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Comment by fulafel | Hacker News Reader

How is the software support for BeagleBone boards? Can I expect to get automatic kernel updates with security patches?

Traditionally a problem with many boards is that you have to choose between running a distro kernel with incomplete hardware support but timely security updates, and running a board specific kernel that can't be safely exposed to internet-connected environment.

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I had a student try to do an independent study research project using the BBB a couple of years ago. The experience wasn't good. We had a lot of trouble getting the thing to run with anything except the one kernel version that it came with. Porting over features from kernel modules done on earlier minor versions was a huge pain and not at all straightforward.

This has definitely changed. I'm using the current mainline kernel and it includes proper configs for the BBB. Works pretty much hassle-free.

Yeah this changed a lot in the last 12 months.

Problem was to support capes (addon boards) especially dynamically and at runtime wasn't really supported in mainline. They had special cape manager patches to do it but it wasn't a good solution for upstream.

3 years later or so we finally have good overlay support for this in a mainline happy and now merged way. They paid to have this work done which is great, though sadly took a long time.

I forget the guys name that did it but he is clearly a champion of patience.

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