Fedora on ARM netbooks?

[Michel Salim]

Hello,

Given the recent interest in using ARMv7 processors in Linux netbooks
and tablets, many of them (at the very least, Nokia's next tablet)
reaching the market this year, I was wondering if Fedora ARM already
works on these, and how well.

Considerations:
- soft float. presumably this only affects the kernel and glibc
- installation. given livecd-tools and liveusb-creator, this should be
doable. Do we already have anaconda?
- desktop. The default Fedora desktop probably does not scale down to
a 7"-10" widescreen device.
- Moblin. how much divergence is there between them and Fedora?

Thoughts? With GSoC opening up we could probably get some more
resources into this.

Thanks,

[Felipe Contreras]

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Michel Salim  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Given the recent interest in using ARMv7 processors in Linux netbooks
> and tablets, many of them (at the very least, Nokia's next tablet)
> reaching the market this year, I was wondering if Fedora ARM already
> works on these, and how well.
>
> Considerations:
> soft float. presumably this only affects the kernel and glibc
> installation. given livecd-tools and liveusb-creator, this should be
>
> doable. Do we already have anaconda?
> desktop. The default Fedora desktop probably does not scale down to
>
> a 7"-10" widescreen device.
> Moblin. how much divergence is there between them and Fedora?
>
> Thoughts? With GSoC opening up we could probably get some more
> resources into this.

I work and Nokia and am a Fedora user, if you have anything
interesting I could try :)

We try to be as close as possible to linux-omap upstream, but there
are still some missing pieces AFAIK.

[Michel Salim]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Felipe Contreras
 wrote:
> > Considerations:
> > soft float. presumably this only affects the kernel and glibc
> > installation. given livecd-tools and liveusb-creator, this should be
> >
> > doable. Do we already have anaconda?
> > desktop. The default Fedora desktop probably does not scale down to
> >
> > a 7"-10" widescreen device.
> > Moblin. how much divergence is there between them and Fedora?
> >
> > Thoughts? With GSoC opening up we could probably get some more
> > resources into this.
>
> I work and Nokia and am a Fedora user, if you have anything
> interesting I could try :)
>
> We try to be as close as possible to linux-omap upstream, but there
> are still some missing pieces AFAIK.

I have a Nokia N810 at hand (OMAP2 / ARMv6); while it's not quite what
Ubuntu and Nokia are targeting (9.04 and Maemo 5 targets ARMv7), it'll
be interesting to see how well Fedora runs on it. I'd have to get a
larger SDHC card, read up on how to boot the device from it (as far as
I remember, not that troublesome), and work out what binary blobs are
needed.

Having a real ARMv7 device would be much better, though. Does Nokia
provide those to developers, and would they lend development boards
(even remote access would be better than nothing) for non-Maemo use?

Regards,

[Robert Nelson]

Hello,
> >
>
> I have a Nokia N810 at hand (OMAP2 / ARMv6); while it's not quite what
> Ubuntu and Nokia are targeting (9.04 and Maemo 5 targets ARMv7), it'll
> be interesting to see how well Fedora runs on it. I'd have to get a
> larger SDHC card, read up on how to boot the device from it (as far as
> I remember, not that troublesome), and work out what binary blobs are
> needed.

Ubuntu is actually building 9.04 with: "-march=armv5t
-mtune=cortex-a8" (1) so it would work on your Nokia N810 (just not
optimal)...

Nokia was sponsoring a project called Mojo-Handhelds (2) that did do
an optimized 'armv6' version of Ubuntu 8.04, however their future is
in question at the moment.
> Having a real ARMv7 device would be much better, though. Does Nokia
> provide those to developers, and would they lend development boards
> (even remote access would be better than nothing) for non-Maemo use?

Have you taken a look at the TI's beagleboard? 5xxMhz ARMv7 cortex-a8?
(3)  Add a usb harddrive and usb ethernet adapter and they work great
for development.

I currently have one setup running 24/7 with ssh access available to
developers, it's currently building native kernels (beagleboard,
omap-3evm, etc) for all the debian variants i work with (debian, mojo,
ubuntu) each in a separate chroot.

I'm in the process* of adding fedora chroot's, (with an end goal of
attempting to build an armv7 variant using the koji build system).

* rootfilesystem runs native on the beagle, now just to make the chroot work...

1: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gcc-4.3/+bug/303232
2: http://mojo.handhelds.org/
3: http://beagleboard.org/

Regards,

[Michel Salim]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:27 PM, Robert Nelson  wrote:
> Hello,
> > >
> >
> > I have a Nokia N810 at hand (OMAP2 / ARMv6); while it's not quite what
> > Ubuntu and Nokia are targeting (9.04 and Maemo 5 targets ARMv7), it'll
> > be interesting to see how well Fedora runs on it. I'd have to get a
> > larger SDHC card, read up on how to boot the device from it (as far as
> > I remember, not that troublesome), and work out what binary blobs are
> > needed.
>
> Ubuntu is actually building 9.04 with: "-march=armv5t
> -mtune=cortex-a8" (1) so it would work on your Nokia N810 (just not
> optimal)...
>
> Nokia was sponsoring a project called Mojo-Handhelds (2) that did do
> an optimized 'armv6' version of Ubuntu 8.04, however their future is
> in question at the moment.
> > Having a real ARMv7 device would be much better, though. Does Nokia
> > provide those to developers, and would they lend development boards
> > (even remote access would be better than nothing) for non-Maemo use?
>
> Have you taken a look at the TI's beagleboard? 5xxMhz ARMv7 cortex-a8?
> (3)  Add a usb harddrive and usb ethernet adapter and they work great
> for development.

That appears to be just ideal -- though if an all-in-one notebook is
coming soon, I don't think I can justify the investment myself:

1. board = $150
2. USB serial adapter + serial cable
3. USB network card + USB hard disk (I can reuse the latter, but the
former is an added expense)

If the final product ends up under $200, setting up my own board would
double the total cost.
> I currently have one setup running 24/7 with ssh access available to
> developers, it's currently building native kernels (beagleboard,
> omap-3evm, etc) for all the debian variants i work with (debian, mojo,
> ubuntu) each in a separate chroot.
>
> I'm in the process* of adding fedora chroot's, (with an end goal of
> attempting to build an armv7 variant using the koji build system).
> rootfilesystem runs native on the beagle, now just to make the chroot work...

Could I possibly get an account on yours? Are there any tasks on which
other Fedora developers can help?

Regards,

[Robert Nelson]

> > I currently have one setup running 24/7 with ssh access available to
> > developers, it's currently building native kernels (beagleboard,
> > omap-3evm, etc) for all the debian variants i work with (debian, mojo,
> > ubuntu) each in a separate chroot.
> >
> > I'm in the process* of adding fedora chroot's, (with an end goal of
> > attempting to build an armv7 variant using the koji build system).
> > rootfilesystem runs native on the beagle, now just to make the chroot work...
>
> Could I possibly get an account on yours? Are there any tasks on which
> other Fedora developers can help?

Sure, I can give you one Michel.  Please send me a private email with,
user+pass for ssh access, and i'll reply with connection details.

Just got the chroot working this afternoon, and kinda messed it a bit
up already. (I have way more experience with debian systems.)

But i'll setup an additional (untouched) chroot for fedora-10, based
off the initial tar.bz2 image.  (fedora-8 if people want)

Current Issues: arch is reported as armv7l, so rpm needs --ignorearch
when installing armv5el*** packages.

yum (installed version) needs this patch:
http://lists.baseurl.org/pipermail/yum-commits/2009-January/003137.html
; which is in fc11.

Regards