Need help choosing an OS
Hello, I am hoping you guys can point me in the right direction...I am working on a fully autonomous robotic submarine with a group friends, and I signed up to be part of the programming team. We all came to an agreement that we want OpenCV to be the submarines eyes and are going to be taking in constant video from 2 cameras 90% of the time, 3-4 cameras 10% of the of the time. Because we do not want the submarine to be to big, we bought a Mini-ITX motherboard and threw in an i7-3770, SSD, and 8gb of RAM to handle as much processing power as possible without a video card (because of heat, size, power consumption, and budget).
I need your guys help choosing an OS to put in there. We are all fluent in Windows but are looking to run Linux instead. We want to isolate as much power as possible to run the cameras, and talk back and forth with our Arduinos. What do you guys recommend? what linux distro is good for developers, somewhat easy to use (with a GUI), fast, and uses little resources? or would you stick with windows? does OpenCV run better on linux?
Thanks guys!!!
I would recommend linux just because it tends to be more flexible in what software you can use and how you can configure the OS. Theres probably distros designed to use low resources and low-power, but if you are beginners I would recommend something like debian or ubuntu. Perhaps starting with a headless installation and then adding a lightweight GUI like XFCE.
Thank you awknaust, I think I might go with your second choice (ubuntu) because of the friendly camera driver.