January 31, 2026
KISS or miss?
Working example of a Yocto setup without unnecessary complications
Folks cheer a “keep it simple” Linux kit—then bicker over patches and math
TLDR: Bootlin released a pared‑down guide to building custom Linux systems, championing a “keep it simple” approach. Readers praised the clarity, sparred over whether hardware files should be patches, and meme’d a “two equals three” typo—proof that simplicity is hard and the internet tracks every slip.
Keep it simple? The Bootlin crew just dropped "simplest-yocto-setup," a no-frills example showing how to build custom Linux for gadgets using Yocto—think: a toolkit to assemble your device’s operating system. Their demo layer, cheekily named meta-kiss after the Keep It Simple Stupid principle, tosses vendor bloat, leans on one tidy layer, and lets a helper tool pull in the basics. Translation: less spaghetti, more sanity.
The crowd loved the vibe—then immediately split into teams. One user cheered the payoff once you climb Yocto’s steep learning hill (with a nod to the simpler Buildroot), but fired a flare: don’t bundle new hardware files as patches. In plain English, they want the device’s “hardware map” file kept clean and separate, not hidden in patch stacks. A tiny detail? Not to this crowd. It became the day’s micro-drama over what “simple” really means.
And then came the meme moment. The docs say the layer has “two” machine setups, then list three names—dogbonedark, stompduck, and freiheit93. Cue the roast: “That’s quite a large value of two.” The names alone sparked giggles, but the math got the headlines. In short: Bootlin preaches simplicity, the community agrees in spirit, argues on the details, and absolutely never misses a typo.
Key Points
- •The repository “simplest-yocto-setup” demonstrates a minimal, working Yocto/OpenEmbedded setup for product companies.
- •It uses a kas configuration (.config.yaml) to fetch bitbake, openembedded-core, meta-arm, meta-arm-toolchain, and enable the in-repo meta-kiss layer.
- •meta-kiss is a single layer providing machine support, a distro configuration, and recipes (kernel, U-Boot, userspace app, image).
- •A dogbonedark machine targets BeagleBone Black using mainline Linux and U-Boot, avoiding full vendor BSP layers like meta-ti-bsp.
- •The project advocates keeping layers simple and consolidated, only splitting when complexity genuinely requires it.