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Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 10:28 pm
by michael0015
Hey guys,
I'm interested in using a Pi for a simple network bridge. Power efficiency and stability are my main two concerns. Thus far, I've only tried out Raspbian and RasPBX on the Pi, but I would like to find a better suited distro.
I realize this is a pretty trivial task and any number of distros would handle it just fine, but some possible distros I have picked out thus far are as follows:
BuildRoot
Moebius
IPFire
Raspbian Server Edition
Which of these would you suggest, and why? Are there any better options I missed?
Thanks!
Re: Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 10:33 pm
by tonyhughes
Raspbian seems pretty solid to me. Strip out all the un-needed packages, run:
Code: Select all
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get clean
, and then set up for your needs.
I can give you a list of packages (approx 300 packages, leaving Raspbian at a total used space of ~680MB) to safely remove if need be (or use the stripped-pi function in Baked Raspberry Pi Mod to do it).
Re: Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 8:40 am
by technion
buxwuu wrote:Hello, I mulled over your predicament and I have several solutions. First, have you tried a full left system reboot of the UI-65 disk sector?
At first I thought this was spam.. but it's so confused I don't know any more.
Most of your recommendations return a single Google hit - to this URL.
Re: Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 8:41 am
by tonyhughes
Totally spam, and reported as such.
Re: Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 8:58 am
by rurwin
Thanks for the report Tony.
I can only assume he was a very careful spammer. Joined in September last year and made a couple of test posts yesterday. Both of them seem to refer to products that don't exist and make no sense whatsoever. I can only assume he was gearing up to flood the board with more profitable spam. So I banned him.
If he wants to come back, I would need an explanation of what: "a full left system reboot of the UI-65 disk sector" might mean, and what TMN-8 sockets are, together with links to MMN, NigerRoon and OMassY.
Re: Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 9:11 am
by Cloudcentric
michael0015 wrote:Hey guys,
I'm interested in using a Pi for a simple network bridge. Power efficiency and stability are my main two concerns. Thus far, I've only tried out Raspbian and RasPBX on the Pi, but I would like to find a better suited distro.
I realize this is a pretty trivial task and any number of distros would handle it just fine, but some possible distros I have picked out thus far are as follows:
BuildRoot
Moebius
IPFire
Raspbian Server Edition
Which of these would you suggest, and why? Are there any better options I missed?
Thanks!
Is this an Ethernet Bridge, or are you looking at a WifI hotspot, or are you looking at a Ethernet/Ethernet Bridge. Anyway any USB peripherals ideally need to be on a mains powered usb hub.
Maybe look at Arch Linux Arm it has basic networking pre-installed and is a Command Line Distro
Re: Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 3:29 am
by Trcx
If all you are looking for is a network bridge check out openwrt, it's designed to be used for routers and such. Also a pretty good sized list of distributions available for the pi can be found at
http://elinux.org/RPi_Distributions#Comparison
Re: Simple Networking Distro
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:30 pm
by michael0015
Thanks for the responses guys. When I saw that spam post, my first thought was "oh crap, I'm in way over my head on this one." I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't know what TMN-8 sockets are

. I've heard good things about Arch and have been interested in trying it out for a while now, so I think I'm going to take the leap.
I like the OpenWRT route, but I think the stripped down Raspbian may be the way to go for me if Arch doesn't work out, just for the sake of easiness.
Thanks for the suggestions!