Other Distros

[Guest]

Hello RPi users and mods,

I was wondering if RPi would be able to run the Backtrack distro from a live boot off a flash drive. If this question has been addressed and i have overlooked I am sorry.

Thanks, Teddy

[Vindicator]

I have not seen that one yet but it may be here somewhere but for the purposes of absolute beginner maybe the current 3 Distros would be a good starting point.

Perhaps try posting this in the distribution section it may be more effective.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/for.....tributions

[jamesh]

Backtrack has been mentioned before - try a forum search.

[RaTTuS]

or even in the backtrack forums

[Guest]

Thanks to all that have replied, unfortunately BT won't run on RPi (wrong ARM architecture), plus it seems that the devs don't condone the use of BT on their devices. Regardless I look forward to getting mine and seeing what all it can do.

[jamesh]

A_TeddyBear said:


Thanks to all that have replied, unfortunately BT won't run on RPi (wrong ARM architecture), plus it seems that the devs don't condone the use of BT on their devices. Regardless I look forward to getting mine and seeing what all it can do.


We don't condone use of Raspi for nefarious purposes (and Backtrack does have some) However, we will not try and stop someone porting backtrack to the Raspi if they want to. We just won' support it here, but then, it's better supported on the BT forums anyway.

[plugwash]

To answer the more general question implied by the title (rather than the specific question given in the body) the ease of getting a distro running on the Pi will depend on what it's existing arm support is like.

If it supports a suitable variant of arm then it's just a matter of putting in place the Pi firmware, kernel, modules etc. This should be pretty trivial for anyone who has a modicum of experiance with such things.

If it supports arm but not a suitable variant (a lot of distros unfortunately fall into this category because the Pi guys used an armv6 chip while most previous similar devices have used armv7 chips) you are looking at changing the compiler defaults (not too hard) then recompiling everything and dealing with any build failures that result. How much of a PITA this is depends on the size of the distro and whether the distro is setup for cross compiling or native compiling.

If it doesn't support arm at all then have fun porting it .

[ghans]

This is a answer which i could put up in a frame (or in the wiki , but to lazy ).

Thanks , plugwash !

ghans

[ghans]

darned doublepost

[Sublime865]

My understanding is that BackTrack is not supported due to "nefarious" uses (hey python can be used to write viruses, just saying...) and an ARM incompatibility, however something like this would be a huge help in setting up stop-n-drop small packet sniffers in a client's network; note that I said client, some of us work for a living XD. My question is, are there any plans to build a more powerful one (ARMv7, perhaps with a Snapdragon or Tegra under the hood), does it have wireless/will it be available with wireless; and if the answer is no to these (I could live without wireless honestly), do you know of any other projects similar to RPi that are a little more beefy? You guys have an *INCREDIBLE* start here, my mind is literally overflowing with ideas and tweaks (obviously not your target market, I understand and accept that I will mostly be on my own here), but I will probably order a few to tinker with as they become available anyway. Cheers guys, I hope at the very least it generates some support and movement for cheap super micro PCs!

[ghans]

BeagleBone and BeagleBoard might worth looking into.
You can also use one of those 100$ ARM "netbooks" (wich Android or Linux) if you wanted to.

ghans