Ubuntu Category - Page 171 of 186 - CNX Software

May 18, 2014May 21, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Ubuntu 14.04 and Slitaz on Radxa Rock

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 […]

May 15, 2014March 6, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments

How to Boot a Headless Linux Image on Amlogic S802 TV Boxes (Tronsmart Vega S89 Elite)

As some of you already know, I’ve been playing around with Tronsmart Vega S89 Elite, an Android TV Box powered by Amlogic S802 quad-core ARM Cortex A9r4 processor at 2 GHz. Today, I’ll show how to boot a headless Linux image on any Amlogic-based S802 TV Box from the network. The instructions can mainly be used as a starting point for developers, as it requires access to a serial terminal via UART, but if you’ve never done it before, the instructions should be easy enough to follow. Everything is loaded from the network, the kernel (via boot.img) is loaded via TFTP, and the rootfs (Linaro ALIP image) is mounted via NFS, so it’s nearly impossible to brick your device using the method provided. Linaro ALIP rootfs comes with LXDE, but at this stage, the desktop environment is not showing, even though my HDMI TV is properly detected by the drivers. […]

May 12, 2014May 12, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 57 Comments

How to Extract a Device Tree File from Android Firmware Files

Up to now, all our cheap Android devices were based on older Linux kernel (3.0.x, 3.4.x) that still used board files (arch/arm/board, but we’ve recently seen companies like Amlogic and Rockchip release source code with Linux kernel 3.10.x. One of the key differences between these version are the move from board files to flattened device tree and multi-platform support. If it is fully implemented, a single kernel image should be able to boot multiple hardware platforms, and all low level configuration handled by the device tree file. Since I’ve connected the serial port of Tronsmart Vega S89 for debugging, and it’s a slow news day, I thought I might try to boot the Linux kernel I compiled myself, but one of the challenge was to get the device tree file. I’ll show how to extract it from the firmware. It should also be possible to get it directly from the […]

May 4, 2014May 5, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

XBMC 13 “Gotham” Released

After month of development, alpha releases, beta releases, RC releases, XBMC 13 “Gotham” is finally out. This is the first official release that supports hardware video decoding for ARM and x86 based Android 4.0+ devices. Support is not available for 100% of devices, as for instance, AllWinner A1X/A20 and Amlogic SoCs do not support the standard Android StrageFright or MediaCodec APIs, but most others should. There’s one XBMC Android version for ARM, one for x86. Android hardware video decoding is obviously not the only feature or improvement brought about by XBMC 13. Here are the key ones: Raspberry Pi and Android speed improvements – Overall system performance improvements, but optimizations are said to be particularly noticeable when opening and browsing libraries, loading images and starting videos. Stereoscopic 3D Rendering – SBS, TAB, anaglyph, and interlaced are supported. XBMC cannot yet support 3D blurays and cannot provide hardware acceleration for FullSBS/TAB […]

May 3, 2014May 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Nvidia Tegra K1 CPU/FPU Performance is Comparable to Intel Celeron “Bay Trail-D” J1900 SoC

Nvidia Jetson TK1 development board powered by Nvidia Tegra K1 quad core ARM Cortex A15 processor and a 192-core Kepler GPU has started shipping, and some people have already received theirs, including Michael Larabel (Phoronix) who ran some benchmarks on the board that comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. We already had some benchmarks comparing Tegra K1 to ARM peers on Android, but it’s the first time Linux benchmarks are available. The benchmarks seems to only involve CPU and FPU, and probably not the GPU at this point, but the results are still interesting, and Michael also pointed links comparing Nvidia Tegra K1 development board performance to some Intel Core i5 based PCs, as well as a platform based on an Intel Celeron J1900, a quad core processor part of Bay Trail Desktop family. The later is most interesting as we compare systems with similar power requirements. Nvidia Tegra K1 […]

April 28, 2014April 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

How to Mount Google Drive in Linux with google-drive-ocamlfuse

Ubuntu One is not included in the latest Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and will be phased out on the 1st of July 2014, with files from users being completely wiped out by the 31st of July. I liked the service to exchange files between my Ubuntu computer and Android phones, and features like automatic upload of pictures. Luckily there are alternative such as Dropbox, Copy.com, and ownCloud, each with their own pros and cons. But today, I’ll show how to easily use your Google Drive in Ubuntu / Debian. Last year, I wrote about insync, a beta service that offers Google drive integration into Linux, but since service went out of beta, the company started to charge $15 per account for consumers (one time year), with business plans starting at $15 per year. If you are interested in this solution you can still give it a try for free for 14 […]

April 25, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 14.04 Release with Linux Kernel 3.14 and Android 4.4.2

Linaro 14.04 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.14 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.37 (LSK), and Android 4.4.2. More work has been done on ARMv8 support, and big.LITTLE for both the Linux kernel and Android, as well as work on member hardware platforms such as Origen, Arndale, Arndale Octa, Broadcom Capri, and Hisilicon D01 boards. GCC 4.8-2014.04 Linaro is said to include performance improvements. Linaro Android engineering builds for Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 have been setup, but I can’t quite find the images. They’ve also added the BeagleBone Black to member builds. Here are the highlights of this release: Linaro Stable Kernel (LSK) 3.10.37-2014.04 Updates to Android support (from Google and Linaro) Added Big endian for ARMv7 and ARMv8 Thermal framework DT support Huge pages and transparent huge pages for ARMv8 Tagged pointers for ARMv8 Non-coherent DMA for ARMv8 Other Features big.LITTLE support – ARM MP patch set, IKS (ARMv7 […]

April 21, 2014April 21, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

SolidRun HummingBoard is a Raspberry Pi Compatible Board Powered by Freescale i.MX6

Yesterday, I wrote about Banana Pi, an AllWinner A20 powered development board that’s mechanically and electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi so that you can keep using your existing R-Pi accessories. It turns out another company is working on a similar concept. Solidrun who has brought us Cubox and Cubox-i in the past, will soon launch HummingBoard, a Raspberry Pi compatible board powered by Freescale i.MX6 solo/dual/quad SoC, bring even more power than the AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 SoC found in the Banana Pi. The HummingBoard, previously known as Carrier One, is composed of a baseboard and SolidRun microSOM (micro System-on-Module) have comes with the followings specifications: SoC = Freescale i.MX6 Quad @ 1 GHz with Vivante GC2000 3D GPU. The microSoM also comes in solo and dual flavors, and although it’s likely the HummingBoard will be sold with these variants too, it’s not 100% confirmed System Memory […]