Re: debian on acer tablets
On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Ian Campbell <ijc@hellion.org.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 2014-11-29 at 13:24 +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
>> In the meantime, I want to ask again, what's the outlook for an acer
>> a200 (nvidia A7 processor)? How much work would I be looking at to get
>> a useable OS, if, say, I could extract the relevant drivers from the
>> kernel source?
>
> Debian's userspace should work on essentially any ARM platform which
> meets the relevant ABI requirements, AIUI lots of people run a
> (debootstrapped?) Debian userspace with a vendor kernel of some sort.
> The main sticking point would be ancient vendor kernels, anything 3.x
> should be fine though, I reckon (Wheezy had 3.2, by way of comparison).
Android 4.0, kernel 2.6 .
> It seems pretty likely that A200/A7 will meet the armhf requirements
> (i.e. it's ARMv7) and so you ought to be able to run an armhf userland
> on your own or the vendor's kernel.
Vendor is supposedly on record as not intending to provide anything
beyond 4.0 for the A200.
Squeeze or learning how to compile my own kernel. Okay.
> (one thing I'm not so sure about is when the vendor kernel is an
> "android" kernel. But I think those should still support "normal"
> userspaces ok).
Primary issue is the C library, I think.
> Getting formal support into Debian would be more work, starting with a
> requirement for the platform to be supported by the mainline kernel,
> i.e. cleaning/rewriting enough of the vendor stuff for upstream to be a
> useful kernel on the platform.
Yeah, if I can find enough of the drivers in the kernel source tarball. Okay.
> As far as I can tell the A200/Nvidia A7 is part of the Tegra family,
I thought I had read that somewhere in the settings dialog or perhaps
in the printed manual. Haven't found where I saw it before, however.
> which is a pretty actively maintained SoC family in the upstream kernel
> (and u-boot, I think). However I don't see any sign of the A200 or
> Nvidia A7 in the upstream mainline kernel source based on a simple grep.
Which is why I decided to ask.
> I don't know if there is some other tegra/a200/acer community looking
> into upstream support for such things, they'd be the ones to talk to if
> they exist.
>
> Ian.
Haven't found a community at this point, but I'll keep trying. Or
maybe try setting one up, I guess.
Thanks.
--
Joel Rees
Be careful when you look at conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart,
and ask yourself if you are not your own worst enemy.
Arm yourself with knowledge of yourself, as well.
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