Army Core Volunteers?

[roberts]

I wish to gauge the real interest on Arm platform for a Core offering.
Obviously the Raspberry Pi and Allwinner devices have generated much interest for the Arm platform.

Realize that such would necessarily be even more of a "kit" style rather than generic downloadable image.
But, with such a strong community as we have, perhaps many will enjoy such an offering.

Please vote. Poll open for only 30 days.

If you vote "yes" please indicate if you are willing to help develop, i.e., compiling sources, or if you wish to help test targeted construction kits.

[netnomad]

hi roberts,

i own a raspberrypi for a couple of weeks now
and i'm looking forward to use this device with a real tiny, lean distribution.
usually i really enjoy debian on different devices (desktop, server, netbook, nas, router),
but even the recent released raspbian-image is much to fat and heavy.

i think that tinycore could do so much favor for this interesting new category of hardware.
as you know, i'm a heavy tester... so you could be sure that you get support from my side.

hopefully you take the raspberrypi and squeeze the most out of this tiny hardware.
lets look for lean solutions... although it's probably the easier way to buy all 6 months new hardware.

[mocore]

hi
 i have raspi (in the future maby other arm hw) ,"embeded linux primer" book
 + a little free time
 im no embeded linux veteran
  im however willing to help in any way i can
  with getting core concepts to arm's

[vinnie]

apart from my cellphone i do not have any arm.
Before I buy one, can I participate in the test with a virtual machine?

[AbNoRMiS]

it seems to me that with time will be even more arm devices
which can use systems is not stitched in firmware
but i so far don't plan purchase such device

[caminati]

If you vote "yes" please indicate if you are willing to help develop, i.e., compiling sources, or if you wish to help test targeted construction kits.

I voted yes. As stated elsewhere, I am already running other distros on my allwinner a10 tablet; I compiled (and cross-compiled) kernel and u-boot, so count on me for any assignment.
I patched together a wiki page about my experiences:

http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/ainol_novo_elf_7/


Btw, I could spread the word about this poll among allwinner users community. Or would you consider that an improper bias?

[xyz-worx]

Some weeks ago  I got a Freescale iMX53 Quick-Start board populated with an iMX535 (Cortex-A8),
1GB RAM, running @ 1GHz, including a dedicated power-management-IC. . For further information look here:
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB

It comes with a board support package on micro-sd card, from which it boots an Ubuntu 11.04.

In fact it is not as cheep as an Raspberry Pi, but the capabilities of this board are much higher.
For instance there is a SATA port as well as a JTAG port for professional debugging. Also VGA and
LVDS outputs for video are present.

Up to now I'm digging into the hardware features of this processor. Next step will be to learn about
the boot process - as far as I know, u-boot is used. There are so many peripheral devices inside, which
have to be unveiled.

From my point of view, a taller linux system than Ubuntu might be a good alternative way to run this board.

Regards

xyz-worx

[tinypoodle]

What does "taller linux system than Ubuntu" mean?

[roberts]

Guys, thanks for your input. I will post my full strategy later. For now I will state that I too have no serial console ability for Allwinner.
Therefore my plan is to start with something that does, rpi. Building up a solid working Core root file system. With rpi I have basically completed this task. Since Allwinner has broken fbconsole, there will be no base Core; TinyCore yes. There again using the rpi to segue to full rootfs of TinyCore. Then with such  known rootfs target Allwinner. More to come.

[netnomad]

hi roberts,

sounds good!
i'm looking forward to test especially simple core on rpi, lean and clean.
... and then test to enhance it in single steps from package to package

thank you for your commitment.

[xyz-worx]

@ tinypoodle

Sorry, stupid mistake: just replace tall with small or tiny ...

[genec]

The biggest (dis)advantage with ARM is that there is no standard boot protocol.  The loading of the kernel/initrd is more device-class specific.  Even if 2 devices share the same instruction set (or even CPU), they may use different means to getting the same kernel/initrd loaded.  Once running, the playing field should be more consistent for extensions and such.  It will almost certainly be more of a toolkit to make a running system at that point.

[roberts]

I will be posting my first pi Core construction kit in the next few days.

[caminati]

I will be posting my first pi Core construction kit in the next few days.

Although I have no RPi, I look forward to that happening.
I like how "Army Core" sounds, by the way.

[HWP1]

I recently received my Raspberry Pi and will be loading wheezy-raspbian as soon as my hdmi to dvi cable arrives.  However, I would prefer to run Tiny Core which I ran on my really old (2001) laptop until the hinges give up and I sent it off to Goodwill.  I really like Tiny Core and the Tiny Core philosophy.

I would be glad to help but I consider myself a beginner at system level tasks and don't know how much real help I could give.  I'm somewhat familiar with Linux (Red Hat) but always from the user's side not the sys admin side.  (I was an DBA for years before I retired, so I installed and upgraded many versions of Oracle on both Linux and Sun Solaris.) 

But if there are tasks I could be trusted with, I'd be glad to give it a shot.  I do have time.

H.