Letux-OS

[hns]

News: I have ported the Nub driver to latest mainline Linux so that we now have the Pandora Nubs working.

What it is: Letux-OS is a Debian based distribution which has focus on Kernel and U-Boot to get full and almost identical hardware support for multiple devices. Currently: OpenPandora, GTA04/Letux2804, Pyra, BeagleBoard, BeagleBone, PandaBoard, OMAP5432EVM, Udoo neo and more.

On user-space side it currently supports LXDE,Xfce and QuantumSTEP. Almost working are (were) Replicant and QtMoko.

More info: www.letux.org

 

[ingoreis]

Sound Interresting for me.

Can you make a DiskDump Image of this Linux in installed Form for the Pandora for us?
I would be Glad to test it and DiskDump Images make installing a new Linux to SD Card much more Easier



btw:
Do that Letux Linux support the Beagle Board Rev C3 too? (not BeagleBone)
I have 2 of these here and search a good OS for them:

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Yes, it should work.

 

[hns]

Yes, BeagleBoard C3 is also supported.

To make an SD, download the "makesd" tool: http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-makesd/

run (assuming your SD-Card reader is called /dev/sdb)

DEV=/dev/sdb ./makesd beagleboard

or

DEV=/dev/sdb ./makesd openpandora

For a list of the known versions check : http://git.goldelico.com/?p=gta04-m...=37c83763cddd35f894ae2aa1ddc0ef4d3150efa6#l80

Making dd images has the problem of different SD card sizes. Either they are too big for a card or too small. And resizing the root file system dynamically is difficult. Therefore we prefer to use the makesd approach. It can also handle different mixes on multi-partition cards much better than providing .dd images for every potential combination.

It should boot immediately on the BeagleBoard. But I haven't checked recently - have to remove some dust from mine . If it doesn't please let me know the boot log.

On the Openpandora, press the right shoulder button while powering on and then select "boot from SD:1" by the left side controls and press the "B" button from ABXY.

 

[notaz]

To make an SD, download the "makesd" tool

Your makesd has a problem that we recently discovered on the pyra: tar extraction is trying to magically convert uid/gid of all files to match between hosts. For example, if there is a file belonging to user "lightdm" uid=84 in in the tar, but the host used to prepare the SD is using a different distro and also has "lightdm" user but with different uid (108), tar will silently change the uid from 84 to 108, which may lead to mysterious permission errors when SD is actually booted. The solution is add --numeric-owner .

Most of the time this doesn't show up, but a few unfortunate users might have problems.

 

[hns]

Your makesd has a problem that we recently discovered on the pyra: tar extraction is trying to magically convert uid/gid of all files to match between hosts. For example, if there is a file belonging to user "lightdm" uid=84 in in the tar, but the host used to prepare the SD is using a different distro and also has "lightdm" user but with different uid (108), tar will silently change the uid from 84 to 108, which may lead to mysterious permission errors when SD is actually booted. The solution is add --numeric-owner .

Most of the time this doesn't show up, but a few unfortunate users might have problems.

Thanks for this notice. I will add asap.

BTW: there is an issue tracker for reporting bugs: http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-makesd/issues/

 

[hns]

News: there is letux-kernel 4.14-rc1 available [1]. But it seems to have broken the display. Colors are lost but instead of showing B&W it shows B&B (black and blue) only. I.e. red and green are missing. But only on the OpenPandora while the GTA04 using exactly the same OMAP has all colors. So it is very likely an effect of the panel driver.

[1]: http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-kernel/

 

[CommanderB]

Do I understand correctly that your long-term goal is to get the specific devices like the Pandora to be supported by mainline Linux?

Gesendet von meinem SM-N9005 mit Tapatalk

 

[hns]

Do I understand correctly that your long-term goal is to get the specific devices like the Pandora to be supported by mainline Linux?

Gesendet von meinem SM-N9005 mit Tapatalk

Yes.

The reason is that we just have to maintain ca. 0.5% additional lines of code to Mainline to make everything work (ca. 200 modified files for ca. 10 different devices). If we get rid of the final 0.5% you can use the distribution kernels e.g. Debian because they use mainline as their source tree (and not any private one).

For the Pandora, we are almost 90% there. Significantly missing is sound. And currently WiFi and Display are broken. They did work and it is just to find out what upstream patch did break them.

 

[CommanderB]

Thanks for the information!

I have never thought that so few lines are needed. But you are talking just about basic support, not advanced features like the Pandora wifi hacks and the power saving, right?

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[hns]

Yes, Linux is really big... So 0.5% is still a lot

I think WiFi hacks are included. Power saving might be not as elaborated, but everyone is welcome to work on it. And not to forget: the Pandora uses the same OMAP3 as the N900/Neo900 and GTA04 and those are mobile devices where WiFi and power-saving is equally important. Therefore a lot has already been done upstream to address common issues.

 

[hns]

News: Letux-OS runs out of the box on the brand new PocketBone.
Simply use the Letux makesd script to create a bootable SD card with Debian:

 

[PowerGod]

This is good stuff !! Thanks for the effort

 

[___]

Very cool endeavor. And @hns post inspired me to buy a pocket beagle, which I will install letux on . I have a display which is meant to be used on a beaglebone black. Hopefully I will be able to make an adapter and drive it with the pocket beagle.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Awesome! My Pandoras welcome new alternative OSes anytime!

 

[Swordfish II]

Would be really cool if this could be flashed to the NAND

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Too small for letux. What's wrong with running from SD card?

 

[hns]

Would be really cool if this could be flashed to the NAND

Too small for letux.

Well, depends on total NAND size. On GTA04 we can flash it into the 512MB NAND. But to be honest it has not much functionality. As soon as you do an apt-get update NAND may overflow...

What's wrong with running from SD card?

IMHO nothing.

 

[levi]

Maybe I'm being blind, but I can't see any instructions there on how to install it to a bootable SD card for Pandora. I appreciate this is a commercial project, so maybe that's deliberate, but if you want us to test it it would be nice.

Would we expect to get anything by taking the latest Pandora tgz and blatting over the kernel on it? I see you provide a uImage and a modules.tgz, so it sounds like it might not be a complete disaster. IIRC the Pandora doesn't use initfs so there should be no extra steps before getting it to boot at least.

Edit: Scrolling up it looks like I should be using makesd. Unfortunately, my Pandora doesn't have a working screen, so I can only use it via TV out, so I'll have to dig out the old autoboot script.

 

[hns]

Hi,
to create a bootable SD card, use the Letux makesd script on some Linux host:

http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-makesd/

like

DEV=/dev/sdc ./makesd pandora

Then insert SD card into let slot, press right shoulder button and power on. Choose Boot from SD:1 by the up/down navigation keys and finally press B from ABXY.

BTW: Letux-OS is not a commercial project. It is FLOSS and everyone can contribute.