Novena update; armhf flavor for i.MX6
Hello again debian-kernel!
I wrote to this list in December[0] regarding the Novena open hardware
laptop project[1]; there is now a Debian porting wiki page here:
http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena/Debian
I met Ben H and bunnie in late December, and then had access to a
development board again a week ago. I was able to build and boot an SD
card image using a mainline linux kernel (clean ~3.8 kernel.org checkout
with custom defconfig), a custom u-boot, and wheezy armhf rootfs
(instructions at [2]). The Novena boards are in very short supply, and I
don't have one in my hands at this time, but a couple second rev boards
might be available in the coming months.
Currently mainline does not include working support for SATA, the PCI-e
port, HDMI, and several other peripherals, but the Novena team is working
towards getting support for those (perhaps older Freescale BSP or Linaro
code) merged into mainline. Ethernet has a couple bugs but mostly works.
As far as I know, basic framebuffer graphics over HDMI and the LVDS ports
should be feasible under DFSG, but non-proprietary accelerated GPU support
would be new work and need to come from the community or a third party.
It sounds like there has been talk of a unified i.mx5 and i.mx6 armhf
debian kernel flavor (something like '-mx'), which would be the place for
us to submit kernel defconfig tweaks to, and potentially device tree files
before they are accepted upstream (is there policy for that?).
I have no idea what would be involved in creating or maintaining a new
flavor[3]. How can I help? Is a proposal required?
FWIW, the only other devices using i.MX6 chips so far that I know of (and
might make use of this flavor) are the Sabre Lite and Nitrogen6x
development boards, the Wandboard development board (using single and
dual-core chips, not quad-core), the Zealz GK802 Android "TV stick", and
the Ampe A10 table (confusingly named, not using the A10 ARM chip).
--bryan
[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2012/12/msg00349.html
[1] http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page
[2] http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena/DebianBuildProcess
[3] It seems like it could be a real spiritual quest! A thrilling journey
into the dark heart of maintenance, mucking with the overlapping
build internals of two huge software communities, with all commits
almost certain to be cursed in posterity!
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