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 involved.

Since I don’t own any of the supported boards, but still want to give it a try, I’ll use the chroot method in a virtual machine running Ubuntu 12.04. There are two images available:

  • JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) image for a minimal system  (openSUSE-12.2-ARM-JeOS-rootfs-*.tbz )
  • XFCE image for a graphical system (openSUSE-12.2-ARM-XFCE-rootfs-*.tbz)

Let’s go for the XFCE image (743 MB):


after installation, prepare the environment and run chroot:


We can now run some commands to show we run openSUSE (zypper is the equivalent of apt-get in SUSE):


There seems to be some problems with some repositories, but it basically works. I’ve tried to run startx, but it does not work within the chroot (probably because Xorg does not work in QEMU yet). It’s also possible to use the JeOS image (minimal) using QEMU emulating a Cortex A9 or A15 versatile express board.

Share this:

Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress

ROCK Pi 4C Plus
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
The comment form collects your name, email and content to allow us keep track of the comments placed on the website. Please read and accept our website Terms and Privacy Policy to post a comment.
1 Comment
oldest
newest
Diego Hernandez
Diego Hernandez
10 years ago

Can you copy the .Xauthority file from you pc to rootfs directory and launch X session 🙂

Khadas VIM4 SBC