[Arm-netbook] mele a1000 - best way to get newbies up and running

[moo cow]

Hi,

I've been watching newbies (like me) struggling to get linux up and running
on the mele A1000

I remember going through this painfull process when hacking plug computer
devices to get a debian CLI only (SSH) version on.

the easy bit was buying a 3.3v nokia cable for a couple of pounds on ebay
and chopping off the end and connecting to the serial port prongs on the
plug computer (in my case i used an voltmeter, an old floppy drive cable
connector and spliced the cables with insulating tape).

the much harder bit (and i sense what a lot of newbies will struggle with)
is having with a lack of understanding of the ARM and linux boot
process  and the huge amounts of tin foil hat jargon to wade through to
get linux booting.

a few people came together to help newbies like me out with a simple set of
commmands to type in to the terminal to reconfigure uboot to boot from SD
and compiled a 4GB SD card image (debian CLI/SSH) .. all a newbie then had
to do after sorting out the serial port cable  is follow a simple set of
instructions to get uboot reconfigured and just image a 4GB SD card and
boot  .. it worked really really well and in addition the simple freebie SD
card backup/restore imaging tool is really useful to back up SD cards (in
effect system) images as well.

I've really got to like administering the plug boxes over SSH rather than
connecting to monitor/keyboard :-)

Although the freebie program is a windows program (and i sense thats
persona non grata here) i'll post the link and i'm sure there are bags
of simple linux alternatives:

http://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/

Remember as well guys that newbies will struggle to even setup a suitable
compilation environment and go through the process of getting the source
compiling it and installing it on the target system.

my vote is for a lean and fast Debian CLI only with SSH server (but im
biased ;-)

Hope it helps
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