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OpenSUSE ARM Final Less Than a Week Away; RC2 Out Now

Posted by timothy on from the diversity-training dept.

Andy Prough writes "Jos Poortvliet of the openSUSE team has announced that openSUSE ARM RC2 is available for download and needs testing. The final version is due out on November 6th, and support has been expanded to include the following SoCs: Calxeda Highbank, CuBox, IMX 53, and Samsung Origen. Although Raspberry Pi is not yet supported, the openSUSE team plans to roll out support in the future. User Etam has posted a picture of it working without trouble in chroot on an N900, although Firefox is working "terribly slow" but not crashing."

28 comments

  1. Seems like the normal state of Firefox... by RocketRabbit · · Score: 0, Troll

    Seems like the normal state of Firefox to work terribly slow, but I can't really believe that it's not crashing.

    Unless, of course, that it's working so slowly that it hasn't executed the buggy code YET...

    1. Re:Seems like the normal state of Firefox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, if you read their myth busting blog they're now claiming it's the OS that's keeping their "speedy" browser down. Mozilla is becoming a joke. Thankfuly we still have Opera and Chrome.

    2. Re:Seems like the normal state of Firefox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah bullshit. Go back a dozen versions and firefox runs perfectly.
      Oh sure the new one has lots of exploits patched. but it runs like shit.

      Change the useragent and the web works just as well in the old version as the new one too. Even tho it is 'unsupported' and 'won't work'. lol

    3. Re:Seems like the normal state of Firefox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Opera and Chrome really aren't comparable. The main feature of Firefox is extensibility, with regard to almost any component. The other two with their fairly limited "just to get Adblock working" APIs are nowhere close.

      Thus, I abhor Mozilla's decision to try and compete with Chrome in terms of cutting the interface and dumbing down features and, most of all, adopting their insultingly stupid release model, but I'm going to stay with Firefox nevertheless. It would be great if we would get some true competition here. I still hope for extensions developers, angry at the current direction, teaming up and forking the code.

    4. Re:Seems like the normal state of Firefox... by Andy+Prough · · Score: 2

      I'm having the opposite experience - recent updates to FF are running faster and with less memory usage than Chrome on my laptop. Previously, I had relegated FF to third tier browser for about the past year due to its overall sluggishness, but now its back to being the browser of choice.

    5. Re:Seems like the normal state of Firefox... by Andy+Prough · · Score: 2

      Thus, I abhor Mozilla's decision to try and compete with Chrome in terms of cutting the interface

      Only takes a few clicks to put the interface right back to where you like it. I'm beginning to enjoy the Chrome-like interface, after about 6 months of disliking it. As far as interface, FF has a big advantage out of the box with the drop-down-awesome-bar.

    6. Re:Seems like the normal state of Firefox... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, that's why I still consider Firefox better than Chrome. It's just... Well, in a current state of software development, making some settings default always raise the possibility of dropping even the options to change it back - with constant mantra that it requires maintenance, testing and bugfixing resources that can be put somewhere else. As far as configurability goes Firefox is largely the best mainstream browser, but i.e. the attempt to force the version number out of "About" box may be interpreted as a sign of change.

  2. Linux in chroot on N900 by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't personally see much point in running another distro in chroot. You're just wasting memory and CPU on running two X11s and all, and it's obviously going to be slow.

    I'm still disappointed in Nokia keeping the necessary information to be able to implement battery charging closed, such a dick move from their part; I installed Gentoo natively on my N900 -- no chroot -- and god damn it flew compared to Maemo, but no matter what I just couldn't get battery charging to work. And quite obviously not being able to charge the battery on a mobile phone makes the whole thing quite useless.

    1. Re:Linux in chroot on N900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're only running two X servers if you do the VNC or Xnest thing; you can let clients from the chroot connect to the main X server just fine, if you don't need different window management (e.g. to make the GIMP "usable"), and that's what I did 99% of the time on my N810. Still got two copies of a fuckload of libraries and such eating RAM, of course. (I never messed much with chroots on my N900 -- something about being out of grad school and having a job left me with less time for more-or-less pointless dicking around...)

      Anyway, if your USB connector dies (as mine did), and your preferred solution involves soldering wires to the battery terminals and installing a separate charging circuit (I used a Palm Pre inductive receiver + a USB Li-ion charging board, all crammed in a Mugen extended battery cover) rather than just replacing the USB connector, you don't need the onboard charging anyway. I never thought of it, but that does basically make booting other distros practical. I really should dig it out and try it sometime...

    2. Re:Linux in chroot on N900 by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1

      Anyway, if your USB connector dies (as mine did)

      I've been lucky on that; the USB-connector on my N900 is still perfectly solid and works peachy.

      and your preferred solution involves soldering wires to the battery terminals and installing a separate charging circuit (I used a Palm Pre inductive receiver + a USB Li-ion charging board, all crammed in a Mugen extended battery cover) rather than just replacing the USB connector, you don't need the onboard charging anyway. I never thought of it, but that does basically make booting other distros practical. I really should dig it out and try it sometime...

      With your setup, yes, running other distros natively should be perfectly feasible. I've been thinking of going the same route, but my hands shake so much that I probably would mess the soldering up -- it's hard for me to keep my hands/fingers stable and make small, delicate movements.

    3. Re:Linux in chroot on N900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      about charger when running nativ http://marc.info/?l=linux-omap&m=135188391620044&w=2

    4. Re:Linux in chroot on N900 by Andy+Prough · · Score: 1

      And quite obviously not being able to charge the battery on a mobile phone makes the whole thing quite useless.

      Reminds me of the scene in Book of Eli where he gets his iPod trickle-charged from the crazy old dude in the electronics shop. Would the N900 charge if you turned the phone off after you had installed Gentoo, or still not?

    5. Re:Linux in chroot on N900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not dick from their part. It's military design.

    6. Re:Linux in chroot on N900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've replaced opensuse kernel with the latest Nemo kernel and I am able to use opensuse rootfs natively! No chroot!
      Although I have no clue on how to get phone functionality.

    7. Re:Linux in chroot on N900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've replaced opensuse kernel with the latest Nemo kernel and I am able to use opensuse rootfs natively!

      Forgot to mention: XFCE and compositing work perfectly, after some manual xorg.conf.d editing.

  3. Does X.org work okay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've read about a number of Linux distros (including Ubuntu and Fedora) putting out ARM versions. But nowhere have I read about how they manage to get X to work at acceptable speeds on an ARM SoC with a locked-down GPU that makes those evil nVidia guys look like angels. So are the ARM ports good enough to run Gnome Shell or Unity or even just Gnome 2 with some graphics bling?

    1. Re:Does X.org work okay? by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1

      If there is a driver for the GPU then it should perform just fine. Unity does not support GL/ES AFAIK, so it'd be really slow due to software emulation, and I don't know whether or not GNOME Shell does support GL/ES, either. But well, any WM/compositor that does utilize GL/ES or that just does 2D should work just peachy. Compiz does support GL/ES 2.0 these days, apparently, so using that for "graphics bling" would certainly be feasible if your GPU does GL/ES 2.0.

    2. Re:Does X.org work okay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't OpenGL ES also require a 3D driver of some sort?

    3. Re:Does X.org work okay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OpenGL ES is an extended/modified API of OpenGL designed for things like phones and other non-desktop devices. Not supporting GL/ES means you don't support the differences involved between the normal GL and GL ES API (Which isn't too much from what I am aware of since GL ES is based off GL).

  4. Open Pandora port should work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's the same hardware.
    But Slackware already works nicely, so why use SuSE ;D ?

    1. Re:Open Pandora port should work. by Andy+Prough · · Score: 1

      SUSE is a big company with an army of engineers and a big stable of products. They are some of the biggest contributors to numerous projects, such as KDE, LibreOffice, and make a lot of commits to kernel development. If they really decide to support ARM architecture, they should bring a lot to the table.

      Also, the openSUSE implementation of KDE Plasma Netbook environment is a fast desktop with low graphics requirements. Combined with the SUSE GUI config tools (YAST2), you would have a zippy yet robust distro running on ARM without the need to dive into CLI for every modification. This could be useful for small screens, virtual keyboard arrangements, etc.

  5. Elop determined to kill Nokia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most likely the contract Elop signed with Microsoft that landed him $2 billion had clauses in it to prevent Nokia letting others know any internals like battery.

    Imagine how embarrassing it would be if Elop was claiming Android couldn't be ported to it, and someone did in the weekend, or that it couldn't run any better with Linux and somebody slapped a fast Linux distro on it.

    I think at this point, they're being driven to collapse, then a quick firesale to the only company that would buy them, Microsoft and Elop exits with a bonus from Microsoft for his 'work'. But perhaps I'm just being cynical.

    1. Re:Elop determined to kill Nokia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      while it's absolutely true that Elop is determined to "kill" Nokia to the point where only MS can/will resuscitate them, your timing is off. We're talking the N900 here, which was done before Elop took over, not the N9.

  6. N900 by gmuslera · · Score: 2

    Killed by Nokia, dismissed as a failure, and ... still is the reference board for a lot of hacking projects, still showing how adaptable is it, still somewhat relevant in some circles. Why no company got a hint of it and tried to push something comparable, maybe more up to date, maybe even more open?

    1. Re:N900 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      something comparable, maybe more up to date, maybe even more open?

      You mean like the N950?

      (Yeah, it still hurts, but if you can't laugh, what can you do?)

  7. Just now? by noobermin · · Score: 1

    Just now openSUSE has arm support? Gentoo has had support for arm since forever, but I guess few people use it so it doesn't matter...

  8. AllWinner A10 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Right now it is the most popular and cheaper ARM SoC and is featured on several Android Mini PC ( along with RK3066)... If OpenSuse wants to be competite those cheap SoCs must be supported... I am welcoming the era of usuable 50$ pcs!