<div dir="ltr"><div>I've also experienced some issues with cheap SD cards. Sometimes I would have to reboot multiple times before the Pi would boot from a particular card. Probably a low-level timing issue or something along those lines. It's been a few months since I fired mine up, so I'm sure everything has changed.<br>
<br></div>Steve<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 12:10 PM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lhowell@speakeasy.net" target="_blank">lhowell@speakeasy.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I sent this then realized it replies only to the poster, ot the list.<br>
<br>
>On Sun May 5 9:07 , <<a href="mailto:lhowell@speakeasy.net">lhowell@speakeasy.net</a>> wrote:>On Sun May 5 5:06 , Scott Merrill <<a href="mailto:skippy@skippy.net">skippy@skippy.net</a>> wrote:I bought a Raspberry Pi, finally.<br>
<div class="im">>><br>
>>I intend to use this headless, so the Fedora Remix and the Raspbian<br>
>>distributions both seem like more than I need. A good old fashioned<br>
>>minimal install of Debian should suffice.<br>
>><br>
>>>From the <a href="http://elinux.org/RPi_Distributions" target="_blank">http://elinux.org/RPi_Distributions</a> page, I downloaded the<br>
>>following image:<br>
>><a href="http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/images/debian/6/debian6-19-04-2012/debian6-19-04-2012.zip" target="_blank">http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/images/debian/6/debian6-19-04-2012/debian6-19-04-2012.zip</a><br>
>><br>
>>I flashed the image onto two different SD cards: one 4GB class 4<br>
>>device, and one 8GB class 10 device.<br>
>><br>
</div><div class="im">>>When inserting either card into the Pi and applying power, nothing<br>
>>happened. The red power LED illuminates, but the green SD card access<br>
>>light never lights up.<br>
>><br>
</div><div class="im">>>I flashed the official Raspbian image<br>
>>(<a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads" target="_blank">http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads</a>) onto the 4GB card, and the Pi<br>
>>boots. The green SD card access LED illuminates, the NIC lights flash,<br>
>>and I can access the device over the network.<br>
>><br>
>>I'd really rather stick with stock Debain, rather than Raspbian, if at<br>
>>all possible. Is there a better Debian image I should be trying,<br>
>>perhaps?<br>
>><br>
>>Thanks,<br>
>>Scott<br>
>><br>
>><br>
><br>
</div>>The primary difference between the Raspbian and Debian images is that Raspbian is hard-float and Debian is soft-float. Debian will work fine, but at the cost of a performance hit. The Pi ARM11 hardware does well for what it is, but needs all the help from the OS it can get so I'd choose HF. I followed the creation of Raspbian vian discussions on the debian-arm mailing list, which was a six month effort as the Debian "wheezy" source for 35000+ packages was rebuilt for the ARM11 v6 ABI instead of the normal ARM9 v7 ABI. Much of the time was spent fixing hard-float issues. The Cambridge team was very time constrained and chose the more expedient path of building with soft-float.<br>
>My wife gave me two Pi's for Christmas. One is my media server running the Pi version of openELEC (<a href="http://openelec.tv" target="_blank">openelec.tv</a>) and I used to other one to pass the Kalamazoo winter evenings experimenting with different OS images. If you want a minimal headless OS I suggest looking at <a href="http://www.pi-point.co.uk/raspbian-minimal/" target="_blank">http://www.pi-point.co.uk/raspbian-minimal/</a> which is the standard Raspbian HF image with about 75% of the packages stripped. You can start small and add whatever you like from the Raspbian repo.<br>
>SD cards are a sticky issue, and a discussion for another time. The Pi demands quality cards. I've had good luck with SanDisk Mobile microSDHC 4GB cards (4.99 at MC). I don't worry too much about the class rating. That rating criteria is for handling relatively large files on cameras, not the much smaller files on an embedded device like the Pi.<br>
><br>
>Larry<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">><br>
><br>
<br>
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