Linaro’s 96Boards initiative was launched at the beginning of the year with Hikey board, and beside the hardware specifications, 96Boards also has some software requirements that include support for “bootloader (open source), accelerated graphics support (binary or open source), a Linux kernel buildable from source code based from mainline, or the latest Google-supported Android kernel version, or the last two LTS kernels, and one of more of the following operating systems: Android, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/Red Hat, or an OpenEmbedded/Yocto build of a Linux distribution”.
In order to achieve this goal, Linaro introduced the Reference Software Platform for 96Boards, and they’ve now pushed the first Alpha release for Hikey and DragonBoard 410c boards. The release includes a bootloader, the Linux kernel, Debian and AOSP with firmware, source code, and documentation.
Some highlights of the Reference Software Platform 15.10 Alpha release include:
- CE Debian RPB (Reference Platform Build)
- Debian 8.2 “Jessie”
- Linux 4.3 kernel with additional patches
- OpenJDK 8 included by default
- 96Boards artworks and default settings
- CE AOSP RPB (Hikey board only)
- AOSP Android Marshmallow 6.0
- Linux 3.18 based kernel
CE refers to the consumer edition of 96Boards specifications, as there’s also an Enterprise Edition (EE), which is not covered by this release.
You can find documentation, including how to build your own image on 96Boards Wiki on Gihub. You can interact with 96Boards community on the forums, the bug tracker, or #96boards on IRC.
If you want to find out more of the Software Reference Lead Project, you can watch the Linaro Connect presentation below (~42 minutes), and/or download the slides.
The next release is planned for December 2015 (15.12 release), and should include:
- Have both boards using a single kernel tree/branch and a single kernel binary
- Better understanding about the upstream gaps
- Adding support for CE AOSP for Dragonboard410c (with freedreno)
- Adding support for CE OE/Yocto
- Enterprise Edition
The Enterprise Edition will likely run on AMD Opteron A1100 96Boards.
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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