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ALTERNATIVE ARMBIAN
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PiBOX, A READY NAS FOR YOUR HOME.
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Armbian has a comprehensive list of hardware that it supports. When looking for the correct image, use the list to download a NAS image for your hardware.
Armbian (www.armbian.com) is a competitor to Raspbian. Its approach is more geared towards creating images for special hardware and squeezing performance out of them. Thanks to its network of hardware makers that cooperate with the company, you’re sure to find an image that suits your board.
If you want to try out the systems and commands, a good idea is to emulate the whole thing in a virtual machine or a docker instance. For this purpose try docker run -it lukechilds/ dockerpi. This launches an instance of Raspian to play around with.
For a system that you may be able to buy soon, check out the PiBox. Its Kickstarter page is at www.kickstarter.com/projects/pastudan/pibox-a-modular-raspberry-pistorage-server. The project is fully funded and looks promising.
You can run the whole thing in a QEMU emulator. The images are available at https:// github.com/ dhruvvyas90/ qemu-rpikernel. There are also links to Raspbian images, making it a great start point for emulating the Pi
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Mats Tage Axelsson is working hard to avoid work and save money, which is tricky when computing plays such a large role in his life.