Ubuntu 12.04 Ported To the Allwinner A10 MK802 Mini PC

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Ubuntu 12.04 Ported To the Allwinner A10 MK802 Mini PC

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 14, 2012 @01:49AM from the submini-seems-appropriate dept.

New submitter beefsack writes "Thanks to the strong ARM support in the Ubuntu repositories, Ubuntu, along with Lubuntu and others have been ported to work on the new MK802 mini PC. Performance is very impressive, especially given that Mali GPU driver support in Linux is still lacking features such as hardware video decoding."

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Don't believe. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 01:56 · Score: 0

Ubuntu I believe, but Lubunto or Edubuntu?
No chance, too much characters for such a small device.
First Post by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:08 · Score: -1

Seems like their website is running on it.
1. Re:First Post by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:22 · Score: 0
  
  FAIL
In other words... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:11 · Score: 1

Someone has strong-armed the MK802 mini PC into running Ubuntu?
1. Re:In other words... by unixisc · 2012-06-14 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  Ain't StrongARM currently w/ Marvel?
well. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:11 · Score: 0

It looks like their webserver is running on one of these...
slashdoted by fredan · 2012-06-14 02:14 · Score: 0

allready?
1. Re:slashdoted by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:17 · Score: 1
  
  Their website must be running off of am MK802. They should upgrade to the MK802+ Extreme Edition.
2. Re:slashdoted by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  This is not TFA, but it's the closest I could find (and it contains practical information, rather than "reporting"): http://liliputing.com/2012/06/how-to-run-ubuntu-linux-on-the-mk802-74-pc-on-a-stick.html
3. Re:slashdoted by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:33 · Score: 0
  
  Haha, good laugh, but one of these could easily withstand a slashdotting if it's configured to do so. You just have to avoid going to disk for anything and cache composed content in RAM instead of recomposing it for every request.
and this is newsworthy why? by markhahn · 2012-06-14 02:15 · Score: -1, Troll

isn't this a very conventional piece of hardware? is there some reason a particular distro would matter?
porting the kernel to a new, unrelated CPU would be interesting. porting a distro is never interesting, since, after all, distros are just some bozo typing "make" on a big pile of opensource packages.
1. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:21 · Score: 0
  
  Tell us what you've done for society lately, hmmm? At least this is something. What you've done is... well, I'll let you finish that one.
2. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:36 · Score: 0
  
  They "ported" fuckall.
  They took the ubuntu sdcard image for the mele a1000 (exact same A10 SoC, news about 2 months ago) and booted it on a mk802.
3. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:37 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  is there some reason a particular distro would matter?
  Yes. It's by an Ubuntu user. In their world it's the only Linux out there. Only Ubuntu is the source of all the innovation. Taking credit for the hard work of other distributions that actually are apart of the thousands of upstream projects is what Ubuntu does.
  Wanna start a fight? Tell an Ubuntard that their distro isn't Linuxy enough. It's funny because they simultaneously want to be "Linuxy" and pretend that no other Linux exist. Remember, it's not a tutorial about GIMP or Bash, it's a tutorial about how to use Ubuntu's GIMP and Ubuntu's Bash--because those products are different on Ubuntu on some fundamental level, apparently. If you really wanna piss them off just tell them that Ubuntu should try to push something other than their branding upstream.
  You can mostly stop reading if the article title has "Ubuntu" in the title.
  Mod me funny, troll, insightful, or informative... they all fit, I won't be offended by your moderation, they're all the right choice in this case.
4. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  No it's a Chinese device that shipped running Android 4.0 and as usual the Chinese piss all over the GPL and never ever release source code, so it's a very big deal.
5. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:47 · Score: 0
  
  That line of rebuke only works if you've actually done something for society. Since you've done nothing for society, AC, your argument is just as invalid. How can you get self-righteous about a cause you've probably never even tried to contribute to? Justify the validity of your indignation! What. have. you. done. for. society?
6. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by viperidaenz · 2012-06-14 11:53 · Score: 1
  
  Its a device produced in China (like everything else) by an Australian company.
  
  Miniand is located in Canberra, Australia with a presence in Guangzhou, China. ABN 26 237 024 804
"We're sorry, but something went wrong." by L4t3r4lu5 · 2012-06-14 02:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yup. Someone posted a link to your site on /. without hitting a cache service first.

Amateur mistake, editor. Make this standard practice, for pity's sake!

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1. Re:"We're sorry, but something went wrong." by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:28 · Score: 0
  
  A slashdotting isn't some incredible force of nature. If a site can't handle it nowadays, it's that site's author's fault, unless it's something like "hey, I'm hosting this on my Apple II". Even cheap shared hosting doesn't snap under the load if you know how to set it up properly.
not news by Cyko_01 · 2012-06-14 02:20 · Score: 4, Informative

Debian has been releasing for arm for years! Since ubuntu is based on debian of course it would follow that ubuntu can be made to work on arm too
1. Re:not news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:40 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, but Ubuntu wants you to think that they're their own upstream.
2. Re:not news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:45 · Score: 0
  
  "Thanks to the strong ARM support in the Ubuntu"
  It's not the strong ARM support in the kernel or the highly portable source code of other projects... nope... Ubuntu did that. Just roll your eyes and move on.
3. Re:not news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:39 · Score: 0
  
  More like: Ubuntu users are stupid.
  Which follows from the generalization: People are stupid.
4. Re:not news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 07:17 · Score: 0
  
  Ubuntu users are stupid.
  Ubuntu users are a lot like Windows users, except not only are they too cheap to buy their operating system, they're also too lazy to pirate it.
5. Re:not news by jedidiah · 2012-06-14 09:40 · Score: 1
  
  What's to buy or pirate?
  Chances are that every Ubuntu and Windows user was force fed a copy of Windows with whatever PC they happened to buy.
  "Buying" and "Pirating" are not really necessary here.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
6. Re:not news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-15 15:30 · Score: 0
  
  Whoosh.
What the mini-PC looks like by k(wi)r(kipedia) · 2012-06-14 02:30 · Score: 4, Informative

A random search for the actual device yields the following self-explanatory link:

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/mk802-new-usb-thumb-drive-sized-android.html

The link alone should tell you what the device is. Price per unit is supposed to be $74, not quite RasPi class.
1. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:55 · Score: 0, Informative
  
  Uhh.. looking at the company website www.miniand.com you can buy the thing for $14USD.
2. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:03 · Score: 1
  
  The link alone should tell you what the device is. Price per unit is supposed to be $74, not quite RasPi class.
  This seems a bit expensive, considering that one can buy a 7" Allwinner/Mali-based tablet like the Ainol 7 Elf for very little more, with a touchscreen etc. I can't really understand why anyone would bother with this.
3. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:10 · Score: 0
  
  Not to mention the Mele A1000, same price, same SoC, but with one more usb port, sata, 10/100 ethernet, vga and component video out...
4. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by MMC+Monster · 2012-06-14 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  Hardware looks nice.
  Anyone use one of these (or similar) as a cheap NAS device? (With external hard drives via USB.)
  
  --
  Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
5. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by wed128 · 2012-06-14 03:25 · Score: 2
  
  Shipping is $14. the device itself is $74
6. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by ArsonSmith · 2012-06-14 03:26 · Score: 2
  
  double the hardware of the RasPi, double the price. It is about the same class.
  
  --
  Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
7. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by DrXym · 2012-06-14 03:51 · Score: 1
  
  They wholesale on Alibaba for $50. I assume you could probably obtain them for even less shopping around that site. In some respects these are more attractive than Raspberry PI since they have 512MB or 1GB ram and 4 GB storage and come with case and cables. On the flip side I doubt they're ever going to be as well supported by the community or manufacturer and it may be the hardware codecs remain locked up.
8. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 07:48 · Score: 0
  
  but it has a case.....the Rpi doesn't
9. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by pjr.cc · 2012-06-14 09:28 · Score: 1
  
  To me, personally what the 'pi has always represented is a arduino replacement and hence while i'm very into arm and tech in general, i've never really been able to get into it given that its only got 256mb of ram. For a while i had this idea in my head of building a vps style system out of small arm boards and the 'pi just isnt going to cut it. The CPU in the thing is probably decent for some applications but there just not enough ram.
  Calxeda are now doing just that (with hp) and now dell are getting into it too, but they're taking it to the high end of the spectrum. Personally i think this is where these little mini-pc's can fit. 1g of ram, 1.5ghz cpu, size of a thumb drive (ok a bit bigger than that). Sure they're 3x the price, but its 3x25$ In fairness what the 'pi's original goals are intended to achieve makes it idea for that application, but to the techo geek in me, its just not quite been able to raise my excitement.
10. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by viperidaenz · 2012-06-14 12:01 · Score: 2
  
  Boo hoo, it's not $35.
  Its got a case (not a bare board).
  Its got 1GB ram (not 256m).
  its got 4GB flash (not nothing).
  Its got wifi (but no ethernet...)
  It's a 1,5GHz A8 CPU (not a 700mhz arm11).
XBMC Possibilities by bornagainpenguin · 2012-06-14 02:34 · Score: 2

People are already working on getting OpenELEC (Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center) to work on these, which will make these a wicked entertainment center given that this means XBMC on the cheap. I look forward to seeing these popular up in the houses of every day Joes being put together by their geek friends.
What I'd like to see is a method of running XBMC as shell and allow Android games to be launched from within the interface. Should provide a library of games that way, especially if it could be made to pair with cellphones as controllers. Seems like everybody has a cellphone these days so it should make having controllers for everyone easier.
Then of course there are all the emulators....

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1. Re:XBMC Possibilities by timeOday · 2012-06-14 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  Would OpenELEC enable hardware video decoding? The summary says it's not supported, and without that it'll be pretty useless for video replay. Software decoding is too jittery.
2. Re:XBMC Possibilities by bornagainpenguin · 2012-06-14 03:16 · Score: 1
  
  Would OpenELEC enable hardware video decoding? The summary says it's not supported, and without that it'll be pretty useless for video replay. Software decoding is too jittery.
  That's being worked on. There is a thread on XBMC's forums with the various attempts to get these types of devices working. Some are closer to success than others. Last I heard the Allwinner A10 SOC driver code were released but the developers wanted to make sure they had written legal permission to use them. (Previously the code had license restrictions on it so they are being careful.)
  
  Since the Allwinner A10 SOC is so popular and so relatively inexpensive I expect that hardware acceleration will come sooner than you think.
  
  I just wish that there would be some "smartbooks" made using this SOC and released with Linux (whether Ubuntu or some other system, just so long as it is open and not Android--although I wouldn't mind either dual booting or running Android co-currently to get access to those apps while still retaining Gnome 2.xx or MATE desktop) but a cheap XBMC pc would be great too!
  
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3. Re:XBMC Possibilities by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 05:00 · Score: 0
  
  answer is chrome. Obviously it's only a subset, but if they could get the graphics driver working you should be able to get webgl eventually
Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by DrXym · 2012-06-14 03:35 · Score: 1

I have a 7" NATPC using an AllWinner A10 chip running ICS. Cost of device $90 or less on places like EBay. Mostly it runs pretty well but it definitely suffers from not being dual core since there are times related to background activity when performance takes a dump. It's still capable of running most Android games pretty smoothly though.
1. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 05:43 · Score: 0
  
  Do you think the same image of lubuntu may be used in a ekken 90 tablet? Is also uses the A10 and melle.
2. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by DrXym · 2012-06-14 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know since I haven't used Ubuntu on it. As a general rule, anyone who claims you're going to get decent desktop performance out of an embeddable SoC is lying. Same goes for the Raspberry Pi.
3. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 06:59 · Score: 0
  
  With the tablet I've got based on this chip (Hyundai A7) the performance always goes to shit whenever I'm downloading, so I blame crappy flash chips for some of the performance issues (thinking about it I should test downloading to a SD card to confirm this) also my one at least has crappy wifi performance which tends to make web browsing painful, so I wouldn't recommended it, but it does do okay playing games.
4. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by viperidaenz · 2012-06-14 12:06 · Score: 1
  
  Those cheapo tablets seem to all be around 1ghz, this thing is 1.5ghz so may be a bit faster...
5. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by White+Flame · 2012-06-14 12:28 · Score: 1
  
  The RPi folks claim good performance for media decoding & 3D games, but I haven't heard any big claims about CPU-heavy stuff. Most of the RPi chip is the VideoCore processor, with only a tiny sliver of an ARM hanging off the side.
6. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by DrXym · 2012-06-14 19:48 · Score: 1
  
  The aside about the Pi was because prior to the launch I mentioned in one forum how crap desktop performance would be and a guy with access to a preview board claimed it was good. Then lo and behold it turns out desktop performance is pretty crap which is entirely predictable considering the lack of RAM, the IO constraints, low clock speed, single core etc.. You *could* use it as a desktop, depending on your patience but it would be a borderline experience even with the lightest of window managers and apps.
  I've programmed set top boxes using SoCs not dissimilar to the one in the Pi and I know how weedy they are in general. The built in hardware is meant to do the heavy lifting. Whenever the CPU takes over performance becomes very mediocre. These things are designed to service an embedded linux with a process or two sitting on top controlling the experience, providing a gui and acting as the conductor to set off the decoders and so on. I intend to buy a Pi as soon as my place in the queue comes up but I expect it will end up running something like XBMC which more closely fits the sort of thing it was designed to run.
  The flood of AllWinner A10 chips is interesting though. Performance will still stink but they seem to be ship with more RAM and a higher clock speed which is nice. I wonder what their other hardware performance is like and if it's accessible from open source.
7. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-15 03:12 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, 1.5 GHz = 1.0 GHz CPU + 0.5 GHz GPU.
VIdeo decoding? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 04:13 · Score: -1

Mali has no hardware video decoding. No matter how much work someone does on the software gpu driver, that won't change.
Perhaps there's some other video decoding hardware in there, though?
1. Re:VIdeo decoding? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 06:18 · Score: 0
  
  If it has a pixel shader, then you've got color space conversion and probably several other basic operations as well.
  So while it may not have "full" HW video decode, it has more HW capability than "none".
Easier Method to Create a Bootable Ubuntu 12.04 SD by BoydWaters · 2012-06-14 05:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

Nice article here explains how to roll your own:
http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/06/13/hardware-packs-for-allwinner-a10-devices-and-easier-method-to-create-a-bootable-ubuntu-12-04-sd-card/
Too Bad It's Not Impressive by ilikenwf · 2012-06-14 06:12 · Score: 1

Ubuntu is a resource hog and IMHO sucks in general, but to each their own. Debian ARM or Archlinux ARM would be a much better choice.

I feel like this ubuntu bandwagon thing is more for n00bs and people who don't want to set everything up themselves...perhaps Canonical is somehow associated with the US government or something, and wants to get their foot in the door of most Linux users as well...

Either way...not a good use of resources, IMHO, when something like Debian or Arch would've been much more efficient and fast.
There's a better Ubuntu version at a10linux.org by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-27 05:25 · Score: 0

That is the home of the Allwinner A10 GNU/Linux Development Community