Re: Regarding Kirkwood cpu support
* Björn Wetterbom <bjohv052@gmail.com> [2009-03-25 16:56]:
> What kind of time frames are we talking about when it comes to Debian
> support for Kirkwood for us "ordinary users" who don't compile our own
> kernels and want our machine to start every day, every time?
>
> Will initial support consist of install packages from Martin or
> others, and official Debian support be available only in Debian
> Squeeze?
Something like that, yes. In fact, there will be another big
kernel+installer update for lenny at some point (maybe based on a
2.6.30 kernel) and I hope this'll allow me to add basic SheevaPlug
support to lenny, but that still remains to be seen.
The 2.6.29 kernel was uploaded to the Debian archive yesterday and it
includes a Kirkwood image with SheevaPlug support. I've made some
basic changes to the installer already but that will require some more
work. Given that there are so many different options to install the
SheevaPlug (to USB, to SD card, to internal MTD flash; boot from
flash, boot from USB) I still need to think about the best way to
handle this in the installer.
Giving a time frame is very difficult, especially since I'm fairly
busy right now and have quite a bit of upcoming travel, but I'd you
say can expect something that works pretty well within 2 months, and
something more untested in a month or so. I can also provide a manual
"unpack a tar ball to a USB stick, download my kernel" method fairly
soon if there's enough demand.
> The reason I am asking is that I am thinking "Should I buy a
> SheevaPlug now or wait a couple of months?"
If I were you, I'd wait until it's actually available in Europe. But
apart from that, there's no big reason to wait too long.
--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/
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