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Comment by alexose | Hacker News Reader

I've done a lot of this sort of this as well. The ESP8266 is so great for simple on/off switches and sensors.

But-- there are so many applications for having a full IoT Linux distribution that I can't believe this isn't already a solved problem. I'm imagining an ultra-stable distro that is easy to deploy to a headless machine, handles security updates, handles flaky wi-fi issues, tests the SD card (I've had more than a few burn out on me), and automatically logs to the cloud for easy debugging.

In other words: Why am I still maintaining my RasPis as if they are apache servers from the 1990s?

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ResinOS does all that and more.

It's container-based. Works super-well on a Pi3.

Oh, this is awesome. Can't wait to try it. Thank you!

Linuxkit is another option, slightly different approach.

Thanks. Where would alpine linux fit into this all. It seems like a good candidate for embedded setups.

You could run whatever you like in an alpine container on ResinOS

Android-things solves this problem at the scale of embedded linux, and mbed solves this problem at the microcontroller level.

I'm a wary of Android only in that I'm so used to the Raspian ecosystem, but I will check it out. Thanks for the recommend!

People have been building stuff like this. Often for firewall appliances (eg SCC Sidewinder, Immunix Linux, genua w/ OpenBSD). They usually do one of these: (a) get big under new management that doesnt care about either security or the little people (enterprise focus); (b) sell out to company like that; (c) go bankrupt cuz market values assurance of security the least.

Sad but true. There's still a few companies selling microkernel-based solutions in defense and mobile with Linux user-lands. They'd OEM license their stacks for a new set of products aimed to do this. They cost a fortune. Whoever pays it wont get it back, though, cuz folks dont usually pay for security in that volume. So, nobody is doing it for small players for now.

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