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.)

Comments

This might be useful

[palegray.net]

Debian GNU/Linux on ARM

Re:This might be useful

[CAIMLAS]

Maybe; maybe not.

Back in the day (ie, when the MobilePro 780 and similar "netbooks" were about and popular with Linux hackers - maybe 8-9 years ago), there were some non-trivial limitations to booting Linux or a BSD on the devices.

The problem was that there was no way to actually boot Linux natively without chainloading from within CE. Sure, the hardware worked, but the CE ROM address was hardcoded within the "BIOS", and there was no way to circumvent it.

As a result, booting was/is a 5-minute (manual) process due to CE's boot. It's highly cumbersome.

Additionally (and possibly somewhat related), I noticed that around 2004 or so, all of the "mobile computing" or "Borg-like computing" project pages, targeted products, and the like just sort of disappeared. Stuff like the "matchbox PC" from Stanford, twiddler keyboards (think that's what they called them), IR (etc.) keyboards for Palm, et al, and misc. other peripherals became difficult to find. No new products were coming to market in that segment.

Cool project pages where people had some interesting software work for mobile computing (including novel input/output devices) just kind of stopped being updated. Kernel porting and hardware support projects (eg. Linux on the MobilePro 780/880) were abandoned. I don't get it, but I'm going to have to guess that emergence of the first widely accessible smartphones distracted these adventurous types, or the hackable geek-preferred hardware simply dried up. It's really too bad. (Maybe the economy or impending adulthood had somethign to do with it, too?)

That said, I have good news and bad news: the good news is that it looks like the "embedded" computer with a keyboard is coming back (See: Viliv S7). Unfortunately, I also suspect that x86 Intel hardware will dominate the market instead of the "cooler" ARM hardware (OMG, Mooreland is impressive). We'll see how much that matters, but I hope "not very" - and we're able to have our cake and eat it too, despite (because of?) the Intel badging.

My hope (and guess) is that we'll have decently powerful MeeGo/Moblin/Maemo powered cell phones at a reasonable price within two years or so - whether that's what the vendor shipped on them or not.

Re:This might be useful

[spun]

I believe we were talking about Ubuntu Netbook Remix, not Ubuntu Big Honking Desktop Version. You could click on the link in the summary, google 'beagleboard,' or go to Youtube. That's what I did, took two minutes. I mean, here you are using the Internet, without really using the Internet.

Re:This might be useful

[BikeHelmet]

Debian is a possibility, but Ubuntu won't work. Ubuntu has been updated to a newer arm instruction set than the one used in a lot of these netbooks.

The problem with these things is, unlike x86, ARM has no BIOS. Your kernel/image has to be customized to work with all the chips that particular netbook has. This would be easier if they all had the same CPUs/SoCs, but they all vary quite a bit.

I've seen vt8500 netbooks, wm8505's, Samsung SC2410's, 7802's, cheap x86-i386 knockoffs, and MIPS based netbooks. None use the same boot loaders (!), and few have the same instruction sets. (!) Those that do do not have the same LCD controllers or other components, and usually all drivers are closed source. (if available at all)

There are some attempts to get linux on them... here's a few:

http://s0.blackmage.co.uk/~nextvolume/via_arm/index.php (some luck, using android kernels mostly)
http://3mx.taita.co.uk/ (some luck)
http://mininetbooks.your-board.com/ (no luck yet)

If you've got one and want to chat, join the IRC on freenode.net, channel #easypc

Most of the hackers and developers there have different kinds of netbooks, and only one each, but pooling knowledge has been handy. Apparently vt8500/wm8505 netbooks usually have a read-only card reader that needs to be soldered to be fixed. My Anyka 7802 netbook ($58 shipped!) doesn't have this problem, but it has no drivers available. Not even Android runs on it.

There's a dozen or so people in the channel, so if you've got questions (or maybe answers), join in. Note: We're all in different timezones. Responses can take hours, or if you're lucky minutes.

The trouble...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Re:Google is part of your problem

[i.r.id10t]

Do you ever use www.google.com/linux or www.google.com/bsd ?

Linux on iPAQ

[lostdistance]

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.