Dear Elkers,
we are (finally!) ready to release the first public image:
To get started, just download the .bz2 file in the Github repository and follow the instructions here.
This is a development version of the system that includes several tools like compilers, editors, etc. to make it easier to work directly on the board. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll release a stripped-down production image that has fewer features but is more optimized for live usage.
Elk Audio OS includes an easy-to-use update system, so you won’t have to reflash the whole SD card when we’ll deploy further updates.
Many thanks to the closed beta testers who helped us spot several issues in the previous builds!
And to everyone, apologies for the long wait. Fixing the major issues on the distribution (SD card and WiFi stability) was more challenging than we initially thought. Despite its massive user base, the system stack on the Broadcom SOC on the Pi is definitely not one of the easiest to work with.
The amount of possible combinations between 32/64 bit, GPU acceleration, Kernel versions, etc. makes the whole process very time-consuming.
Compared to the previous closed beta releases, we had to switch back from 64bit to 32bit and drop HW GPU acceleration for the time being. At least, we made sure that performance is almost as good with the 32bit distro and that HDMI is usable for the initial network setup.
For those of you that are building their own C++ applications, you will have to replace the SDK with the new 32bit one here.
We also updated the documentation to reflect the changes and we are updating right now all the Elk Community plugin binaries.
Please, let us know about any issue that you might experience, this is still a beta so we expect several to be found. Post on the forum for general Q&A and use the Github Issue page for reporting issues.
Happy hacking!
The Elk development team
