Linux 4.11 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architecture

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.11: So after that extra week with an rc8, things were pretty calm, and I’m much happier releasing a final 4.11 now. We still had various smaller fixes the last week, but nothing that made me go “hmm..”. Shortlog appended for people who want to peruse the details, but it’s a mix all over, with about half being drivers (networking dominates, but some sound fixlets too), with the rest being some arch updates, generic networking, and filesystem (nfs[d]) fixes. But it’s all really small, which is what I like to see the last week of the release cycle. And with this, the merge window is obviously open. I already have two pull request for 4.12 in my inbox, I expect that overnight I’ll get a lot more. Linux 4.10 added Virtual GPU support, perf c2c’ tool, improved writeback management, a faster initial WiFi connection […]

Top 10 Posts of 2013 and Stats on CNXSoft Blog

This is the last day of the year, and just like in 2012, I’ll look back on the main trends of this year,  post a list of the top 10 posts of 2013 on cnx-software.com, and add some fun stats about the site and my visitors. 2013 has been the year of quad core media players and mini PCs, especially those based on Rockchip RK3188, XBMC is now featured in many Android STBs, “big.LITTLE” and “Octa-core” have been the buzz words on the application processor front, Google has entered the HDMI TV sticks market with the ChromeCast, and is competing with Miracast / DLNA TV dongles, we’ve gotten more and more low cost Linux development boards, crowdfunding has almost gone mainstream, and the Internet of things has started to take off thanks to new technologies such as Bluetooth Low Energy. I’ve compiled the list using data from Google Analytics, filtered […]

UDOO QUAD vs BeagleBone Black vs Wandboard Dual vs ODROID-X2 vs Raspberry Pi

UDOO QUAD is a development board featuring both Freescale i.MX 6Quad and an Atmel SAM3 Cortex M3 MCU, that’s currently having a very successful campaign on Kickstarter, as the total amount pledged is now close to $500,000 US. UDOO decided to put a comparison table against four other ARM Linux boards they consider their main competitors: the BeagleBone Black for its numerous I/O options, Wandboard Dual, also a Freescale i.MX6 powered board, the ODROID X2 for its powerful Exynos 4412 processor, and Raspberry Pi model B which is ubiquitous. The Cubieboard board would also have been an interesting addition, but they did not include it. As you would have guessed the green parts in the tablet shows the winner for each features according to UDOO team. These 5 boards vary greatly in terms of price, and since this is not included in the table above, I’ll mention  the price of […]

Ubuntu Linaro 12.11 with 2D/3D Mali-400 GPU Acceleration on ODROID-X Development Board

A few days ago, Hardkernel released the first version of Ubuntu 12.11 (Linaro) with Mali-400 GPU support for their ODROID boards (ODROID-X/X2, ODROID-U/U2). This is still WIP (Work in Progress), but this is one of the few boards together with Pandaboard, Origen and Snowball that can support 2D/3D GPU acceleration in Ubuntu Quantal. Since I have an ODROID-X development board, I decided to give it a try. There are different ways to install it. I chose the way that is most convenient for me (LCD display instead of HDMI), and likely to yield more performance (eMMC instead of SD Card). The current installation instructions to eMMC are extremely cumbersome and you have to go through 5 main steps: Install Android (yes, seriously) in the eMMC Install Ubuntu in the SD Card Install Ubuntu to the eMMC Upgrade Ubuntu to the latest version Install the Mali drivers In this post I’m […]

Running Ubuntu in Android with ODROID-X Development Board

I’ve had several people asking me about running Linux on Android in the last few months, but I did not look into it into details, because I thought we would just be able to run server apps. That is until Rohith left a comment on CNX Software Facebook timeline,  that it’s possible to run Linux in Android, and access the user interface via VNC (sort of simple, but I did not think of it). You probably need at least 1GB of memory and a multi-core processor to run this sort of setup correctly, so I finally decided to give it a try by running Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity interface in ODROID-X development board. I mainly followed the instructions available at http://linuxonandroid.org/ and inside the Android app. Most of the steps I followed can also be replicated on other rooted Android hardware platforms. Apart from Ubuntu 10.04 & 12.04, you can […]

$69 ODROID-U & $89 ODROID-U2 Exynos 4412 Development Boards

Hardkernel has just announced 2 tiny quad core development boards based on Exynos 4412 @ 1.4 GHz (as used in Samsung Galaxy S3) and Exynos 4412 Prime @ 1.7 GHz (as used in Samsung Galaxy Note 2) called respectively ODROID-U and ODROID-U2. The other difference is the U version comes with 1 GB RAM, and the U2 version with 2 GB RAM. Here are the specification the ODROID-U and ODROID-U2 boards: Processor – Samsung Exynos4412 @ 1.4 GHz (ODROID-U) or Exynos 4412 Prime @ 1.7 Ghz (ODROID-U2), which can be overclocked respectively to 1.8 GHz and 2 GHz. GPU – Mali-400 clocked at 400MHz (ODROID-U) or 440MHz (ODROID-U2), which can be overclocked respectively to 533 and 633 MHz. System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 DRAM @ 800MHz (ODROID-U) or  2GB @ 880MHz (ODROID-U2) Storage – microSD socket, eMMC connector USB – 2x USB 2.0 Host ports, 1x USB 2.0 device for ADB/mass […]

$149 Hardkernel ODroid-X2 Development Board with Exynos 4412 @ 1.7 GHz and 2 GB RAM

You’ve probably heard about the ODROID-X development board announced in July by Hardkernel. They now have an updated version called ODroid-X2 with Samsung Exynos 4412 clocked at 1.7 GHz (vs 1.4 GHz) and 2 GB RAM (vs 1 GB RAM for the first version). They also boosted the Mali 400 clock speed from 400 MHz to 533 MHz. Apart from being a good mobile development platform, the 2 GB RAM could make the board a pretty good native ARM build machine under Ubuntu, as I’ve read 1 GB RAM is not always enough at link stage (e.g. for Debian packages, sorry I can’t find the link), unless you use swap which tremendously slows things down. The rest of the board seems identical and it just looks the same as the first version. Charbax shot a video of Hardkernel ODroid-X2 development board at ARM Techcon 2012: ODroid-X2 will cost $149 (ODroid-X […]

XBMC For Android on ODroid-X Development Board (Video)

I’ve tried one the latest nightly builds for XBMC on Android on the ODroid-X development board based on Exynos 4412 quad core Cortex A9 processor, and more exactly that file. Currently XBMC only supports 2 cores, so it’s still not optimized for this platform, but there has been a lot of progress since last month, when I tried XBMC on the Mele A1000, and it appears to be fairly stable. The UI is very smooth (about 55 fps) and responsive on the ODroid-X  board. 1080p video playback is not perfect yet, but once XBMC can make use of four cores, it should be possible to handle 1080p software video decoding. Most of the things I tried work almost perfectly: video playback, picture display, audio playback, weather… There are still some bugs however, such as the lack of timezone support as you can see on the picture above, and the plugins […]

Memfault IoT and embedded debugging platform