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Installing Linux On ARM-Based Netbooks?
An anonymous reader writes "I am sure that many other Slashdotters have noticed an increase in ARM-based netbooks over the past several months. For example, the Augen E-Go. It is a widely touted theory that it is impossible to install Linux on one of these notebooks, replacing the commonly installed Windows CE operating system. The sub-$100 netbooks carry decent specs, including 533MHz ARM processor; 128MB DDR RAM; and a 2GB Flash drive, as well as most expected netbook components (USB, Wi-Fi, etc.). I find it hard to believe that a computer with these specs is impossible to hack and install Linux to, but Google searches have been largely unsuccessful in finding proper information. Do any Slashdot readers have experience in installing ARM Linux distros to these cheap netbooks like this? If so, what distros do they recommend?"
(In particular, I wonder if anyone can comment on Ubuntu on ARM.)
Debian GNU/Linux on ARM
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Angstrom Linux
Sounds like they are good candidates for Android IMHO.
Debian GNU/Linux on ARM
Isn't it amazing what one can find with a few seconds of doing a Google search?
I know it doesn't let you say "hey, I submitted a Slashdot story, yay for me!" but it does solve the problem a lot faster, plus it allows you a chance to be independent and forego unnecessary hand-holding, like having other people do your Google search for you because "type in the keywords you want to search for" is too hard for you and you don't see that as a problem.
I use debian on my arm raid box. Not a netbook, but similar specs (except for the keyboard and video, of course).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I don't even get why these arm based machines come with windows ce, that's just setting the user up for disappointment... Sure it looks like windows, but won't run any of the apps people would expect to run on it....
Linux at least doesn't create such a false impression, and has a much wider array of applications readily available for it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
NetBSD runs on my toothbrush. I'm sure it'll run on your thingamabobber.
With Linux on ARM is that ARM devices are substantially less standardized that x86s are when it comes to such niceties as the preboot/early stage of boot process.
Because of the decades-long Wintel monopoly, pretty much any x86 board(with the exception of a few oddball embedded things and OLPCs), boots in almost the same way. Worst case, the ACPI implementation is so shot that you have to boot with -noacpi in order to get the kernel up and running.
ARM devices, though, have had considerable freedom to do their own thing, so long as the vendor provided a BSP that papered over the weirdness enough to run the OS of the customer's choice(historically WinCe/VXworks, more recently this has included Linux). On the plus side, this has meant some fairly interesting capabilities in some of the bootloaders. On the minus side, this has meant a multitude of bootloaders(a few OSS, redboot, u-boot), some fairly common, and some horrid oddball crap that even Google has only heard mentioned a few times.
If you can get the kernel booted, userland is not such a big deal. Debian has had a pretty decent one for a while, and the Ubuntu guys have recently been doing some "suitable for low-rez screens" type polishing. The issue will be figuring out the bootloader. And, of course, there is absolutely no assurance that the drivers for whatever oddball devices are crammed into the cheapo SoiCs in these things exist, or work properly.
If you get to the stage of "what distro do I want", you are ahead of the game.
Sure, Linux runs on lots of CPUs, and would have no problem on ARM, and probably even supports all the devices on the systems in question. The trick is finding a way to install it, and that's where the hacking comes in. How does the system boot? Can you modify the boot image to install Linux? Does the BIOS (or whatever equivalent) insist on only booting digitally-signed boot images like video game consoles do? Those questions may have different answers for each device.
In most cases, I would think it shouldn't be too hard, as they aren't likely to bother with digital signatures, and they probably have some mechanism for installing an upgraded or patched operating system (for bug fixes, if nothing else). Someone has to buy one and figure out how to do it.
Is more a tablet or a cellphone than a netbook, but the N900 runs it, and is ARM based. And probably will be a Meego version for it too soon. Anyway, the N900 have twice that RAM, completes to 1gb counting the swap, and several times that flash on storage, you could feel a bit stretched with it.
There are also several mini linux distributions specially targetted to low ram/hardware (i.e. damn small linux), but not sure if there are ARM ports of them.
I wouldn't bother with ubuntu on that thing, my cell phone has better hardware specs, in every category.
Check out Slackware on ARM
http://www.armedslack.org/
This is is a port of 12.2 packages (slackware is almost complete with 13 rc1).
Who honestly cares if they run Linux/Windows/Andriod/ any OS on these or not... these devices have about as much use as a 486 these days! They have f all power, the screens are crap and are basically useless...
I've already posted in this thread elsewhere, but I just thought I might add: Google is likely part of your problem (inability to find anything useful).
I've noticed lately that Google has become much less of a useful resource when looking up technical information. You're more likely to find a useful link with "stupid" queries, but any level of complexity results in two out of three being only-sorta related. It's a mess, and historically useful search formatting (quoting, -, +, etc.) no longer really help.
I really hope a better alternative comes along soon (or google releases "geek.google.com" or some such thing - with the old indexing). The lack of good search results (nay, worse results) has really made my life more difficult.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Contrary to what NetBSD advocates like to think, Linux actually runs on a wider variety of hardware than NetBSD does.
In the real world where things that matter happen, there's only one BSD derivative that can claim to be anything near as successful as Linux is -- and that (officially) only runs on hardware from one single manufacturer.
Looking at the specs given by the OP, I am wondering why you would go to the trouble of installing Linux on one of these machines (other than geek cred) when you could just get a MIPS based netbook with similar specs that comes with Linux, e.g. the CnMbook. I got one for £90 last year, it's slow as hell but does the job for basic web access etc when I don't want to carry around a full sized laptop.
I might add that putting a full-featured Linux distro (e.g. replacing the basic Linux install it ships with with Debian or the like) on the CnMbook doesn't seem too plausible at the moment, there's just too much tweaking necessary, and this is a machine that ships with a Linux variant installed. Trying to put Linux on one of the ARM machines mentioned by the OP when it isn't even supported by the manufacturer seems like more pain than it's worth to me...
https://alephnull.uk/
Or OpenBSD.
Plenty useable.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
If it's a bottleneck on Puppy or basic Debian, it's going to be a bottleneck on MSWinxxx.
The RAM is not the problem. The problem is the wetware of engineers who deliberately throw up roadblocks to using a decent OS.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The Simpad is an ARM-based tablet computer made by Siemens some years back. It came with WIN CE but people have created a Linux distro called OESF that runs on it and it will run many Sharp Zaurus applications unmodified even though it has a much larger screen than a PDA.
I would expect that people would have to do some boot loader hacking similar to what was done with Simpad, but if you could get that Simpad distro booted on one of these netbooks then you will be past the biggest hurdle in making Ubuntu Netbook remix run on them.
semi-intelleigent sounding stuff that presumes INTEL has already won.
Shoot. Why not just give in to the BORG entirely?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
No not Digital Subscriber Line! Damn Small Linux here - http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
This is a very generic model; do you have any idea who manufactured the board inside? It appears most other WinCE laptops out here are based on that exact same board - the shell/color differs but the ports are placed exactly at the same place!
If one of them runs Linux that would likely be a good starting point, then you need to figure out a way to write the flash memory.
I have installed Linux on an HP iPAQ hx4700 PDA (624MHz XScale PXA270, 64Mb RAM, 128Mb flash, 480x640 screen). As others have pointed out the main problems are finding (1) a boot loader and (2) drivers for your device. In the case of the hx4700 these problems were already solved for Familiar Linux (familiar.handhelds.org); SDG Systems produced a boot loader and others produced the kernel patches and drivers. A more generic boot loader is HaRET (Handheld Reverse Engineering Tool), a Linux bootloader which works from the Windows CE environment. I haven't used it myself because I wiped WinCE off my iPAQ years ago. Drivers and platforms for ARM devices are being developed for the Linux kernel all the time; check out the source code under ./arch/arm. But you may not find exactly the right combination for your device. Being a kernel hacker helps!
As for a Linux distro, I first used Familiar Linux. But that is no longer actively developed. So I switched to Angstrom Linux (www.angstrom-distribution.org). But that doesn't offer the latest version of the Mozilla Fennec browser. And in both cases I found the desktop environment (e.g. GPE) to be too resource hungry.
So I have now rolled my own distro from the latest software sources. In particular I am using a window manager called PAWM (Puto Amo Window Manager), which is small and perfect for a device without a keyboard, and fennec-2.0a1pre built from bleeding edge sources. Yes, they do actually work in 64Mb of RAM! It does take some effort to port, configure, debug and fix the software, but it's fun to do.
You can wait for MeeGo (Nokia's Maemo + Intel's Moblin) which is expected to get released (for the end user) in the coming quarter. It will run on both ARM and PC.
How different then, would doing this kind of thing be from installing Linux on a PocketPC/Windows CE device such as an iPaq? Yes, that is possible, but it is far from straightforward. I imagine the device is significantly different from a standard PC and more like a PocketPC-based ARM handheld or smartphone, and one ought to be considering it as such. I assume that such a device will not have some Palladium-like trusted computing system similar to what one sees in some gaming consoles which prevents one from easily changing the OS arbitrarily, but even so, getting everything to work is likely to be a major chore.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I have a Sharp Zaurus and it is ARM. I think there is an open source version of it also: www.openzaurus.org
Why not? http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-arm.xml
I've Gentoo installed on 2G USB drive, working on any x86 system I tried to boot up. Switching to ARM should not be a problem.
The 128Mb limit should mean poor performances, depending on your way to use the computer.
Geek users can do a lot, with Linux.
Linux can be installed on very poor systems, even more strange than Augen E-Go. Have you tried to install Linux in a home router? http://openwrt.org/
So, you can install Linux on such a computer and it should not be so hard. :)
I'm pretty sure about, considering that I didn't try...
Regards,
HUJuice
The problem with portable computing devices -- at least the ones that aren't tied to an expensive cell plan -- is that they are such narrow margin markets that few manufacturers are interested in them. Let's say that you want a lightweight, long battery life, portable computer with a full-sized keyboard to do actual work on: word processor, spreadsheet, or for the more technically inclined, a text editor and a copy of gcc, and you don't give a shit about watching video or browsing Flash-heavy sites.
Good luck with that.
It's not that there's any technical barrier involved here. You could do all of that just fine on a 90MHz Pentium fifteen years ago, or even a 50MHz 80486 twenty years ago. Odds are that the processor and memory in a third-rate cell phone could blow those specs away. Add a real screen and a keyboard, and you've got a device that could retail under $100. Of course, that means that it would probably wholesale for around $40, and the manufacturer's profit would likely be a couple of bucks, but only for the month or two it would take every factory in Taiwan to rush out clones. And that's provided it wasn't stillborn because every clueless tech "journalist" started bitching about how you couldn't watch video or play the latest games on it. Frankly, you can't really blame the manufacturers for not wanting to jump on that wagon.
So instead, we get the overpriced toys of the netbook world which, while capable computing platforms in the abstract, are so crippled by their toy keyboards that they're basically DVD viewers with built-in web browsers. It's like the final, terrifying revenge of WebTV.
I suspect that if you want something else, you're going to have to find an otherwise suitable netbook and substantially modify the hardware yourself. Personally, I've been giving serious thought to stuffing the guts of a netbook inside of a vintage IBM Model M keyboard and building a custom cover for it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
http://www.linuxuk.org/2010/02/the-new-ui-for-arm-based-ubuntu-devices/
is because ARM systems so far are embedded systems.
PCs are easy because their behavior is very simple and effectively, hasn't changed much since the beginning. But ARMs are a dime a dozen and used in various things from lightweight controllers to cellphones. Your PC might very well have several ARM processors inside it.
As a result, every ARM system is different - the memory map is different, the interrupt controller is different between SoC vendors, peripherals are located at different spots, etc. The only real constant is that ARMs boot at 0x0, but many SoCs have boot ROMs that are mapped at that area, which load a bootloader off storage at some arbitrary memory location and jumps there. End result, on ARM, you need to build a kernel/bootloader that's specific to your hardware.
On a PC, it's pretty much a monoculture and you know where things are in physical memory space. Things are located at well known addresses. On a PC, then, it's effectively the same architecture. That's why there's so many OSes available because the basic kernel needs are all the same across every PC, ranging from low power embedded systems to super 128-core behemoths - you know where RAM starts, how the BIOS will load you and where, how the interrupt controller, timer hardware, etc., work, and how to talk to more advanced peripherals via interfaces like ACPI. Hell, about the biggest change in PCs is the slow move to EFI based firmware, but they implement a BIOS compatibility module for backwards compatibility.
Try writing a program where you don't know where you're going to be located in memory, hardware you don't know where it might be located, interrupt controllers that can change wildly, etc without requiring reconfiguration and recompilation, and it's impossible. That's the current state of ARM systems...
Im extremely happy with my SmartQ 7. Its using a slightly modified and not very optimized Ubuntu. Should work for similar systems with the same Samsung reference design.
My experience has been with a 300MHz ARM with 128MB ram. The hardest part was actually finding the real manufacturer of my device. It's a no name device I bought off eBay dirt cheap. The manufacturer released an Android OS image for the device so I could use that kernel image. Installed Android to the internal flash, and have Debian booting straight from an SD card. It doesn't load Debian from Android it loads straight into Debian when the SD card is in. There are some scripts that need to be in place but they can be copied and modified from the Android install image. You have to be picky with your choice of applications but you can have a very functional device for when you are on the go. I actually run the XFCE desktop environment. It is by no means the most lightweight but it still performs well. These devices can't compete with the power of a notebook, but they can still be very useful. I use mine for the net (Links 2 graphical mode or Midori browser), email (Claws Mail) and for coding on the go, although compile time is a drag :). It runs Abiword and Gnumeric surprisingly well. You just have to remember that these devices aren't notebooks. Although with the right choice of apps they can be quite quick and responsive.
The problem with changing what an arm device runs is in the bootloader that arm devices run. What most arm devices have is firmware that not only configures the CPU and other devices but loads the OS. Unlike a PC where it loads some code off the first sector of the drive most arm devices actually have the code to load the file system, put a file in memory, and execute it. This is great except there is no standard on how to do this and can be configured from very easy to change(i.e just change the file it loads) to very hard(i.e the firmware checks the file checksum). Your best bet is to do some googling on the device and see who makes the CPU. Then google and CPU and you should find what the standard firmware the manufacture uses. Next you need to hook a serial device(most devices have these just no serial port on the board, you need to sodier it on). Then you can start hacking away. Marvell based devices are great since the OpenRD and Netplug devices have plenty of documentation and they all use the same boot loader and such.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-arm.xml
So here's a little more background for those who haven't followed development of it closely:
MeeGo is the arranged marriage of Intel's Moblin + Nokia's Maemo.
MeeGo is still under heavy development, and although source and builds are available, everything is still experimental.
The steering group is "planning [a] release of MeeGo version 1 in the second quarter of 2010", according to the FAQ. It'll be here soon; don't start making plans to run it as your daily OS until v1.0 is actually released.
To give a taste of how raw development of the OS is right now, even basic tutorials on how to write a "Hello, World" application aren't useful to the community yet as most tutorials depend upon the MeeGo SDK, a component that hasn't yet been released by Intel.
But what you care about most is: "Will it run on my hardware?"
The best place to determine that is on the Devices page on the MeeGo Wiki. If you find that you can run the current development images on a different piece of hardware, please make a note of it on that page.
coding is life
There is nothing inherently difficult about Linux on ARM. I have installed Gentoo on two such systems, a Buffalo Linkstation and a Nokia N800 (though the latter runs Maemo most of the time). These devices were designed for Linux to begin with.
IMHO, it is much better to support manufacturers that support Linux. Even if you get Linux running on one of these WinCE devices, you are supporting a closed monoculture by buying it.
As of netbooks, there are two currently available in online stores that I find particularly interesting: Always Innovating Touchbook (ARM) and Lemote Yeeloong (MIPS). Both of these are intended for open source hackers. The Lemote, in fact, is completely open source down to the firmware level. Both of these are considerably more powerful than the WinCE ARM netbooks.
The last time I mentioned these, some people complained that the Lemote is not actually available anywhere, so here are two places:
http://lemote.kd85.com/
http://www.tekmote.nl/epages/61504599.sf/nl_NL/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61504599/Categories/%22Lemote%20linux%20PC%20and%20Linux%20laptops%22
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Commonly in a PC you have the BIOS which initializes CPU, RAM, and then executes code from a device (usually the bootloader). There is no such thing in ARM, each device has its own custom code to initialize the hardware and load the operating system. Sometimes that code is embedded in ROM memory which makes it harder until someone finds a way to overwrite it (bug or hardware hack). Not impossible, but certainly no quick and easy.
If you plan to install linux on it, try to find an "easily hackable" device, or better: get one that already comes with linux.
At the company I work we have some little arm computers, no netbooks but rather thin clients. They come with windows CE 5 installed, but it is a bitch to get them to run linux. I have not succeeded at all. Partly because I don't know windows CE and I can't seem to get Haret to boot my prepared linux kernel because it won't work properly.
At the Ubuntu Developer Summit last November, one of the Ubuntu ARM guys did a plenary presentation where the machine hooked to the projector was an ARM machine running Ubuntu. I also saw Jonathan Riddell looking for a USB mouse so he could install Kubuntu on an ARM machine he'd been handed.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
Already running Linux on ARM here. It is called a Nokia N800. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800
There are N770, N810, and N900 models too.
I've had the N800 for a few years and have traveled internationally with it and no other computer. That's great for overnight, but I have to admit the screen physical size, resolution and keyboard (I have a BT keyboard that I bring with me) have been real issues for common tasks like blogging, email, remoting into servers and other systems. A 7" model under $100 with 256MB of RAM and a keyboard certainly would be a fantastic replacement for me. I doubt the battery on a larger model would support all day use and that the battery would be small+light enough for a quick switch on those international flights.
BTW, media playback (xvid, flash, divx, mpeg2) work well enough on the N800 processor too. There are thousands of the most popular Linux tools already ported alone with the most popular Maemo specific tools - Maemo Mapper is a great GPS/mapping tool, for example.
I can't be 100% sure what you've got because I can't find much info about it on the internet, but odds are good that is just a re-stickering of a very prevalent ARM netbook that's doing the rounds.
If so, a developer community can be found below, and there is a full replacement Linux distro available (no promises that it'll work, YMMV etc.).
http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/
Check out the Sharp NetWalker. It comes with Ubuntu Pre-installed. It's so small that people assume it's a texting phone or a Nintendo DS.
http://conics.net/catalog/product_info.php?currency=USD&products_id=572
I don't know where you got the mod points from, but others without as many real-world sock-puppets have pointed out where you are either lying or fooling yourself.
Look at all the resources intel has to waste keeping x86 afloat. Engineering resources, marketing resources, arm twisting, kickbacks and bribes, ...
Imagine what we could have, if the resources intel is putting into keep x86 afloat were put into ARM. Or, shoot, PPC. Sparc, ColdFire. MIPS. The other Moore's FORTH CPU.
No, you can't imagine it because you're afraid it would offend your gods.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
- Create ARM VM (Qemu does this)
- Create development image/environment (Qemu can do ARM)
- Build an ARM image
- Test in emulator/simulator
- Install with one of several methods - the Debian Installer works on ARM, for example.
- Test, log notes for yourself, and repeat the build process
----
http://cross-lfs.org/view/clfs-embedded/arm/introduction/how.html>
"The CLFS system will be built by using a previously installed Linux distribution (such as Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, or Ubuntu). This existing Linux system (the host) will be used as a starting point to provide necessary programs, including a compiler, linker, and shell, to build the new system. Select the "development" option during the distribution installation to be able to access these tools."
---
Debian Live - ARM
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Arm
Dude, many of these ARM based computers are shipping with the Android OS and such. Amdroid IS Linux.
Yes, we always thought X Windows was a bit bloated, back in the late 80s, on a 386/33. I don't remember how much RAM it had (if I still have to files to look that up, they're on a 9-track tape or maybe a 60MB Sun cartridge...) It was a bit faster than running NeWS on a diskless Sun3/50 with 8MB RAM, but NeWS was so much cleaner most of the time that it was the better system.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And you couldn't even turn it off. And Skr1pt K1dd13z no longer remember all the horrible attacks you could use because of it....
I think the original versions of Opera had Javascript as well - the whole thing fit on half a floppy disk.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Das Uboot will help boot linux on 95% (maybe even 99%) ARM systems
http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot
It's a lot more work to find Moorestown product without Windows attached to it in a complete platform. For whatever reason, if Windows will run on the thing no matter how poorly, it's sold with Windows. No thanks. I do have a few of those inexpensive Atom boards. The video on the early ones was pretty hopeless, and they didn't run Vista well. But attach an SSD for the OS and a 2TB HDD for data with Ubuntu it makes a credible media server, guest workstation, thin client and Citrix terminal. Intel is so terrified that these platforms will "cannibalize" their established and more expensive server, desktop and notebook product lines that they cripple them in various ways - limited memory, video resolution, no PCIe. Intel's suffocating the product line their own selves.
Regular Windows doesn't run on ARM, and fewer ARM platforms are shipping with the WinCE version of Windows these days. So we'll get ARM platforms for the most part not because they're better (though all-day battery while playing 1080p is still beyond Moorestown in a practical CE device), but simply because people can get them without Windows attached, and with it Microsoft's control of the software platform, the user interface down to the icons on the desktop, the feature set, the necessary antimalware suite that sucks out any performance and battery life the platform might have.
Moorestown is a cool product and I'll probably get a few platforms of that for various things. For the tablet type devices I think I'll stick with the Android Tegra tablets. Did you know that the manufacturers of Android platforms are allowed to optimize the software and user experience for their platform? Isn't that neat? It can come out of the box ready to use.
Maybe in the next generation the Atom line will be more interesting as the power envelope for the processor and the support chips comes more in line with what ARM can do. For now, not so much. With Windows 7 the product will always be disappointing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And then be surprised that it's difficult to reach the goal. Brilliant!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Some readers may remember that Intel was once an Arm licensee, with the PXA StrongArm range, which they sold off to Marvell, a move many found strange at the time and then soon after came Atom which sort of explained it. In the meantime Intel have struggled to keep up with the march of Arm, nearly every CPU in a handheld device is an Arm processor or derivative.
The problem with the earlier N-series atom motherboards is that not so much the atom itself but the support chip set, a problem played down quite a bit by Intel - whilst the CPU might have been less than 10W the motherboard would eat a lot more. The new N-series are quite a bit better.
Some netbooks used the Z5xx series, and that processor was even more frugal, but the support chipset called US15W aka Poulsbo had some interesting design issues, one being that it didn't have SATA support, only PATA (when it was announced PATA was already well on its way out). Also, the GMA500 video chipset has historically been badly supported by Intel - just google for GMA500 linux.
An arm cortex a8 and its entire chipset eats less power than just an atom, which is why they're used in Palm Pre, Nokia N900, iPhone 3GS, Archos tablet, and other handheld devices.
Intel, recently announced the new Moorland Z6xx processors which in theory will be competitive on power with the Arm Cortex. However, a CPU by itself without chipset support, and good driver software etc, is not enough. Hopefully Intel learned that with the Z5xx, even though they have persistently failed to rectify that despite lots of complaints from the community.
The SoC used is the same as in the GP2X Wiz, only problem is starting the kernel. The rest should be fine.
I have recently bought a Netwalker PC-Z1 as a replacement for my Zaurus PDA. Ubuntu Jaunty seems to work well on this device. Here is one review: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/27/sharps-5-inch-pc-z1-netwalker-honors-the-zaurus-legacy/ Unfortunately it is aimed only at the Japanese market & needs to be converted to English.
If your machine can boot from a SD card, you can build a bootable linux system
well under 2GB, including qt and multimedia, using this project:
http://buildroot.uclibc.org/
I have already used it for a mini2440 with 64Mbytes of ram and a Smagung
S3C2440 micrcontroller with a 926T arm core. Buildroot is self contained
and lets you configure everything from the kernel up to the applications
you want in your system. It is conceived precisely for those small systems with
small amounts of ram and a framebuffer instead of a graphics processor.
Usefull for other architectures like mips, powerpc, i386, avr32, etc.