I am a potential Tx2 developer evaluating various development environments/platforms before diving in. I was wondering if anyone has tried using a cloud-based Linux desktop to do cross-platform Tx2 development or to flash to a newer operating system on the Tx2 (or any Jetson). The following related topic was helpful but does not explicitly clarify any possible issues with a cloud-based Linux desktop versus an actual Linux desktop.
Is there any known reason why a cloud-based Linux desktop would not be suitable for Tx2 dev?
Has anyone tried Pycharm Tx2 development on a cloud-based Ubuntu Linux desktop?
To actually flash you need a direct USB connection. To cross compile and build most any system with the proper cross tools will do the job. However, the packages used with the Jetson series all grew up specifically around Ubuntu, and so Ubuntu packages are available by default.
Regarding the USB connection, in recovery mode the Jetsons become custom USB devices. This means hosts flashing a Jetson needs a custom driver…which appropriately enough is called the “driver package” (JetPack/SDK Manager downloads this for you when using them). The driver package has to talk to the USB port, and I have no experience with cloud, but if this can be accomplished, then probably cloud could work so far as driver package goes.
JetPack/SDKM also can add extra packages to both a Jetson and a PC host, e.g., CUDA (flash doesn’t add CUDA, this is a second step after flash completes). In the past this was done with the wired ethernet port to a fully booted Jetson, and more recently this has been done via a virtual ethernet adapter over USB (it’s still wired ethernet, but instead of an actual ethernet jack it is a USB connector pretending to be ethernet). The host has to be able to use that virtual ethernet for JetPack/SDKM to add packages.