[Arm-netbook] Good netbook based on Cortex-A9

[lkcl luke]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 3:58 PM,  <freebirds at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012, at 07:11 AM, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>> > > Raspberry pis are preinstalled with Fedora.
>>
>> I thought they come bare without even the SD card.
>
> RS sells Raspberry Pi model B board: "Boots from SD card, running the
> Fedora version of Linux."
> http://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi
>
> RS is also selling the Debian "squeeze" release on their website. The
> ordering number number is 763-1030.
>
>> But images of most Linux distros are available for download, including Fedora, RedSleeve, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.
>
> The tutorials I have read on installing Linux on many ARM and MIPS
> devices is much more complicated that simply dd image to SD card.

 yes.  that's because of the difference between ARM or MIPS and the
x86 system, with its BIOS and the much more prevalent use of dynamic
buses such as PCI, PCIe, USB and so on.

 let's take a look, as an example:

 * the IBM original x86 PC: dynamic bus (XT), and a BIOS
 * 386s from 1991: an upgrade of the XT bus to 16-bit: still dynamic,
and still with a BIOS.
 * 486s, 586s, 686s, P4s - all upgrades of the original XT bus: still
dynamic, and still with a BIOS.

so no matter what you get, with very few exceptions you can pretty
much download any x86 distribution from any vendor and have the
majority of the hardware work out-of-the-box.  i heard a story a while
ago - it's probably not true any more - that you could even take a
linux 1.0 kernel and stand a good chance of running modern
applications on it.

by contrast, let's take a look at e.g. the GPL-violating CT-PC89e:

* a USB bus which we had to look up in the samsung 2.6.24 sources how it works
* two GL850G hubs which we had no idea how to power up, because the
GPIO pins were hard-wired to specific functions on the Samsung CPU
* USB devices which we also had no idea how to power up, because again
the GPIO and Reset pins were hard-wired to specific functions on the
Samsung CPU
* an LCD panel which we had no idea how to power up or even how to get
it to function, or how to vary the brightness, nor what frequency it
operated at, because it was directly hard-wired to the Samsung CPU and
the information on how to control it was hard-wired into the
GPL-violating kernel.

so it took about 3 weeks of reverse-engineering, and me passing that
information over to frans pop for him to write proper drivers in a
clean-room fashion.  at the end of this 3 weeks there was NOTHING OF
ANY VALUE TO ANY OTHER HARDWARE OTHER THAN THAT ONE SPECIFIC LAPTOP.

and the reason for this should be very very clear: in ARM and MIPS
products, there *is* no BIOS, and all the hardware is directly
connected to the SoC.  when you get to the next product, the
hard-wiring is often completely different.

i've written about this before, but it's worth repeating: any
GNU/Linux distro that is to run on ARM or MIPS hardware basically
needs the linux kernel to be severely and heavily customised, because
effectively the linux kernel *is* the BIOS for that device.

this is what is making it so damn difficult for enthusiasts.  first
the reverse-engineering, then the attempts to run that
heavily-customised linux distro on some completely unsuitable hardware
(often with disastrous results - many people have bricked their
expensive MIPS-based Linux TVs by trying to upload the wrong
firmware), then *finally*, often just as the product becomes
end-of-life, someone makes a decent "easy-to-install" firmware... but
it's too late: nobody can buy that product any more, and the cycle has
to start all over again.

this is incredibly disempowering and it's why the rhombus tech
initiative exists, to break this stupid cycle and to provide another
way that is enriching for both the companies that subscribe to the
EOMA initiative as well as to the software (libre) developers who also
support it.

l.