ubuntu News - Page 163 of 181 - CNX Software

March 29, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 13.03 Release with Linux Kernel 3.9 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.03 is now available, and features Linux Kernel 3.9-rc3 and Android 4.2.2. This month, Linaro has released their first Origen Quad Android image, as well as Tiny Android build for Arndale. The ALIP image listed in the download page is still based on Ubuntu 12.11, but as doc Bormental noticed earlier this month, the latest ALIP Quantal 13.03 image is available for download at https://releases.linaro.org/latest/ubuntu/quantal-images/alip. Some development tools (gcc, g++, vi, make..) are now included in Android, so you can develop and build natively from your Android device. Linaro has kept on cleaning the Linux kernel ARM tree for Exynos and ST Ericson SoCs. More work has been done on big.LITTLE for both IKS and HMP, as well as ARMv8 OpenEmbedded, and an initial GRUB port on ARM UEFI is now available. Here are the highlights of this release: Automation and Validation A simple CLI tool for communicating with […]

March 27, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Mini PCs (MK802+, UG802, GK802 & iStick A200) Linux Performance Comparison

Ian MORRISON (linuxium) has tested Linux with several mini PCs powered by different processors. The main point of his tests was to evaluate the performance difference between running Ubuntu 12.04 natively, or in a chroot in Android using tools such as Complete Linux Installer. I previously tried Linux on Android in ODROID-X, and found the applications start time when running from an low-end SD card pretty dismal, and the graphics performance poor. Ian had a different approach, and decided to use a subset of Phoronix Suite benchmarks to compare different hardware / software combination and posted the results in “mini PCs” G+ community. There’s a lot of data, and analyzing the results is not really straightforward without spending some time looking at the data. In this post, I’ll explain how the tests have been conducted, explain the results and try to draw a conclusion. Mini PCs and other Hardware Under […]

March 26, 2013March 26, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Zealz GK802 Is (Temporary?) Available for $69.99 on GeekBuying

Zealz GK802 is a mini PC based on Freescale i.MX6 Quad processor, with 1GB RAM, 8 to 16 GB internal memory (internal micro SD card). The main selling points of this HDMI dongle is that it’s the only currently available quad core processor (about to change), it’s hackable and unbrickable with easy access to the serial console, full support for Linux with hardware video decoding and 2D/3D acceleration (work in progress), and Freescale has released proper software and hardware development resources for the i.MX6 processor. As mentioned in my review of Hi802 mini PC, the downside is that Vivante GC2000 GPU performance is lower than the Mali-400 MP4 found in Rockchip RK3066 mini PC, and its price (usually above $90) is about double the price of Rockchip RK3066 mini PCs. We can’t do anything for Vivante GC2000 performance, but Roman found a coupon code “FVKIWVAG” on a Russian forum that […]

March 25, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Ubuntu 11.10 Image for Hi802 / GK802 is Now Available for Download

About 2 weeks ago, Jasbir released an Ubuntu 11.10 image and installation instructions for GK802 and Hi802 mini PCs based on Freescale i.MX6. I could only find time to give it try yesterday and today. I’ll provide the steps I followed to install the image, and my quick first impressions of the stability and performance of this image. Installation Instructions I mainly followed the instructions provided by Jasbir, and run GParted to increased the partition size on my micro SD card. The image is for a 8 GB micro SD, but those instructions should work on 4GB SD card and greater, as the rootfs partition is only 3GB large. Download the Ubuntu 11.10 image, uboot, as well as the kernel image and modules in a Linux PC:

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

Copy the image, uboot and the kernel to the micro SD card by typing the commands below:

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt;
sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt; &amp;&amp; sync
sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/&lt;sd_drive&gt; bs=1048576 seek=1 &amp;&amp; sudo sync

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/<sd_device>

sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/<sd_device> && sync

sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/<sd_drive> bs=1048576 seek=1 && sudo sync

Replace /dev/<sd_device> by your […]

March 5, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Future Versions of Ubuntu To Feature Mir Display Server Compatible With Android Graphics Drivers

The X server is getting old, and many developers complain it’s not an optimal solution anymore due to its (over) complexity, which was why Wayland was developed. However, it turns out Ubuntu will not use Wayland, but instead their own display server called Mir which will be used in all form factors from phones to desktops. Phoronix has provided a quick summary about the key aspects of Mir: Mir is a new display server being developed at Canonical and it is not based on X.Org or Wayland. Android graphics drivers will be supported. Existing DRM/KMS/Mesa/GBM (the open-source Linux graphics drivers) will work. Canonical is pressuring the binary blob vendors to make their drivers compatible. There will be support for legacy X11 applications through an integrated root-less X.Org Server. Canonical will natively support GTK3 and Qt/QML toolkits with Mir. Mir will be used for all form factors from Ubuntu Phones to […]

March 4, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Measy U2C Gets Finless ROM and PicUntu Support

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Measy U2C, a Rockchip RK3066 mini PC with a webcam using the stock Android firmware. Since then other people received the device, and started to work on improving it notably by releasing a Finless ROM and providing instructions to install PicUbuntu on the device. Bob Finless is Freaktab.com administrator., and he has released popular custom ROM for the most commonly RK3066 mini PCs, and this time it’s Measy U2C turn! Measy U2C Finless ROM This first custom ROM is based on the latest ROM released on Geekbuying (March 1st, 2013) that fixes the CPU frequency, and let the device now achieve 9200 Antutu score. The Finless ROM brings the following improvements: Fully rooted with the latest SU and SUperUser.apk. All Google apps updated to latest, except Google Search. Deleted unusable and junk apps. Cleaned up the file system with tune2fs. Increased “system” space for […]

March 4, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

FXI Technologies Cotton Candy HDMI Stick To Fully Support Both Android and Ubuntu

FXI Technologies was the first company to ever show an HDMI TV dongle when they unveiled the Cotton Candy in November 2011. Since then, many Chinese companies started to provide similar products at lower cost, and the company further improved the Cotton Candy, which is still powered by Exynos 4210 (dual core Cortex A9), by making it even smaller, and getting rid of the internal flash in the process. As a memory refresher, here are the specifications of the Cotton Candy: SoC – Samsung Exynos 4210 dual core Cortex A9 + Mali-400MP4 System Memory – 1GB DRAM Storage – No flash, up to 64GB microSD Video Output – HDMI Connectibity Wifi 802.11b/g/n Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR USB – USB 2.0 male connector for power and connection to devices that supports USB mass storage + microUSB Video Codecs- 480p/720p/1080p Decode of MPEG4-SP/H.263/H.264 AVC/MPEG-2/VC1 Audio Codecs – MP3, AAC, AAC+, Real Audio […]

March 3, 2013March 3, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Ubuntu 11.10 on GK802/Hi802 mini PC with 2D/3D and Video Hardware Acceleration

You may remember an Ubuntu 11.10 image was released via Geekbuying early January, but this image would not boot on my Hi802, lacked 2D/3D acceleration, and to my knowledge there hasn’t been any update since then. So hope of proper Linux support on the device was fading, until the community discovered Freescale released patches for i.mx6 HDMI dongles, developers setup the imx6-dongle community, and after a lot of work, mainly by three members: Jasbir, Dmitriy (rz2k) and James, there’s now GPU and VPU support on Ubuntu 11.10. Here’s a summary of the current status: Wifi working. External SD working Matched IOMUX configuration to align with the Android image. Stripped out unnecessary device initialisation from the original HDMI dongle source. Enabled EGL and GLES HW Acceleration in Ubuntu. Unity desktop might be partially HW accelerated (TBC) Jasbir uploaded a video to YouTube to show the progress, and it looks pretty good. […]