Hello,
I have been using Arch Linux for three years. My laptop will not last very long and I would light to buy a board as a replacement. For several reasons:
- I want to switch to opensource hardware (I will use also OpenBSD in the future so I really need opensource hardware)
- I work 350 km away from my home, so I would like to have some lighter hardware to carry
- I prefer using my TypeMatrix keyboard than any laptop keyboard
I am now wondering which board should I buy. I am mainly hesitating between PandaBoard and BeagleBoard XM. I will use my board for desktop uses:
- showing pdf presentations to my students (HDMI connecting to projector welkome, which sounds better for Panda Board so far)
- sometimes presentations are coupled with short videos (usually 2 minutes long, a 10 minutes long videos is shown once a year) or music (with mpv). I read PandaBoard has trouble with video, since it uses a nonfree graphical component. Any feedback?
- I would also use it as a laptop replacement, to take notes in libraries or archives, so a small screen (without tactile options) is needed. Since most libraries offer wifi rather than ethernet, I think wifi should be useful.
- my desktop uses will be almost only CLI applications: no desktop environmen, only dwm as a window manager, vim, LaTeX compiling, mupdf, sqlite small database (1-2 Mio max), spatialite small database, maybe sometime map designing with GRASS. I think 1 Go RAM should be enough for those tasks
Do you think PandaBoard or BeagleBoardXM fits to theses requests?
Thank you for any feedback or suggestions