I hi have just ordered a couple of beaglboards for experimenting. I know that it can rub Ubuntu and many other flavors of linux.
Does that mean it can run all the trivial software that run on Ubuntu?
Will the python and ruby interpreters work just the way they work on PC ?
The Beagleboard can run both of them, but you may have to compile the interpreters from source. And don't expect the performance of a desktop.
I purchased a BeagleBoard-xM recently, built and installed an Angstrom distribution with a basic toolchain generated by the Narcissus website.
Angstrom uses the opkg package manager. After getting the base system up, all I had to do to get Ruby up was to run
opkg install ruby
and ruby / irb ran fine.
I was also able to get ruby gems installed from the tar on gemcutter and build some gems I needed for a project I was working on e.g., sinatra.
The interpreters do not need to be compiled from source, as the Ubuntu arm distribution has python in its repository as a deb. I was able to write my python scripts on my Ubuntu box and transfer them to the beagleboard without any changes. Performance so far has been surprisingly good, as I'm using the python script as a bridge between the real-time sound processing/synthesis language supercollider and a motor control board that communicates over USB-serial.
The Angstrom Linux distribution (which runs on the Beagle Board) has binary packages for both Python and Ruby. I've worked on an application that uses Python and PyGTK. Never had any problems.
