consider. I would go for anything that is equal or higher than a dual/quad-core A9 (Pandaboard ES, Odroid, Tegra3), but there are also newer dual-core A15 (which is at least 2x faster than dual-A9), on several flavours (Arndale, Chromebook, Odroid, Tegra4).
You might also try the very cheap "AllWinner A10" which is essentially a Beagleboard (dual-core A8). You can find several cheap platforms on the market with that configuration (including tablets running Android) that you might be lucky putting Linux on it. Though, I'd have a look at how your software behaves on a Beagleboard before trying the hard way. Mans suggestion (Beaglebone) is smaller than the Beagleboard, but faster than the Raspbery Pi. It's also extremely cheap and very customizable.
The Pi is not a bad choice per se, IMO, but Wookie is right regarding what pre-compiled systems are in offer, you just won't get the best experience unless you opt for specialized Linux distros (Raspbian?). Given that they're really (really) cheap, it might be worth a try.
Hope that helps, --renato