Armbian Bookworm Minimal CLI vs Armbian Jammy Minimal CLI

[krrmbn]

Hello friends,

 

I apologize for such a noob question, but I was not able to find the answer in the forums, nor via duckduckgo.

 

Since the 23.08 upgrades were released (thank you again to team Armbian!), I noticed that the "default" image for the Orange Pi 3 LTS is Armbian 23.8 Bookworm. The minimal CLI image weighs in at 267Mb.

 

My OPi3LTS SBCs are all running Armbian Jammy 23.08. The minimal CLI image weighs in at 195Mb.

 

My understanding is that Jammy is Ubuntu (22.04.3 LTS), and Bookworm is Debian (12.0). But also Ubuntu Jammy is based on Debian Bookworm/sid. 

 

My questions are as follows:

 

1. What goes into the decision to designate one or the other as the default (ie. listed in the hero section - above the "other supported variants")?

 

2. What constitutes the 72Mb difference between the images?

 

3. Other than obvious software incompatibility (ie. software requires either Ubuntu or Debian), what does one lose by moving from Jammy to Bookworm?

 

4. How does one upgrade to Armbian 23.8 Bookworm Minimal CLI from Armbian 23.8 Jammy Minimal CLI - without reformatting?

 

Thank you team Armbian for all of your heroic efforts!

 

Best Regards.

Edited September 4, 2023 by krrmbn

[krrmbn]

With regards to 4 above… not sure if this is Armbian approved:

 

from https://linux-packages.com/ubuntu-jammy-jellyfish/package/bookworm

Quote

 

1. Install bookworm package

Please follow the instructions below to install bookworm package:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install bookworm

 

2. Uninstall / Remove bookworm package

Please follow the guidelines below to uninstall bookworm package:

sudo apt remove bookworm

sudo apt autoclean && sudo apt autoremove

 

 

[krrmbn]

With regards to 2 above… my understanding was that Debian installs were typically smaller than Ubuntu installs, but in this (Armbian) case, the reverse is true.

 

With regards to 3 above… my understanding was that Debian installs were typically: 

 

1. more stable

2. less compatible with the newest hardware

3. more compatible with the oldest hardware

4. less resource intensive (CPU, RAM, storage)

5. more difficult for noobs to work with

 

But I'm not sure if that is applicable to Armbian releases - especially when Armbian supports both Ubuntu and Debian on the same hardware (ie. in the case of the Orange Pi 3 LTS) - and especially when all of the software that I deploy works on both Ubuntu and Debian (the install instructions and usability are the same).

Edited September 4, 2023 by krrmbn

[Igor]

7 hours ago, krrmbn said:

What goes into the decision to designate one or the other as the default

 

Maturity of user-land packages. At one point in time Ubuntu LTS is better then Debian stable and vice versa. I think this principle is now not working as intended (randomly could be O.K.) as we recently changed how download lists are generated. Here you can observe how this is assembled. There is some additional info in wiki.

 

Keep in mind that packages lists are more or less the same and (hopefully) all Canonical suspicious code is cleaned out.

 

7 hours ago, krrmbn said:

What constitutes the 72Mb difference between the images?

Can't tell from my head. That would require analysis / diff.

 

7 hours ago, krrmbn said:

what does one lose by moving from Jammy to Bookworm?

 

Only diff is userspace packages versions. HW interface is identical.

 

7 hours ago, krrmbn said:

How does one upgrade to Armbian 23.8 Bookworm Minimal CLI from Armbian 23.8 Jammy Minimal CLI - without reformatting?

 

I am afraid that you can't do that just like that and IIRC you the first person coming up with such idea. Upgrades within Debian or Ubuntu are already complicated enough and prone on breaking. Also this problem exceeds Armbian as user-land packages are stock Debian / Ubuntu.

 

6 hours ago, krrmbn said:

But I'm not sure if that is applicable to Armbian releases - especially when Armbian supports both Ubuntu and Debian on the same hardware

 

This is an attempt to send you a message. It tells that "Debian" or "Ubuntu" fairly tales and stereotypes, that are attached to those keywords, means nothing in this close-to embedded Linux world. Check FAQ for more https://docs.armbian.com/#what-is-armbian

[krrmbn]

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

 

I have many years of macos / darwin & macports experience - but recently have migrated servers to openbsd and armbian / ubuntu. I haven't actually installed linux since MKLinux and Yellow Dog Linux on PowerPC… so it has been a while now. Since I wasn't using it, I wasn't really following linux development and evolution.

 

Sounds like since I'm headless and only using the CLI, it doesn't matter if I have Armbian 23.8 Bookworm Minimal CLI or Armbian 23.8 Jammy Minimal CLI. I guess in this case - since Jammy is smaller, so much the better. And since I already have Jammy installed, there is no reason to migrate to Bookworm.

 

Thanks again to you and team Armbian. I am very glad to have found you and your great software.

Edited September 6, 2023 by krrmbn