Puppy ARM?

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aarf

#16 Post by aarf »

aarf wrote:Is there some block to using operamini? Openmokko figures prominently in mickos link so is direct collaboration with openmokko also an option? Amigo hasnt shown any interest in posting his unfinished arm work online. Debian and ubuntu also have models to copy. Freerunner is mentioned as a platform although availability is an issue for me at least. If someone with knowledge could select a phone to target.
on reflection i'd like to clarify. My full although limited by knowledge support will be behind ANY initiative that gets puppy on any phone. Count on me for testing and use on a daily basis. I see browser choice as just another user downloadable choice of app from the many available and so dont see browser as a limiting factor. If micko and Pierre can swing this using any combination of surfer, deforaOs and puppy the sooner the better in my book.

nooby
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#17 Post by nooby »

I am not sure but here is one reason it is so difficult to get puppy on ARM or pads or smartphones with Android on them.

The software and hardware guys don't want us to.


http://www.gizmag.com/android-3-0-honey ... -os/17522/
It's fair to speculate that in the coming years, Apple's locked-down iPad will continue to offer the best user experience - provided you're happy to work within the narrow confines that Apple allows, but Android will probably gain a larger market share by becoming available on a wider range of brands and devices.

It's also fair to speculate that Android tablets will likely suffer a lot of the same problems as Android phones: home screens filled with crappy undeletable apps added by hardware manufacturers or network service providers, Android Market apps that don't work or work poorly due to hardware fragmentation, and difficult operating system upgrade paths due to customized interfaces laid on by each manufacturer. These are unavoidable with an open system that runs on such an array of hardware.


These people are dependent on each other. No software sold then they can not pay the hardware guys. and vice versa.

So we need to get every potential puppy love to put in a fair amount of cash to preorder a version of an android phone with Puppy on it.

Then unless that firm get boycotted by Google then we get one.

Am I too pessimistic?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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jamalexa
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#18 Post by jamalexa »

I am also interested in using puppy for the Sylvania 7" or on a 10.2 " tablet I was going to buy. I'll read the ubuntu thread to see whats possible.

Master_wrong
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#19 Post by Master_wrong »

Cluster-Pup v.2-Puppy Beowulf Cluster
[url]http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=499199#499199[/url]

nooby
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#20 Post by nooby »

As I tried to write on some other thread. Booting seems to get the Radio circuits on the Smartphones to boot up first so the boot sequences are highly specific for each phone and that way it is guared by the manyfactories?

But I know too little to say anything.

an old workmate managed to find a program on internet that allowed him to root a windows phone and to boot android on it.

So why not use same program to boot puppy on it? Just a naive thought but I trust that program is highly illegal to use so I did not dare to ask him for its name. But I saw how he started the smartphone and could chose to either start into windows on it from built in ROM or into Android from the SD card with that boot up program on it.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

linuxgnuru
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Willing to give it a go

#21 Post by linuxgnuru »

I'll be getting (maybe sometime Feb) a CherryPal Africa laptop (arm-9 400mhz suspected) along with the Always Innovating's Smartbook (MID+tablet+keyboard) and I plan on testing out just about every linux dist under the sun (or should I say Oracle now) that work on ARM, including (and perhaps with more vigor towards) Puppy. So far, I have a plethora of machines running fedora, ubuntu, centos, yellowdog (on my ps3 and old mac g4), DSL, puppy, and slackware .. oh, and a kernel-only running on my dreamcast. Anyway, once these guys arrive I'd be more than happy to help out with Puppy-on-ARM project or just post what I'm doing/not getting to work etc.

nooby
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#22 Post by nooby »

Debian has for a long time have ported their basic things to ARM.

How easy that is to make a puppy of is way beyond my capacity to guess.

Those that have made Dpup maybe know more?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

nooby
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#23 Post by nooby »

ARM seems to be the future for low power Fan less computers.

Read here
http://www.gizmag.com/compulab-announce ... -pc/17664/
desktop PC replacement. There's also mention of the company offering more than one operating system working "out-of-the-box," but what will actually be running the show hasn't yet been announced.

Availability is expected to be some time in April

... NVIDIA's Tegra 2 processing platform. ...
The 5.1 x 3.7 x 0.6-inch (130 x 95 x 15mm) Trim-Slice is the company's smallest and most energy efficient model to date, having an average operational draw of just 3W. Within the rugged all-metal, nickel-plated housing beats the Tegra 2 heart, where a 1GHz Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 processor and an ultra low power, high definition GeForce graphics unit sit together on the same chip.

Supporting players include 1GB DDR2 memory and 64GB of solid state storage, with expansion possible via the duo of media card slots.


So would be cool to have a Debian or Puppy OS on such a machine.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

amigo
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#24 Post by amigo »

nooby, you actually are quite right about creating a debian-based puppy for ARM. Anyone who has mastered 'woof' building and can compile and package all the extras which puppy needs which aren't in debian, plus adapt any scripts which need it, could fairly easily get a start on an ARM port. There are some difficult points, though. First of all with the bootloader -ARM can't use grub, syslinux or lilo. Then, most ARM devices are not gonna have CD drive. Even if they are not 'embedded' systems (like phones), they are still gonna need a way to be install to the hard-drive, USB Flash, SSD or whatever. Basically you'd have to create a puppy which is *not* a LiveCD distro.

That's the real sticking point, I think, because it requires re-designing the core boot-up procedure to fit the hardware usage. Otherwsie, you wind up with something that is much slower than needed. These devices are nearly all fairly low-spec hardware. It makes no sense to use up half of the RAM(already low), nor take the time to copy a rootfs into the RAM. Doing so means that for any program running, there are two copies of it RAM.

This is why I asked you the other day what 'feature' or characteristics of Puppy you would hope to see in your phone or other small device. It seems to me that most of what characterizes Puppy is exactly what you would not want to do on such a device. The (maybe) friendliness of the Puppy desktop is the only concept I see thjat really applies. Even the supposed 'lightness' of Puppy is not really so great for these devices -it simply takes too much RAM to be that effective -if the device has no permanet, accessible storage, you can't suppose to only run part of it RAM and have the rest in a frugal install or save_file. Do you see what I'm saying? There is so much that would need to be *undone* to make Puppy effective for these devices. It would be more expedient to start from scratch and incorporate the best ideas out there for the task -including any thing from Puppy which fit the bill.

I say it would be 'easy', but I mean for someone who knows how to do all these things. And it would still be a very large job. Also, there is one thing you need to realize, there is no ARM architecture. There are over 2,000 varieties of ARM! There are quite a few variant instruction sets, most of which are available for different hardware variants. So, just which ARM do you want to choose? All the work done above will have to be repeated for nearly each platform you want to support! Do you understand why this hasn't been done?

nooby
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#25 Post by nooby »

Thanks Amigo, I read you loud and clear. It was even worse than my pessimism could imagine.

I don't remember if it was Aitch or Lobster or somebody else that wanted Puppy for ARM and I jumped on the train too seeing the need but that guy or those guys maybe wanted to encourage some of the Devs to get interested in it and even if I did not understood the difficulty I am a pessimistic person by nature and always thing things are way more complicated than what most people think ....

Anyway you confirm that this is much more difficult than what any of us enthusiasts could imagine.

So what would one do instead. We have smart phones that are almost like computers. We have ten or more Pads that try to out compete the Apples internet Pad and all these alternatives have Android on them.

And out there on internet there are "Mods" that modify Android so one can root it and add things that the OEM??? Operators did not made available.

But that is not what I like because most likely it is not legal to do such. I guess when buying one have accepted some Google policy to let them decide on such things. So what one need is an agreement with them that one are allowed to use these android devices under some regulated FOSS thing not making cash on them unless Google get their share maybe.

So we need then a Puppy SDK for doing apps for Android in Puppy?


That would be cool. As it is now I guess one need either MsWin, Apple, Ubuntu or Debian to do such apps?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

amigo
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#26 Post by amigo »

Before I say anything else, nooby, I want to take a minute to compliment you -your english is getting better!

I don't mean to totally discourage you about having a lightweight ARM installation. Starting from an existing debian port is the easiest way to go -but it means having a cross-compile environment for most arches. And, the ports they have already cover the few ARM instructions sets + arch which are most-widely used. They probably do not include your Psion phone, though, but who knows?

Devices which use 'meego' insetad of Android probably make for an easier target. My own interest in ARM support is mostly about having something for one or more of the ARM tablet-PC's. They provide an easier starting point. Installing a new embedded system -like on your phone or a PDA is a whole different problem and will always require one to be 'adventurous' and to be willing to give up your warranty on the device.

Aitch has been holding out hope for a long time now. Maybe someday we'll get there...

Jades
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#27 Post by Jades »

nooby wrote:ARM seems to be the future for low power Fan less computers.
It's been powering low power fanless computers since June 1987! :-) Acorn actually created ARM processors for use in desktop machines, starting with the Archimedes 300 and 400 series. Use in mobile products is actually a much later development (Psion Series 5, IIRC).
nooby wrote:Read here
http://www.gizmag.com/compulab-announce ... -pc/17664/

desktop PC replacement. There's also mention of the company offering more than one operating system working "out-of-the-box," but what will actually be running the show hasn't yet been announced.
That actually looks quite interesting. I have an Advantage Six A9home, which has 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz ARM 920 processor. It comes with RISC OS 4.42 as its operating system but it may be possible to run Linux on it, I've not really investigated it. It's a nice little machine, RISC OS just flies on it.

Slightly out-of-date A9home product page: http://www.advantage6.com/products/A9home.html

Retailer info: http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/micros/indiv ... de=ADV-A9H

RISC OS developer: http://www.riscos.com
Zhaan - AMD K6 2 500, 512MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 VR. Full install Wary 5.5 [url=http://tinyurl.com/dy66kh8]HardInfo Report[/url]
Merlin - Core i5-4590, 8GB RAM, Radeon R9 270X. Slacko 5.7.0

puppyite

#28 Post by puppyite »

@ Jades
Like a blood hound I sniff (click) everything and this link is 404: HardInfo Report

@ Audience
No reflection on OP but: I own a TracFone. If our car breaks we can call a wrecker, that’s all we use it for. If I want something with smarts I turn on a PC. Not everyone is “monkey see, monkey do

Jades
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#29 Post by Jades »

puppyite wrote:@ Jades
Like a blood hound I sniff (click) everything and this link is 404: HardInfo Report
Cheers for letting me know, I've fixed the link. The problem turned out to be a stray uppercase letter i in the file name - looked like a lower case l so I didn't realise I'd forgotten to change it! :oops:
puppyite wrote: @ Audience
No reflection on OP but: I own a TracFone. If our car breaks we can call a wrecker, that’s all we use it for. If I want something with smarts I turn on a PC. Not everyone is “monkey see, monkey do
Zhaan - AMD K6 2 500, 512MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 VR. Full install Wary 5.5 [url=http://tinyurl.com/dy66kh8]HardInfo Report[/url]
Merlin - Core i5-4590, 8GB RAM, Radeon R9 270X. Slacko 5.7.0

gcmartin

ARM

#30 Post by gcmartin »

Just a question starting from teh beginning: ARMs have been around for awhile. Some ARMS have LAN boards, some have Wi-Fi boards, some have Cell, some have serial.. If you are going to talk to an ARM, what is going to be your standard forgetting teh device to begin recieving boot instructions?

For example, in the PC world, I have a LAN connection, where I can boot, say a porperly configured Windows 2008 configuration and logon to manage it without the use of a display, keyboard, or mouse using PXE. I've imaged that I can do this also with a Knoppix/Linux distro which I pre-configure to start SSH/VNC or something after it boots so that I can login and get a desktop. PXE is a standard

If I am going to use an ARM device, in today's world, what STANDARD must I set so that I can get something booted to make the ARM device useful so that I can achieve desktop/console?

I ask this to help. Hope this helps.

noryb009
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#31 Post by noryb009 »

Instead of a ARM based puppy with specially built packages, could we find a X86 emulator for ARM and work with that? It won't be as fast, but it would be much easier and could be done quickly.

nooby
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#32 Post by nooby »

good suggestion but an emulator is not like a virtual thing is it because that would sandbox you so you see nothing of the arm thing at all?

But it would allow you to boot up puppy from within and then use the wifi to go out on internet and that is cool. But what else would it allow?

Sorry if I am too naive. We need to search for emulator for exactly the Arm for the device we own. I ahve two smartphones with ARM on them but they use a non rooted Android OS. So one are locked out from booting the emulator unless the SDK? could make it installed?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

noryb009
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#33 Post by noryb009 »

I'm thinking a minimal QEMU/virtual box OS that gives puppy full wifi, ports, file system, etc access. I'm not sure if this can be done, though.

nooby
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#34 Post by nooby »

Hey maybe good news here?

Put this in google search bar

QEMU for ARM processors

I saw several intersting entries.
QEMU emulates the armv5tej instruction set and all the derivative processors families like ARM7, ARM9E, ARM10E and XScale. It emulates full systems like Integrator/CP board, Versatile baseboard, RealView Emulation baseboard, XScale-based PDAs, Palm Tungsten|E PDA, Nokia N800 and Nokia N810 internet tablets etc. Qemu also powers the Android emulator which is part of the Android SDK (most current Android implementations are ARM based)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU#ARM

And others like that.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

gcmartin

Maybe ARM do-able then make a "bin" replacement for the ARM

#35 Post by gcmartin »

nooby wrote: ...
QEMU emulates the armv5tej instruction set and all the derivative processors families like ARM7, ...
... .
I see, I think.
  • Use QEMU to create an ARM environment on i86.
  • Then build/test a running ARM OS replacement to work out its bugs.
  • Then backup that running ARM environment.
  • Then restore that backup into a "real" ARM.
Yes, I can see how that might work. But, to build and test will require a community effort if you expect success.
Also, you must identify which ARM hardware you intend for ARM-PUP to run on.

Hope this helps

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