Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on GNU Health Embedded Open Source Health Platform Works on Raspberry Pi 3/4, and soon Olimex SBC’s

GNU Health Embedded Open Source Health Platform Works on Raspberry Pi 3/4, and soon Olimex SBC’s

GNU Health Embedded

GNU Health (GH) is a free and open-source Health and Hospital Information System (HIS) that can manage the internal processes of a health institution, such as financial management, electronic medical records (EMR), stock & pharmacies or laboratories (LIMS). It is already used in various hospitals, health centers, and medical research facilities in various countries, most developing countries, across the world. The program would normally be installed on x86 servers running Linux or FreeBSD, but there’s also a version for Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 based on openSUSE called GNU Health Embedded, and work is being done to port the solution to Olimex OlinuXino SBC’s. Contrary to what the photo above implies, GNU Solidario does not sell the hardware pre-loaded with GNU Health Embedded, but you can download it for free from their servers, and if you want to support the project you could always make a donation. As I understand it, GNU Health Embedded does not fully replace GNU Health …

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments on PineTab 10.1″ Linux tablet Launched for $99.99 with UBPorts OS

PineTab 10.1″ Linux tablet Launched for $99.99 with UBPorts OS

As expected, Pine64 PineTab Linux tablet with Allwinner A64 processor, 2GB RAM, and a 10.1″ touchscreen display has just launched for $99.99 or $119.98 with a detachable backlit keyboard on Pine64 Store. Note those are pre-orders with shipping scheduled for the end of July. PineTab won’t shatter performance records with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-400MP GPU, 2GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash, but it’s one of the rare Linux tablets on the market, and certainly the most affordable. The tablet offers a decent set of features too with a 10.1″ 720p capacitive display support for M.2 SATA SSD, Mini HDMI output, front-facing, and rear cameras, built-in WiFi and optional 4G LTE via the M.2 socket. It also comes with a 6,000 mAh battery that should be good for many hours. PineTab also leverages all the software work done since the launch of Pine A64 board in 2016 including mainline U-boot and Linux development from linux-sunxi community, and will also benefit …

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Linux 5.7 Released – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS and RISC-V Architectures

Linux 5.7 Released – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS and RISC-V Architectures

Linux 5.7 Changelog

OK… I’m a bit late on that one. Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.7 last week: So we had a fairly calm last week, with nothing really screaming “let’s delay one more rc”. Knock wood – let’s hope we don’t have anything silly lurking this time, like the last-minute wifi regression we had in 5.6.. But embarrassing regressions last time notwithstanding, it all looks fine. And most of the discussion I’ve seen the last week or two has been about upcoming features, so the merge window is now open  and I’ll start processing pull requests tomorrow as usual. But in the meantime, please give this a whirl. We’ve got a lot of changes in 5.7 as usual (all the stats look normal – but “normal” for us obviously pretty big and means “almost 14 thousand non-merge commits all over, from close to two thousand developers”), So the appended shortlog is only the small stuff that came in this last week since …

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments on Allwinner Submits A100 Initial Support to Mainline Linux

Allwinner Submits A100 Initial Support to Mainline Linux

Allwinner A100 Mainline Linux

You may also have already used boards based on Allwinner processors with mainline Linux support. But so far you had to thank linux-sunxi community for all the mainlining work they do, and AFAIK Allwinner was not involved. But today, I noticed Allwinner A100 initial support was submitted by Frank Lee with an AllwinnerTech dot com email address, and although the company was involved in some other patchsets, AFAIK it might be the first time they work on mainlining one of their processors. Allwinner A100 is a mid-range tablet processor with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, an Imagination PowerVR GE8300 GPU, 4K video decode and 1080p encode that looks to be a replacement for/upgrade to the popular Allwinner A64. The patchset itself brings initial support for the four Cortex-A53 cores, clock and pinctrl, as well as the Device Tree file. There’s also mentioned of Allwinner Perf1 Allwinner A100 SBC with  1GB DDR3, AXP803 PMIC, two USB 2.0 ports, onboard NAND flash, MicroSD …

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments on PineTab Linux Tablet Coming Soon for $100. Watch an Ubuntu Touch Demo in the Meantime

PineTab Linux Tablet Coming Soon for $100. Watch an Ubuntu Touch Demo in the Meantime

PineTab Linux Tablet with Detachable Keyboard

People have been trying to launch Linux tablets for years from PenPod 700 to Jolla Tablet, or more recently NTablet. You may not know or remember about those, as Linux tablets that actually shipped never really gained traction. But in early 2019, Pine64 started to mention development work on PineTab, an Allwinner A64 powered BSD/Linux tablet, and the company/community is really good at developing low-cost hardware and providing decent firmware support, so hopes were high. After COVID-19 related delay, Pine64 has now announced the first PineTab tablets would go for pre-order at the end of the month for $99. PineTab specifications: SoC – Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Arm Mali-400 MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 RAM Storage – 64GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot, M.2 slot for SATA SSD Display – 10″ MiPi 720p Capacitive LCD Video output – Mini HDMI up to 4K @ 30 Hz Audio – Speakers and Microphone Cameras – 5MP rear camera, …

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” Linux Phone Launched with Ubuntu Touch

PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” Linux Phone Launched with Ubuntu Touch

PinePhone Community Edition UBports

PinePhone “BraveHeat” Limited Edition Linux smartphone launched last November as promised for $149.99. As the codename implied, it was for the enthusiasts as the phones that were part of that product batch may have had some defects, and came without an operating system, meaning the users had to flash the firmware themselves. But there’s now a new edition, namely PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” pre-loaded with UBports with Ubuntu Touch featuring Lomiri user interface. The specifications are exactly the same with an Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, a 5.95″ display with 1440×720 resolution, and 4G LTE cellular connectivity. The only difference is that Ubuntu Touch is preloaded to the device, and the back of the phone should have a marking showing you purchased UBports Edition. What should be noted is that it’s still not considered as a consumer device, as UBports is still beta, and the phone is primarily aimed at UBports community members who can …

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments on Allwinner A-Series Processors 2020-2021 Roadmap – Allwinner A33E, A100 and A200 SoCs

Allwinner A-Series Processors 2020-2021 Roadmap – Allwinner A33E, A100 and A200 SoCs

We previously discussed Allwinner business units where each can share the same silicon (with different a name) but maintains its own software stacks for different target applications. Allwinner A-Series is the most well-known as Allwinner A10 & A20 were very popular SoC for tablets and TV boxes many years ago. CNX Software received two slides that originated from Allwinner this morning. The first one shows the different Allwinner processor families, and the second provides a roadmap for A-Series processors for tablets with A33E, A100, and A200 coming this year and next. Let’s go through the Allwinner processor families first and their main use case: R-Series and MR-Series – Smart home applications A-Series – Tablets VR-Series – Virtual reality H-Series and F-Series- High-performance applications like multimedia (TV boxes) T-Series- Automotive, I suppose mostly infotainment V-Series – Camera SoCs XR/XIN-Series – Wireless chips like the infamous XR819 WiFi chip. AXP – PMIC (Power Management IC) accompanying the company’s Arm SoCs The second …

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Linux 5.6 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linux 5.6 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linux 5.6 Changelog

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.6 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: So I’ll admit to vacillating between doing this 5.6 release and doing another -rc. This has a bit more changes than I’d like, but they are mostly from davem’s networking fixes pulls, and David feels comfy with them. And I looked over the diff, and none of it looks scary. It’s just slightly more than I’d have preferred at this stage – not doesn’t really seem worth delaying a release over. So about half the diff from the final week is network driver fixlets, and some minor core networking fixes. Another 20% is tooling – mostly bpf and netfilter selftests (but also some perf work). The rest is “misc” – mostly random drivers (gpio, rdma, input) and DTS files. With a smattering of fixes elsewhere (a couple of afs fixes, some vm fixes, etc). The shortlog is appended, nothing really looks all that exciting, …

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