Linaro 12.01 Release with Kernel 3.2 – Android 4.0.3

Linaro has just released version 12.01 based on Linux Kernel 3.2 and Android ICS upgraded to 4.0.3.  A lot of work has been done to have video hardware decoding on OMAP 4 (in GStreamer) enabling Pandaboard to run Ubuntu TV and XBMC with Video HW acceleration. Prebuilt binaries for Linaro GCC and Linaro GDBare now available which means you don’t need to use Ubuntu with Linaro Toolchain. It has been tested with Debian 6.0.2, Fedora 16, openSUSE 12.1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5.7 and should run on any Linux Standard Base 3.0 compatible distribution. Windows binaries are also available and known to work on Windows XP Pro SP3, Windows Vista Business SP2 and Windows 7 Pro SP1. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro’s ICS has been upgraded to 4.0.3. Linaro Android ICS builds are now optimized using -O3 with the Linaro Toolchain. Click through builds […]

Linux Kernel 3.1.9 for Raspberry Pi Released & Build Instructions

Raspberry Pi has just announced the release of a fork a linux kernel 3.1.9. The source code with patches is available at https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux. If you just want to download the patch, I’ve created one: r-pi_linux_3.1.9.patch.gz The code related to Broadcom BCM2835 processor is referred as bcm2708 in the kernel and I can see committed related to the watchdog timer, the framebuffer,  the VCHIQ driver (the driver sending messages to the GPU) and general commits for bcm2708. For those interested in the messages used to communicate between userspace and the GPU, the VCHIQ driver code is located at drivers/misc/vc04_services in the tree. I haven’t studied it yet, but as the platform should support graphics standards such as OpenGL and OpenMAX IL, most people should not really care about this interface as I suppose the OpenGL library (Mesa?) uses this driver. Here are the build instructions for Raspberry Pi kernel. I cross-compiled […]

Embedded Linux Conference 2012 Schedule

The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2012) will take place on February 15 – 15, 2012 at Hotel Sofitel in San Francisco. ELC consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting. February 15 10:30 – 11: 30 – Profiling and Performance Measurement Techniques Using Linux Kernel Tools by Govindraj Raja, Software Engineer at Texas Instruments and Partha S Basak, Technical Manager at Texas Instruments. With ever growing features and functionality of Linux kernel, one needs methods to trace and profile parts of Linux kernel for various reasons like performance analysis, debugging etc. This presentation aims at providing an insight into few of these tools and their salient features. Supporting use case data as captured on open source OMAP4 pandaboard is also provided. 14:00 – 15:00 – The Yocto Project Overview […]

2012 Linux and Android Events by the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation has announced the list of events it organizes for 2012. Those are mainly technical, but there is also one event dealing with legal issues. Most of the venues are in the US, with 2 back-to-back events in Europe (Barcelona) and 1 in Asia (Japan). If you are one of the first 50 to register for any LinuxCon event, you can get a 35% discount, by registering with the code “12PM35”. List of Events: Android Builders Summit – February 13-14, 2012, Hotel Sofitel SF Bay, Redwood Shores, Calif. A technical summit for OEMs, their device manufacturers, integrators, custom builders, and the growing Android and Linux Kernel developer communities. Embedded Linux Conference – February 15-17, 2012, Hotel Sofitel SF Bay, Redwood Shores, Calif. The premier vendor-neutral technical conference for companies and developers using Linux in embedded products. Linux Storage, Filesystems and MM Summit  – April 1-2, 2012, Hotel Nikko, […]

Linux 3.2 Release

Linux Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.2 on the 4th of January: So 3.2 is out, and the merge window for 3.3 is thus officially open. I delayed 3.2 first a few days to wait for the final linux-next (“final” in the sense that that’s what I’ll fetch to decide whether something has been in linux-next for 3.3 or not), and then some more as people were coming back from holidays and sorting out some regressions. So we do have a few last-minute reverts and small fixes. Still, there’s not a whole lot of changes since -rc7 (shortlog appended), and almost all of them are *tiny*. So despite the few annoying last-minute reverts, I’m feeling pretty happy about it. Linus Linux 3.1 added support for OpenRISC,  Near-Field Communication (NFC) and new power tuning tools called cpupowerutils, as well as support for Xilinx boards and i.MX53 ARD. Linux 3.2 […]

Android Drivers Will Be Included in Linux Kernel 3.3

The Android drivers were no longer accepted in the mainline Linux kernel, starting with Linux kernel 2.6.33, as announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman back in spring 2010. But this is about to change, as it appears that Greg Kroah-Hartman will include the Android drivers into his development branch for the upcoming Linux kernel 3.3, making it boot on Android devices without being patched. The Linux Foundation’s Consumer Electronics workgroup, along with a group at Linaro and various individual developers, is working with Kroah-Hartmann on this project. Tim Bird, chair of the Architecture Group, announced the Android Mainlining Project on the 20th of December with the goal of coordinating work on integrating the Android features. Further information on this project is available on the wiki and developers can also sign up for the project’s mailing list to join the 15 other persons involved in the project. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software […]

Linaro 11.12 Release with Kernel 3.1.5

Linaro has just released version 11.12 based on Linux Kernel 3.1.5 and further support for Android 4.0 including graphics hardware acceleration on Snowball and Origen development boards. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro ICS is built with the Linaro toolchain. Linaro ICS is running on all supported boards. DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Linaro Andoid ICS builds. The latest version of libpng (1.5.7) has been integrated in Linaro ICS. An AOSP master build is now available from linaro. ARM® Mali™ Hardware Accelerated Graphics is supported on Origen and Snowball. libjpeg-turbo has been integrated into all Andoid ICS builds. Developer Platform The linux-linaro and lt-panda kernel packages are now automatically generated by the CI build scripts DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Ubuntu LEB builds. XBMC packages, with Gstreamer and OpenGLES support, are now available at the Ubuntu Overlay (supporting only Panda initially) U-Boot-Linaro is […]

MIPS Releases Kernel 3.0.8, plans for Android 4.0

MIPS has just released Linux Kernel 3.0.8 port for MIPS SoC, the kernel version used by Android 4.0.1. The latest kernel is available on MIPS developer website at http://developer.mips.com/linux/. You can use Git to get the latest kernel source code for MIPS Technologies cores (with hardware fixes and improvements) as follows:

Although git is recommended to ensure you have the latest commit, you can also download a snapshot version from linux-mips FTP site.:

Over the next several weeks, MIPS will be posting updates on the MIPS Developer website regarding Android 4.0 (ICS) with a release planned for mid-december 2011.   Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)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. www.cnx-software.com

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case