Fedora 20 “Heisenbug” Release Makes ARM a Primary Architecture

Fedora has been supporting ARM architecture for a while now, but it was only as a secondary architecture without official support. With the recent Fedora 20 release, nicknamed “Heisenbug”, the ARM architecture, more exactly ARMv7 hard float and greater, is promoted to a primary architecture meaning ARMv7 will have the same status as x86 and x86_64 architectures with packages officially build and supported by the Fedora community. What it does not mean however, due to the nature of ARM architecture, is that you can simply download an ISO to install on any ARM platforms, like you would do on an Intel or AMD computer. It’s a little more complicated than that, as it is platform specific, but instructions are available for the Beaglebone Black, Compulab Trimslice, the Wandboard, Calxeda Energycore Midway and Highbank, and Versatile Express in QEMU. You can download images with MATE, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, SOAS desktops, as […]

Linaro 13.08 Release With Linux Kernel 3.11 and Android 4.3

Linaro 13.08 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.11-rc6 (stating), Kernel 3.10.9 (LSK – beta), and Android 4.3. This month is the first release based on Android 4.3, which was only pushed to AOSP at the end of last month. I can also see work on new SoCs/hardware this month with Texas Instruments Keystone II ARM Cortex A15+DSP SoC and Fujitsu AA9 board (Which processor?, I could not find out). A lot of work also appears to have gone in OpenEmbedded, further optimizations have gone into NEON optimized AES encryption in OpenSSL, and more. It’s also the first time I can see a Ubuntu Raring engineering build image for HighBank (Calxeda Energycore). Here are the highlights of this release: Android Engineering Android stack was tuned to achieve 100% CTS pass result on Android 4.3 Analyzing the UEFI EDK II boot loader for Android completed, implementation of fastboot application and USB […]

Linaro 13.06 Release With Linux Kernel 3.10 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.06 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.10-rc6 and Android 4.2.2. Linux Linaro Stable (LSK) preview is based on kernel 3.9.6. There seems to have been a lot of activity for the LAVA and Builds and Integration teams, with LAVA support for new SoC such as Huawei K3V2 and Broadcom Capri from 2 companies which have recently joined Linaro as members, and well as continuous build for Linaro Stable Kernel. On the kernel side, more work has been done for multi-platform support (unified kernel), uprobes, eMMC power mamangement, and more. Here are the highlights of this release: LAVA LAVA Core As part of the effort to improve the developer experience with LAVA, the different client tools were consolidated into a single package, which simplifies the process of updating the tools and makes it easier for the team to provide new features for LAVA users. LAVA now supports KVM devices, […]

Top 10 Posts of 2012 on CNXSoft Blog

This is the last day of the year, so it’s probably a good time to look back and see what interested people on this blog. This has been a banner year for low cost ARM devices and boards starting with the Raspberry Pi, then MK802 and the new mini PCs / HDMI TV dongles / PCs-on-a-stick (whatever you want to call them) that came after, always cheaper and faster. Those low cost devices have in turn made people really interested in ARM Linux, and lots of development on those little devices and boards started. The top 10 posts of 2012, according to page views, reflect just those trends: 74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC (May 2012) – MK802 started the whole “low cost mini PCs” craze, and drove the most traffic to this blog this year. People got excited about the price, form factor, and the possibility to […]

openSUSE 12.2 for ARM is Now Available for Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Efixa MX and More

The first stable release of openSUSE for ARM has just been announced. openSUSE 12.2 for ARM is officially available for the Beagleboard, Beagleboard xM, Pandaboard, Pandaboard ES, Versatile Express (QEMU) and the rootfs can be mounted with chroot, but “best effort’ ports have been made for Calxeda Highbank server, i.MX53 Loco development board, CuBox computer, Origen Board and Efika MX smart top. Work is also apparently being done on a Raspberry Pi port which should be available for the next release. openSUSE developers explains that almost all of openSUSE builds runs on these platforms (about 5000 packages). Visit “OpenSUSE on your ARM board” for download links and instructions for a specific ARM board. More details are available on the wiki page. openSUSE has limited resources for ARM development, so If you’d like to help with development (e.g. fixing builds), visit ARM distribution howto page to find out how to get […]

Linaro 12.09 Release with Kernel 3.6 and Android 4.1.1

Linaro release 12.09 has just been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.6-rc6 and Android Jelly Bean. This release provides further improvement to Android Jelly Bean, Android benchmark characterization,  an ARMv8 OpenEmbedded image, UEFI bootloader support for Vexpress, origen and pandabords, and some improvement to big.LITTLE and power management. Here are the highlights of the release: Android All Linaro patches are now available on Jelly Bean. Accelerated graphics is now available on Snowball Jelly Bean build. AndEBench, AndEBench Java, Linpack, CaffeineMark, Antutu 2D and 3D, NBench, Quadrant, I/O Benchmark, Vellamo benchmark hotspot characterization available. An Origen tracking build is available and will be released this cycle as a Linaro Evaluation Build (LEB). Audio works on Origen running Jelly Bean (WAV file only). A Monkeyrunner script to run Streamline has been completed. First rev of the NI PXIe-4154 based power measurement system is created. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKyuxLl4iw&feature=plcp In-tree AOSP tests have been automated. […]

SYSGO Releases ELinOS 5.2 Industrial Grade Linux

SYSGO, a software company for the real-time and embedded markets, has announced the release of ELinOS 5.2, an Industrial Grade Linux distribution, updated to kernel 3.2 and with new features related to scheduling, memory management, file systems, networking and security. The new 5.2 version brings the following improvements: Integration of new kernel 3.2 to support new features and availability of previous versions of kernels 2.6.33 and 2.6.34, to respond to customers demand. Real-time extension based on Open Source Automation Development Lab (OSADL) implementation (PREEMPT RT) especially designed and tested for industrial needs. Support for latest embedded CPUs including Intel, Freescale QorIQ, ARM Cortex, TI OMAP 4, Freescale i.MX6 and MIPS. SMP (Symmetric multiprocessing) support on all multi-core platforms.  QEMU simulator supported for all architectures. New functionality support in areas of graphics (i.e. AMD Llano Fusion APUs), Wi-Fi (i.e. Intel iwlwifi 105 and 135), SATA (i.e. Intel C600 serial-attached-scsi controller), USB […]

Linaro 12.03 Release with Kernel 3.3-rc3

Linaro has just released version 12.03 based on Linux Kernel 3.3-rc3 and Android 4.0.3. Among the key points, hardware video decode in now supported in Origen (Android),  Android runs in A15/A7 platforms, libav AAC optimization provides about 2x performance improvement and QEMU supports Samsung Exynos 4240 and Calxeda Highbank (work done upstream). Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro Android has support for DS-5 version 5.9. Hardware accelerated Multimedia is now integrated on Origen. EEMBC, denbench and coremark have been ported to Android and are running in LAVA. android.net ConnectivityManager unit tests have been built and integrated in all builds. Hardware decode of H264 and MPEG4, 1080P and 30 FPS is enabled on Origen. Origen now has 1080p HDMI Graphics and Video Support. Android runs on A15, A7 and A15/A7 fast models. ARM’s big.LITTLE has been tested running Android using a set of unit tests. Kernels of prebuilt […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC