[fedora-arm] New Packages and Policy Questions

[Gordan Bobic]

Peter Robinson wrote:

>> Plus, text mode console switch no longer works one you get into X.
>>
>> There was, however, some success recently in getting one of acceleration
>> APIs working with mplayer, based on hardware acceleration of the Tegra.
>>
>> Are you on the AC100 IRC channel?
> 
> No (not sure what it is) but I am on #fedora-arm and #fedora-mobility

Try #ac100 on freenode. The people there are quite helpful. Just /ignore 
the occasional Atom troll(s?). ;)

>>>>  > What're you trying to achieve by recooking f11 xorg server on f13? Maybe
>>>>  > there's a different way to come at your overall goal.
>>>>
>>>> I very much doubt it. The machine I'm working on is a Toshiba AC100. The
>>>> only kernel available for it with working keyboard/mouse support is
>>>> 2.6.29 provided by Toshiba as part of the open source code they wrote
>>>> for Android (the machine comes pre-loaded with Android). Unfortunately,
>>>> Toshiba have in their infinite wisdom decided to put the keyboard and
>>>> mouse behind proprietary interfaces, rather than USB HID (the machine
>>>> does have full featured master and slave USB, which makes the decision
>>>> particularly retarded). The drivers haven't yet been ported to later
>>>> kernels.
>>> Interesting, I'm looking at this closer as I have one of these devices
>>> myself. The keyboard/mouse reports its attached to the old style ps2
>>> keyboard/mouse interfaces.
>> AFAIK they are attached to the NvEc interfaces. One of the people on the
>> mailing list was working on getting these to work on a more recent
>> kernel, but with limited success so far - it isn't as trivial as one
>> might hope.
>>
>> There is some hope that Toshiba will provide Android 2.2 for the AC100
>> in the near future which should come, in theory, with a 2.6.32.x kernel,
>> which will hopefully make things a little easier for us WRT nvidia
>> driver compatibility, but Toshiba's interest in supporting the AC100
>> seems to be diminishing by the day.
> 
> Well there was an update to the toshiba update utility this week so
> with luck that's the prep for 2.2, then someone will need to chase
> them for that code drop.

In fairness, they were reasonably OK WRT providing the GPL based code so 
far. I certainly hope the update will be arriving soon - it would make 
life a lot easier with a few things.

>>>> Further, the only way to eccelerated graphics on it is using the nvidia
>>>> closed source tegra xorg driver. Since only 2.6.29 kernel works, only
>>>> the tegra driver that is compatible with the interface of the kernel
>>>> module for 2.6.29 works. That driver is sufficiently old that it is
>>>> based on the xorg ABI from version 1.6.x, i.e. of the F11 vintage.
>>> Works fine with the fbdev on the 2.6.29 kernel using the F-13 and the
>>> fbdev X driver. In the 2.6.37 and already pending for the .38 series
>>> there's been a lot of tegra drivers make it to the mainline kernel so
>>> it will be interesting to see what's missing / remaining / different
>>> on the toshiba side of development.
>> As I said, last I checked the keyboard/mouse didn't work with newer
>> kernels at the moment, and carrying an USB mouse/keyboard isn't really
>> an acceptable solution for a netbook.
> 
> Nope, and esp with only one usb port.

That's really a negligible problem relative to the rest - a number of 
keyboards come with a built in USB hub with an extra port.

Gordan