Re: Getting Debian running on an EfikaMX Smartbook
Hi Konstantinos,
markos@genesi-usa.com said:
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:50:50 +0100
> Martin Lucina <martin@lucina.net> wrote:
> > It says there, right in the first post:
> >
> > "NOTE: No 2D/3D drivers have been included, as I'm in the process of
> > converting these to multiarch and setting up the repository for easier
> > download via apt-get. Stay tuned."
>
> Right you are, my message was unclear, I meant 2D accelerated drivers (for video playback,etc). Using fbdev works just fine for unaccelerated 2D graphics.
>
> > Can you please confirm whether or not the image
> > "efikamx-armhf-20120226.img" is supposed to boot out of the box on the
> > Smartbook?
>
> Yes that's the one.
Ok, I tried this again, and it seems to boot fine. I may have been confused
by the lack of any kind of feedback (black screen) while it boots, but I'm
pretty sure I waited quite a while and nothing happened...
> > I understand that there would be work and time required to get display
> > drivers into the mainline; that's fine. But presumably at least the
> > pre-built image above can actually be used to boot a Smartbook today?
>
> yes.
I'm now dissecting this to see if I can understand the boot process enough
to change the text console to tty0 so that I can see at least some feedback
that the machine is booting, and then I'll try and install it to the SSD
since the armhf/xfce image is *way* faster than the stock Ubuntu install.
Good work!
One observation: In both the text console or X, when the screen blanks the
backlight does not go off...
> no need to apologize, ARM has only just started to gain consumer attention and some things are a bit rough and experimental, though I believe in 2-3 years time it will be as common to buy an ARM-based laptop as it is for a x86 one (fingers crossed) :)
Fingers crossed indeed :-) My feeling (coming from x86) is that the major
thing missing is some kind of platform standardisation so that you don't
need a custom kernel and bootloader for each and every SoC. We may actually
end up thanking MSFT for pushing this through in ARM, assuming they don't
lock alternative OSes out in the process :-/
--
Martin Lucina
http://lucina.net/ (interwebs/blogs/rants/consulting)
martin@lucina.net (smtp/xmpp/jabber/gtalk)
@matolucina (twitter)
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