Gentoo Linux

[javaJake]

Unfortunately our project's documentation is very much out of date. Once we've developed that test image we will send to a Pandora developer, I'll bug viridior about writing down all the stuff he knows so far.

 

[Noci]

Yesterday I tried to setup an environment but ran into a few anomalies.
I modified the wiki for some lines that were clearly off.

Tonight i will probably follow up on installing.
Yesterday I left off with building the right tool chain.

I use gentoo natively on all my systems at home so i can guess some things. And some are more troublesome like what stuff to get from the site. (bzr command parameters differ from reality) Also the mount --bind commands give a different result that is later expected.
There a choice must be made what to do, use the mount --bind, or produce the later expected result.

In Any case best wishes for 2009.

 

[viridior]

Yesterday I tried to setup an environment but ran into a few anomalies.
I modified the wiki for some lines that were clearly off.

Tonight i will probably follow up on installing.
Yesterday I left off with building the right tool chain.

I use gentoo natively on all my systems at home so i can guess some things. And some are more troublesome like what stuff to get from the site. (bzr command parameters differ from reality) Also the mount --bind commands give a different result that is later expected.
There a choice must be made what to do, use the mount --bind, or produce the later expected result.

In Any case best wishes for 2009.

I must apologize, that Tutorial was a bit out-of-date and has since been updated. I don't have access to my build environment at the moment but I will confirm my edits when I am able to.

Respectfully,
Viridior

 

[viridior]

The gentoo.pandora.devs would like to greet everyone in the community and wish all a Happy New Year! To commemorate this occasion we are pleased to publish our first release of Gentoo designed specifically for the Pandora! You can find out details here: http://gentoo.openpandora.org/index.php/Gentoo-pandora-0.0.1 This is an ongoing project and by no means is it complete, but we feel that we have enough put together to allow the community and devs to start testing and submit inputs so we may further improve the OpenPandora experience.

Very Respectfully,
Viridior

 

[viridior]

Sort of feel like I'm talking to myself a bit, but I hope that this post will create some kind of verbal interaction...

As some of you know, those that have been tracking this project, we are coming along smartly in producing a Gentoo OS for the pandora that focuses on optimizations and configurability. This is not one of the 'official' distros so we rely on the same knowledge that all of you can grok from the forums. This also means that we don't have access to the default graphics, settings, and configs from the official OS(es).

The gentoo.pandora.devs are dedicated to participate in the community and do what we can to help support all of the many homebrew projects out there. Therefore I've made a quick list of things that we could use from you to incorporate into the default Gentoo Pandora OS releases. This is not all-enclusive so if you have any ideas beyond what is on this list, please let me hear from you so I can stop talking to myself.

[Graphics] (assume using fbdev and 800x480@24b)
- Boot Splash Theme/Image
- Console Theme
- XDM/GDM Login Theme
- Matchbox
> WM Theme
> GTK Theme
> Icon Set
> Cursor Set

[Programming/Projects]
- what languages/libraries do you need for your project?
- PXML file
- hardware/system support?

[Configs]
- You can see some of the configs we are using here. http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~gentoo-pandor...dora/main/files They are by no means complete and highly configured. As we come across something we update it. If you have some inputs please let us know.

[Hardware]
* We are using the default omap3_pandora_defconfig kernel config, there are a lot of interests on adding addition hardware/drivers. While we will happily like to make the kernel work for everything, we just don't have the manpower to make device XXXX work in the kernel. If you know how to, and would like to show us, please stop by the wiki and make a HOWTO!

[Emulators]
* Does emulator XXXX going to work with Gentoo Pandora? Depends. If it is supported by the official distro(s) then it will likely work on Gentoo Pandora. Please don't ask until we have the hardware.

EDIT: You can find our images here: http://gentoo.openpandora.org/index.php/Category:Image We are currently working on 0.0.2_rc1

 

[TaG]

I can't stop you talking to yourself, or add anything meaningful. I'll do my bit by saying thank you and publicising it.

 

[viridior]

I can't stop you talking to yourself, or add anything meaningful. I'll do my bit by saying thank you and publicising it.

Thanks, I think your unofficial blog is a success and I've already noticed interest picking up on Gentoo Pandora since your first post about us. I really hope that we can provide a resource for the community to maintain interest in the Pandora and specifically Gentoo Pandora. It should be understood that we will remain as complaint as possible to the official releases so hopefully if it works on Gentoo Pandora it should work on Angstrom & Ubuntu (albeit a recompile).

Also javaJake brought up a good idea about making a x86 version of one of our builds so people can work on configs etc. This shouldn't be too hard and as soon as I've done some further refinements on 0.0.2 I'll look into it, that should give some people the opportunity to test a similar image without needing to mess with qemu etc.

Very Respectfully,
Viridior

 

[viridior]

First off, I would like to thank all of the enthusiasts out there that have sent the gentoo.pandora.devs your support and encouragement. I feel the pain of the slow development process and hope that this will show you some of what is going on... http://gentoo.openpandora.org/index.php/QEmu ...with pictures!

Currently the image is using a default made by the qemu-omap3 developer, but with some modifications it should be able to work with our images.

More News: javaJake and I have decided to change the toolchain in the 0.0.2 series to a newer gcc and glibc. While this isn't important to most, the newer gcc has better omap3/softfp/neon support among other things and we should see a performance boost.

gentoo-pandora-0.0.2_rc2 is coming along with the newer toolchain and now I have a beagleboard to play with for testing and native-compiling.

Thanks again!

Very Respectfully,
Viridior

 

[viridior]

Hello everyone,

Its been a long time since we have posted anything on this thread, but there is some good news. About a week ago we were able to test our 'dev' image on the beagleboard. We have a working kernel and low-level environment. We also have USB networking up (ethernet likely works too). Right now we are focusing on revamping the wiki site and document the process towards making the 0.0.3 line of images.
If your interested in the project, feel free to stop by in FreeNode#gentoo-pandora to see how we are doing or ask any questions.

Thanks,
Viridior

EDIT: can't spell apparently.

 

[Olexxy]

Well done! Thanks for your hard work on this, I am sure this gentoo development for pandora will be a great alternative

 

[viridior]

Gentoo-pandora-dev-0.0.2 is released. (And it works great on the BeagleBoard)
You can see the full software inventory here... http://gentoo.openpandora.org/index.php/Ge...ndora-dev-0.0.2

Highlights...
[software]
bash
vim
nano
screen

[compiling]
armv7a-softfloat-linux-gnueabi toolchain
gcc-4.3.2
python-2.5
perl-5.8
distcc

[networking] (usb works) (eth not tested but should work)
ssh
nfs
ntp
autofs
rsync
wireless-tools

Installation instructions here: http://gentoo.openpandora.org/index.php/Install_DEV_Image

You can find us in our normal stomping grounds in FreeNode#gentoo-pandora

 

[viridior]

We started our own news/blogs site to help us keep track of Gentoo Pandora development. We are charging forward at full speed to get a nice small and functional image well before the Pandora ships, if your interested check out http://gentoo.openpandora.org, it has a RSS feed.

 

[hells_dark]

Nice

 

[Sphinxter]

Use a bigger font.

 

[viridior]

For the faithful out there,

This last week has shown great progress towards a minimally bootable base image. This is still a work in-progress but 80% of the work is done for this image. You can read more about it on the Gentoo Pandora news site.

Highlights...
* 0.0.3-test (dev image for 0.0.3-base) package listing is complete and installed, only requires configuration files and kernel. You can download the image on the link at the top of the wiki page.
* all packages were natively compiled, binary repo link is available on the news link. Actively being added to and will provide an even greater means of customization for people interested in their own images.

http://gentoo.openpandora.org/news/

Very Respectfully,
Viridior

 

[gruso]

Is there any chance you guys could put together an idiot-proof package in the future, similar to the Angstrom-Qemu one we saw recently? Many of us Windows exe clickers would lap it up, and it would give the Gentoo project a lot of exposure.

 

[streak]

+1

 

[viridior]

Is there any chance you guys could put together an idiot-proof package in the future, similar to the Angstrom-Qemu one we saw recently? Many of us Windows exe clickers would lap it up, and it would give the Gentoo project a lot of exposure.

This is actually a major concern of ours. Along with making the 0.0.3 series of images we are currently redoing our wiki/documentation to match with our building process. Hopefully what comes out is a very easy, step-by-step guide of how to install an image straight from a wiki guide. The 0.0.3-base is geared more for power-users who want to manipulate every detail in their custom image (something Gentoo is designed and reknown for).

After we release the -base image others can use that as the framework to build their own variants which we will provide resources for hosting on our site. This means that we can have a wide variety of images tailored for the different environments that the community wants (think all of the Ubuntu flavors). I personally will work on gnome/matchbox/opie env. I'm sure someone will work on Xfce, KDE, e17, *box, Qtopia, Maemo, etc, etc, etc.

 

[gruso]

Sounds great!

 

[Username]

Awesome. Idiot proof is always good, I hate installing through linux without packages.