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Embedded Gentoo?

Posted by michael on from the patience-required dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Gentoo Linux may soon begin showing up in consumer gadgets, thanks to a new project creating an embedded version of Gentoo Linux. The year-old project has achieved preliminary releases on x86, MIPS, PPC, and ARM. The releases include native core system binaries, along with toolchains for native or cross-platform compiling. Native compiling, eh... considering it's Gentoo, how long would X take to compile on an iPAQ? :-)"

5 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. You wouldn't compile from scratch. by Principito · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Compiling from scratch would be insane. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to put cross compiling tools on a host machine and build your iPAQ or whatever in a chrooted environment. After which you would transfer your build.

    $0.02

    PS:
    Cross compiling tools are part of this project.

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    "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -- Plato (427?-347? BC)
  2. Alright by Apreche · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ARM eh? I see some gentoo on my Nintendo DS real soon...

    Oh, and anyone who things that a source based distribution would be bad for embedded, the opposite is true. Since its embedded you probably wouldn't be managing packages on it, like if it was say, a portable DVD player. Gentoo is really technically a meta-distro. It would just make it easier to create linux systems for different devices without having to do full on LFS. The compiling would be done once by the developer, then imaged into the devices. But the build would be device specific, meaning it would be as good as it can be.

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  3. Re:So why is Gentoo the right choice for this? by GileadGreene · · Score: 4, Insightful
    How many program projects that you know of offer linux-ppc or linux-mips or linux-arm binaries?

    Well, Debian for one. In fact, Debian supports x86, Motorola 68k, SPARC, Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, PA-RISC, IA-64, and S/390 architectures. Porting to the AMD64 and Hitachi SuperH is also underway. Note that the 68k, PowerPC, ARM, and SuperH are all popular for embedded applications.

  4. compiling by SuperBanana · · Score: 4, Insightful
    how long would X take to compile on an iPAQ?

    Helloooooo distccd.

    I have a P2/300 Mobile, a Celeron 450, and a P3/600. Compiling stuff with distcc set up is a breeze and I fail to see the complaints about gentoo compile time...of course, they're all bare-bones console-only systems (firewall, mail/web, and fileserver), but you get the idea. Two of them only have 128MB of ram...

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  5. Did any one read this by pavkb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would have read about 40-50 comments & all i see if people have serious misunderstanding of this project..

    Here is their project goal. From what i read, build in ur PC & move it to embeded device, gentoo style.

    2. Project Goals
    The intention of the project is to make Gentoo viable for embedded systems. This includes creating a system for cross compiling and building the image for an embedded system on a Gentoo workstation. The base install image should be minimal, with different libc options. Building on this base, the system can be customized for the particular system.