Beagleboard and Linux tips

[spizzak]

Hi all, I'm running ubuntu 11.10 on a beagleboard and doing some image processing from a webcam with OpenCV with a C++ app I have written. It works well on the laptop it was developed on but it's a bit slow on the beagleboard so I'm trying to optimize things so it'll run smoother. I would also like to optimize the boot time of Ubuntu on the BB.

My question is what are the major things I can do? Right now I'm thinking disabling the GUI/HDMI out would be a big help so what's the best way to do that? I'm logging in over a serial connection so I'm not using any video output of the BB.

Also, is it possible to disable the network manager entirely or any other services that I most likely wont need to help speed up the boot process?

Maybe I should try running a lighter version of ubuntu altogther? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Resilient]

http://www.uptechtalk.com/?p=162

explains how to set 11.10 to boot into a terminal. I think this stops xserver from starting, but you may want to double check.

[rbtying]

If you use the ubuntu images that are in the tutorials, the GUI shouldn't even be enabled... Among other things, you can make OpenCV run a lot faster by dropping the resolution and disabling JPEG processing (raw images only) when you compile it.