Re: Mini-HTPC that runs Debian?
On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 05:56:29AM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Now that with XBMC announcing support for Android devices, there seems to be
> a great proliferation of small computers running Android >= 4 that are sold
> to be used as HTPCs.
>
> For example, I found the following to be interesting:
>
> https://dx.com/p/177875
> https://dx.com/p/176074
>
> I am mostly asking this because my wife is threatening to kill me if,
> according to hear, I don't give her something that is able to play games on
> the TV (I don't quite get what is so special about the "on the TV", but I
> think that it is better not to ask).
>
> I couldn't care less for the games, but I do care for video playback,
> especially those that I encode with handbrake (which was my motivation to
> get it into Debian, as you can see in the git repo of the Debian multimedia
> team).
>
> OK, so, the questions:
>
> 1 - Is it possible (without too much pain) to run a Debian on these things?
> 2 - If it is possible, would one of these be useful as a mini buildd?
> 3 - Is it possible to run X on this? Would it be accelerated for video
> playback? What if I happened to grab the Android kernel (don't know how
> one would do this, since I have never used Android)?
> 4 - If I were not to tinker with these computers and content with only using
> Android for the games, which one should one prefer?
>
> I think that the first device linked above has a "Vivante GC2000" GPU, while
> the second has a Mali GPU.
>
> If these computers listed above are not good, are there any recommendations
> for a computer that would fit the 4th point (read: "the wife point") above,
> but also allow me to install one Android program or another that I happened
> to write?
Some might have Debian support. Certainly some systems support both
linux and android (not at the same time of course).
The mali GPU would be nice given the lima project is working on an open
source driver. An unknown GPU might only have a driver for android and
no way to run X.
As for a buildd, well anything under 1GB is pretty much useless, and
2GB would be a lot better. I have an imx53 board with 1GB ram and it
does OK for most things but large c++ projects take a while to compile.
Personally I am planning to get a cubox running debian as a mythtv
frontend, but I haven't had time to work on it lately.
The first one you linked to is an i.MX6 quad core. Certainly freescale
supports linux on that. Of course the linux from freescale might not
work on a product made from it without some modifications, but could be
worth a look.
If the sources for the drivers are available, then it should be possible
to get working, but someone has to do the work.
--
Len Sorensen
Reply to: