Fedora 19 ARM Remix R1 Release With Support for AllWinner A10, A10s, A13 and A20 SoCs

Fedora_18_AllWinner_A1XAfter releasing a stable version of Fedora 18 for AllWinner A10 and A13 in February, Hans de Goede, working at Red Hat and a Fedora contributor, has recently announced “Fedora 19 ARM remix for Allwinner SOCs” on linux-sunxi community mailing list. This released based on Fedora 19 for ARM together with linux-sunxi kernel and u-boot, adds support for A10s and A20 based devices, and 38 boards and devices are now supported.

To give it a try, download the 665MB image:


then write it to an SD card (8GB or greater):

Where you have to replace [device] with your actual SD card device, e.g. sdc.Since u-boot is board/product specific, you’ll also have to update u-boot for your hardware. Remove the SD card, re-insert it, and run:<


to display a graphical menu (if dialog is installed on your Linux PC), or a list supported boards and products:


Select you board in the graphical menu, or by running the command with your board, e.g.:


Finally umount the uboot and rootfs partitions:

The SD card is now ready. Insert it in your A1X/A20 device, connect the device to an HDMI or DVI monitor, and power it up to complete the installation. It will first resize the root partition to make full use of your SD card storage space, reboot automatically, and enter the first boot setup, where you’ll be able to configure networking, the timezone, create a root password, and create a normal user, before accessing Fedora 19.

As with Fedora 18, there’s no support for 2D (G2D engine), 3D (Mali 400 GPU), nor video decoding acceleration (CedarX VPU). AllWinner A20 support as been tested with Cubieboard2 development board, and the following are known to work:

  • UARTs, I2C controllers
  • MMC controllers
  • EHCI and OHCI USB controllers (USB controllers 1 and 2, but controller 0 is an OTG controller and is not supported yet).
  • Video Output – HDMI, VGA, LCD, Composite Out
  • AXP PMIC including CPU voltage scaling
  • RTC
  • SOUND – Analog in/out, HDMI audio, S/PDIF out (SPDIF ported, but not tested)
  • Ethernet controller (emac)
  • SATA controller

You can also build the Fedora image yourself by using the scripts available at https://github.com/jwrdegoede/sunxi-fedora-scripts.git.

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13 Replies to “Fedora 19 ARM Remix R1 Release With Support for AllWinner A10, A10s, A13 and A20 SoCs”

  1. I think the sentence about graphics acceleration is unclear.
    >As with Fedora 18, there’s support for 2D (G2D engine), 3D (Mali 400 GPU), nor video decoding acceleration (CedarX VPU).
    I think it should be “there’s no support”.
    Although on the A10/A10s/A13 ” if you add the necessary blobs you might get these to work “

  2. Sorry, I just don’t get it.

    No GPU support; only limited support from the SOC manufacturer.

    You can’t source the SOC itself in small quantities. The “development boards” aren’t really suited for “product” use and have questionable availability and longevity.

    So remind me again — why exactly am I putting lots of time and money into developing for this SOC?

  3. @JQPABC123

    JQPABC123 :
    Sorry, I just don’t get it.
    No GPU support; only limited support from the SOC manufacturer.
    You can’t source the SOC itself in small quantities. The “development boards” aren’t really suited for “product” use and have questionable availability and longevity.
    So remind me again — why exactly am I putting lots of time and money into developing for this SOC?

    The TI CPUs are available for more than 2x the price.

    Olimex are selling the Allwinner chips in small quantities and released their board design files. This would make low-rate production an option.

  4. @JQPABC123
    Are you serious about your question? I see posts like this from you not a first time, could you please stop trolling around this place? If you dont get it – it is your problem.

    1. GPU is supported, it is Mali-400 and it works with both ARM’s X.org driver and ssvb’s xf86-video-sunxifb 2D acceleration driver with XVideo support – http://linux-sunxi.org/Binary_drivers You can get 300fps of glmark2-es2 on 800×480 screen using sunxifb.
    2. VPU is supported in VLC command line player – http://linux-sunxi.org/VLC You can decode various formats http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarXVideoRenderingChart There’s also a big work going on with CedarX reversing – lots of stuff already figured out – there is a real hope for real API for video acceleration. While it goes, you can either go with cvlc or use any player with XVideo support and run decoding on CPU, it will work for lightweight stuff.
    3. SoC itself can be bought from Olimex https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/IC/ in small quantities and from Chinese sources in big ones.
    4. No one demands you to use this SoC family, seriously. You can try find another one with open kernel, live wiki and no NDA’s attached. Also if you are x86 fanboy – I will remind you that Aero on Windows 7 goes like 5fps on Intel Atom D2800, thanks to PowerVR, just sayin’.

  5. Olimex just posted their opinion about longevity of AllWinner SoCs, and AllWinner F20 are said to still be available after 6 years.
    http://olimex.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/how-long-olinuxino-boards-with-allwinner-socs-will-be-available/

    If you have requirements for long term support (10 / 15 years), it clear I would not take the risk to go for AllWinner, but rather go with a company like Freescale that explicitly commit to long term availability. But if your product will just sell for a few years, AllWinner should be just fine.

    I understand CedarX “works” (I posted about that), but there are artifacts during video playback, and that’s the reason why XBMC dropped support for AllWinner in Linux.

  6. Hi,

    i have 8 Gb Sdcard, but i can’t dd image to card by doing xcat image > /dev/sdc
    it says out of space 🙁 whats should i do ?

  7. Hi, what is the default root passwd of this image? I wrote this image to my 8GB SDcard, booted succesfully. I turn on my brand new LG 42LA640 LED TV through HDMI, set input, and then power on my Olinuxino-A20 board… but nothing on screen.. HDMI is dedected by TV… I tried all 3 inputs of the TV, tried 3 different HDMI cable… no luck..

    I am trying to login through tty ( RS232 ), so could you tell me its default username & passwd ?

  8. hi
    i have followed this tutorial and prepared SD card as you have specified ( i used it for a20-olinuxino_micro), but after running script
    ./select-board.sh a20-olinuxino_micro i got the message writing done and when i looked for uboot image i didn’t found anything. then i put the card into a20-olinuxino_micro it didn’t displayed anything on the screen , what might be the reason?? and how can i solve it ??

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