Various Android and Linux images are available on Radxa Rock download page, but if you’d like to get newer images or other options, two developers have provided binaries and posted instructions to get Ubuntu 14.04 and Slitaz operating systems, the later currently booting with Linux kernel 3.10.
Naoki FUKAUMI has published a miniroot how-to install a Ubuntu 14.04 Core (minimal headless installation) on Radxa Rock and Radxa Rock Lite. Installation should be relatively easy as he provide the update.img for both board so your can use the usual method in Windows (RkBatchTool) or upgrade_tool in Linux. If you don’t have serial console, you’ll have need to flash the parameter file requiring RkAndroidTool in Windows, and the same upgrade_tool in Linux. If once the installation and configuration is complete, you want a desktop environment,you can always run “apt-get install lubuntu-desktop” to install LXDE.
SliTaz is a lightweight Linux distribution. I previously tried SliTaz with the Raspberry Pi, and I had a working headless image with a 18.6 MB rootfs and only 7 MB RAM used a boot time. Alanyih, one developer working on SliTaz for ARM platform, has also tried it successfully on the Radxa Rock, and shared the images and quick instructions with me.
First download boot-slitaz-20140517.img (kernel + slitaz ramdisk), and slitaz-armhf-mini-2012-12-14.zip. Extract the rootfs from slitaz-armhf-mini-2012-12-14.img (ext-4 partition). then follow the “Flashing Ubuntu to Radxa Rock” section in my getting started guide for Radxa Rock to flash boot.img. It is simply one line:
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upgrade_tool di -b /path-to/boot-slitaz-20140517.img |
Simply login with root username, and root password to access the command line. It might also be possible to use a more up-to-date rootfs from http://arm.slitaz.org/rpi/, but it is only armel.
[Update: Alanyih has also been given me the build instructions for his Slitaz image:
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git clone -b wip/lsk-android-14.04-radxa-rock https://github.com/linux-rockchip/kernel_rockchip.git make radxa_rock_defconfig make zImage rk3188-radxa-rock.dtb cat arch/arm/boot/zImage arch/arm/boot/dts/rk3188-radxa-rock.dtb > zImage-lsk mkbootimg --kernel zImage-lsk --ramdisk slitaz-ramdisk.gz -o boot-slitaz-20140517.img |
Both Ubuntu 14.04 and Slitaz should be able to run on any Rockchip RK3188 device thanks to the device tree and multi-platform enabled Linux kernel, as long as you can somehow come up with the right device file for your device, which may not always be an easy task.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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