Release Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on SD card


chaotix

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Jun 16, 2012
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I modified the Ubuntu Pre-Installed OMAP-images to run on the Pandora.


You need an extra partition to install this. PNDs don't work as Ubuntu is compiled for hard float. As the PNDs are made for soft float even getting the PND system to work won't make existing PNDs work.


But having the whole Ubuntu repositories at your disposal should keep you occupied a bit :)


http://lxtek.de/pandora/ubuntu


Edit: Of, forgot to mention: The password for the default 'pandora' user is just the single letter 'p'.
 
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Thanks! Sounds promising!


A few questions:


- Does Unity work well with the Pandora hardware?


- Any screenshot to share?


- How much software is available for ARM distributions vs x86 ones ?
 
Oh wow, neat!


Hardfloat should run a bit faster than softfloat, so this is interesting to tryout - and a real good option as a really full PC OS :)
 
Will it work well on the non-Rebirth Pandoras ? (256Mb RAM)


Ubuntu is a "heavy" distribution with some heavy RAM consumption (compared to Angstrom), hence my question.
 
Wow, thank you!


So many new distros to try now :)


Will give it a go soon.
 
Oh wow, neat!


Hardfloat should run a bit faster than softfloat, so this is interesting to tryout - and a real good option as a really full PC OS :)

speed shouldn't be affected in any significant way.


any hot spots in the code should run with short inlined math functions eliminating the issue of passing the data on stack.


code that does a lot of data passing, function calling, will already be slow for other reasons than passing values.


code that work on math vectors should pass data as references or pointers to prevent excessive data copies, eliminating the need to optimize parameter passing of the floats by values.
 
A few questions:


- Does Unity work well with the Pandora hardware?


- Any screenshot to share?


- How much software is available for ARM distributions vs x86 ones ?

1. Works OK. The dash is not really fast, but it's not too bad either. Missing the Windows-Key is not good though. Maybe it's possible for the keyboard shortcuts to accept the Pandora-key or modifiy the keymap so that it acts as Windows-key.


2. Sorry, didn't make any screenshots.


3. I don't know how many packages are available vor x86, but there's quite a bit in the packages list:



Code:
$ for i in *_Packages; do echo $i; grep '^Package: ' $i | wc -l; done | cat

ports.ubuntu.com_ubuntu-ports_dists_precise_main_binary-armhf_Packages

7980

ports.ubuntu.com_ubuntu-ports_dists_precise_restricted_binary-armhf_Packages

3

ports.ubuntu.com_ubuntu-ports_dists_precise-security_main_binary-armhf_Packages

418

ports.ubuntu.com_ubuntu-ports_dists_precise-security_restricted_binary-armhf_Packages

0

ports.ubuntu.com_ubuntu-ports_dists_precise_universe_binary-armhf_Packages

28456

ports.ubuntu.com_ubuntu-ports_dists_precise-updates_main_binary-armhf_Packages

1841

ports.ubuntu.com_ubuntu-ports_dists_precise-updates_restricted_binary-armhf_Packages

0


Will it work well on the non-Rebirth Pandoras ? (256Mb RAM)


Ubuntu is a "heavy" distribution with some heavy RAM consumption (compared to Angstrom), hence my question.

I don't know. I just received my Pandora two weeks ago, so it has 512MB of RAM.

Oh wow, neat!


Hardfloat should run a bit faster than softfloat, so this is interesting to tryout - and a real good option as a really full PC OS :)

speed shouldn't be affected in any significant way.


any hot spots in the code should run with short inlined math functions eliminating the issue of passing the data on stack.


code that does a lot of data passing, function calling, will already be slow for other reasons than passing values.


code that work on math vectors should pass data as references or pointers to prevent excessive data copies, eliminating the need to optimize parameter passing of the floats by values.

That's not necessarily true. Some really floating point intensive stuff (like Povray) can see quite the enhancement, although for "regular" programms there is not much of a difference. Here is a benchmark: https://wiki.linaro.org/OfficeofCTO/HardFloat/Benchmarks201205


And I read a bit more about Multi-Arch-support in Ubuntu/Debian. It should be fully implemented in 12.04. So maybe it's possible to get the best of both worlds, e.g. hardfloat for Ubuntu programms and working PNDs through installed softfloat libraries. Haven't tested it yet though.
 
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Is the sgx actually working or does this use the softwarerenderer for unity etc.?
 
Is the sgx actually working or does this use the softwarerenderer for unity etc.?

I don't know if OpenGL ES is working. I saw that libraries are installed, but actually I don't know how to test if it is using SGX.


Unity is using the software renderer though. I don't know if this is due to missing hardware acceleration or because Unity needs full OpenGL support.
 
Tried it now and have to say, that boottime and normal handling is very good. But if i start any program it is going sloooooooooow. I have a 256mb swap partition on my 256mb Pandora and opening the softwarecenter takes 15 minutes.


Wifi seems to drop out quite often, too.


But it would be cool, if you can improve it a bit. Next thing I will try is to install lubuntu-desktop.
 
Tried it now and have to say, that boottime and normal handling is very good. But if i start any program it is going sloooooooooow. I have a 256mb swap partition on my 256mb Pandora and opening the softwarecenter takes 15 minutes.


Wifi seems to drop out quite often, too.


But it would be cool, if you can improve it a bit. Next thing I will try is to install lubuntu-desktop.

Software-center is a beast, but 15 minutes is really a lot. I tested it and it took about 2 minutes on my 512MB Pandora until the animations on the top started. But it needs over 100MB RAM alone. So that's probably too much for a 256MB Pandora.


I did not have any trouble with wifi. I connected once and did not lose contact although normally I use an USB-Ethernet-adapter because it's faster.


Let us know if lubuntu works and how much RAM it uses.


I don't think I will improve this image. I just tried getting 3d acceleration to work and I kind of did. At least I could start pvr2d_test and it displayed a small car. But this worked by using the multi-arch support (which is really nice) and installing armel (softfloat) packages. Problem is that nothing uses it as the rest of the system is armhf. Maybe I will try to create an armel image from scratch. Isn't it nice how one closed source driver dictates how you can use the system :-(


Which desktop do you think would be best suited for the Pandora? LXDE, XFCE, E17 or Unity?
 
I'd say Xfce, to get consistency with Zaxxon.


For memory usage, i don't know which one if the best.
 
Oh wow, neat!


Hardfloat should run a bit faster than softfloat, so this is interesting to tryout - and a real good option as a really full PC OS :)

speed shouldn't be affected in any significant way.


any hot spots in the code should run with short inlined math functions eliminating the issue of passing the data on stack.


code that does a lot of data passing, function calling, will already be slow for other reasons than passing values.


code that work on math vectors should pass data as references or pointers to prevent excessive data copies, eliminating the need to optimize parameter passing of the floats by values.

That's not necessarily true. Some really floating point intensive stuff (like Povray) can see quite the enhancement, although for "regular" programms there is not much of a difference. Here is a benchmark: https://wiki.linaro....enchmarks201205

HAHAHAHA povray is the only program in your cited benchmark really benefiting of this.


and that's what I was saying: good code wont see a change.


(I'm laughing at povray)


if you want to cherry-pick, here are programs that actually run SLOWER with hardfp:


Ray-Tracing/SmallPT 0.951x


Graphics/GraphicsMagick-Resizing 0.941x


Processor/Hmmer 0.987x


Processor/MAFFT 0,991x


Processor/Minion [Test: Graceful] 0.999x


Processor/Minion [Test: Quasigroup] 0.971x


Processor/NPB [Test: IS.C] 0.911x


gtkperf saw a decrease in performance on average.


excluding povray (hahaha 1500%, OMG horrible code), and ffmpeg encoding (+15%), most benchmarks showed no improvements.


results like this is why most distributions don't switch to hardfp yet, the loss of compatibility with some ARM systems isn't worth the slight performance gain in some rarely used, badly written, floating-point intensive applications.


the guys steering Ubuntu are again going for the latest fad without thinking if its really for the better.


everyday use applications (very little FP), and well written applications wont see an improvement.
 
I'm glad for Ubuntu on Pandora, I'll probably be running it once I get my Pandora, or Debian.


koodos for getting it going.
 
Well, as our kernel is now more mainstream compatible, it shouldn't be too hard to get most of the ARM distributions to run.
 
oh, how I love the pandora-community for all this stuff. It is nice to see a retro-gaming project to become more or less what is according to my opinion a fantastic example for a proper future. Look, this is a real social network. working just out of passion is the one and only way.


Sorry for this off-topic.
 
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