13.2 : arm tablet support

[christophe]

Hello dear list members,

i posted this thread on the opensuse forum :
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/500751-13-2-arm-tablet-support

I got no answer and someone told me to post my question here.

I own an intel based tablet and managed to run opensuse 13.1 on it.
But i would like to install and run opensuse on arm based tablets for
me and for other members of my family.

NB : On my intel tablet, though it runs quite well, the graphic interface
isn't very good. Kde is bad and gnome a little less bad.

But that's not the main problem... Arm tablets are more available,
cheaper and there's more choice. So our next tablets will have arm,
mostly.

Will opensuse 13.2 be easy to install and run on such arm tablets ?

To install, what is the procedure ? Copy a dowloaded iso on an usb key
and boot and install like on classic pc ?

Will there be all the same packages than on x86 opensuse ? Like
packman, google-earth, etc...?

How is the support ?

Thank you for your answer.

[Josua Mayer]

Hi Christophe

Post by christophe
Hello dear list members,
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/500751-13-2-arm-tablet-support
I got no answer and someone told me to post my question here.
I own an intel based tablet and managed to run opensuse 13.1 on it.
But i would like to install and run opensuse on arm based tablets for
me and for other members of my family.
NB : On my intel tablet, though it runs quite well, the graphic interface
isn't very good. Kde is bad and gnome a little less bad.

Well, there is e.g. PlasmaActive which tried to do a tablet UI based on
KDE. It is really nice, and I had v4.0 working(not very well) on my
gta04 phone with opensuse 12.3 quite a while ago.

Post by christophe
But that's not the main problem... Arm tablets are more available,
cheaper and there's more choice. So our next tablets will have arm,
mostly.
Will opensuse 13.2 be easy to install and run on such arm tablets ?

No. Not at all! With most tablets and phones you dont get the
information required to replace the kernel, flash root filesystems, or
change bootargs. And if you do, you are still in need of a good kernel
tarball that is not missing anything. With rockchip, e.g. you get a
kernel that has only parts of flash and gpu driver. But there is the
rockhip-linux project that has it working anyway.
I'd suggest to look for some really special tablets that are well
documented and encourage you to do your own thing, or such that are
already running regular linux (not android).
And then you still have to pray for quality graphics drivers.

Post by christophe
To install, what is the procedure ? Copy a dowloaded iso on an usb key
and boot and install like on classic pc ?

On arm, you do a lot manually. build kernel, perform some magic, like
signing or checksum adding if required by the specific device in use.
Then you copy a filesystem image of an already installed OS on your
memory, e.g. sdcard and hope it will boot.

Post by christophe
Will there be all the same packages than on x86 opensuse ? Like
packman, google-earth, etc...?

We are going to get there, but so far we are not. Packman has a few arm
packages, of which again a few work flawlessly. proprietary stuff like
google-earth, forget it, They will try to jump on standard linux-on-arm
when the desktop is dead(maybe a bit earlier ...).
Other than that, any opensource software should be portable to arm. The
main obstacles are usually RAM and graphics aka OpenGL.

Post by christophe
How is the support ?

Its do-it-yourself as far as I know, though some devices are beeing
cared for by opensuse staff.

Post by christophe
Thank you for your answer.

[christophe]

Thank you for your answers.

Post by Josua Mayer
[...]
I'd suggest to look for some really special tablets that are well
documented and encourage you to do your own thing, or such that are
already running regular linux (not android).

Which arm tablets are well documented and are already runing regular linux ?

Can you point me to a list of such tablets ?

Thanks

[Andreas Färber]

Hi,

Post by Josua Mayer

Post by christophe
To install, what is the procedure ? Copy a dowloaded iso on an usb key
and boot and install like on classic pc ?

On arm, you do a lot manually. build kernel, perform some magic, like
signing or checksum adding if required by the specific device in use.
Then you copy a filesystem image of an already installed OS on your
memory, e.g. sdcard and hope it will boot.

Josua, you're making this sound worse than it is. You can actually
download the root filesystem from the openSUSE website, you don't have
to take it from another installation.
For some devices you can just download an SD card image and boot it. So
far there's a few netbooks, like AC100 and Chromebooks, known working in
addition to development boards, but no tablet. Doesn't mean it's
impossible, just that no one has both done and contributed it back yet.
If you search the Web you will also find blog posts of people trying to
run openSUSE on phones, but only rarely they document that in our Wiki
or actually update our JeOS packages for others to reuse.

One issue I see is whether you can attach an external keyboard to the
tablet device for debugging before X11 is up. Assuming you do get that
far. Usually they don't have accessible serial ports for debugging the
bootloader.

Another thing to check is whether the U-Boot bootloader has support for
the device, otherwise the boot process will require some more manual
fiddling. A few Allwinner based tablets are upstreamed, for instance.

But that's not specific to openSUSE, obviously. You should search sites
like linux-sunxi.org, linux-exynos.org, linux-rockchip.org, etc. for
info on the support status of and how-tos for Linux on specific tablets,
and then as a rule of thumb, if you can boot any self-compiled 3.x Linux
kernel on it, you will be able to boot openSUSE as well.

Post by Josua Mayer

Post by christophe
Will there be all the same packages than on x86 opensuse ? Like
packman, google-earth, etc...?

x86 openSUSE does not ship all those proprietary software either...

Statically built ARMv7-A "hardfp" binaries should just work; if you have
sources, you can build packages in OBS just like for x86. I haven't seen
a single binary arm rpm download yet, but then again I haven't searched
for any either.

Post by Josua Mayer

Post by christophe
How is the support ?

Its do-it-yourself as far as I know, though some devices are beeing
cared for by opensuse staff.

We're not openSUSE "staff", and there is no commercial "support" for
openSUSE from SUSE. Some ISVs may be contracted for supporting a
specific commercial project beyond the openSUSE maintenance cycle. Most
work on ARMv7 is volunteer work by people, SUSE or not, with those
boards/devices though. Thus testers are always welcome here, especially
with 13.2 coming up (cf. "JeOS image status" thread).

Cheers,
Andreas

[Josua Mayer]

Post by Andreas Färber
Hi,

Hi Andreas,

Post by Andreas Färber

Post by Josua Mayer

Post by christophe
To install, what is the procedure ? Copy a dowloaded iso on an usb key
and boot and install like on classic pc ?

On arm, you do a lot manually. build kernel, perform some magic, like
signing or checksum adding if required by the specific device in use.
Then you copy a filesystem image of an already installed OS on your
memory, e.g. sdcard and hope it will boot.

Josua, you're making this sound worse than it is. You can actually
download the root filesystem from the openSUSE website, you don't have
to take it from another installation.

You are right. it is better as it sounds. What I expressed here was
mainly my mood about locked bootloaders(they can and are beeing worked
around) and graphics drivers.
Those suse tarballs exist and make for a good starting point.

Post by Andreas Färber
For some devices you can just download an SD card image and boot it. So
far there's a few netbooks, like AC100 and Chromebooks, known working in
addition to development boards, but no tablet. Doesn't mean it's
impossible, just that no one has both done and contributed it back yet.
If you search the Web you will also find blog posts of people trying to
run openSUSE on phones, but only rarely they document that in our Wiki
or actually update our JeOS packages for others to reuse.
One issue I see is whether you can attach an external keyboard to the
tablet device for debugging before X11 is up. Assuming you do get that
far. Usually they don't have accessible serial ports for debugging the
bootloader.
Another thing to check is whether the U-Boot bootloader has support for
the device, otherwise the boot process will require some more manual
fiddling. A few Allwinner based tablets are upstreamed, for instance.
But that's not specific to openSUSE, obviously. You should search sites
like linux-sunxi.org, linux-exynos.org, linux-rockchip.org, etc. for
info on the support status of and how-tos for Linux on specific tablets,
and then as a rule of thumb, if you can boot any self-compiled 3.x Linux
kernel on it, you will be able to boot openSUSE as well.

Post by Josua Mayer

Post by christophe
Will there be all the same packages than on x86 opensuse ? Like
packman, google-earth, etc...?

x86 openSUSE does not ship all those proprietary software either...
Statically built ARMv7-A "hardfp" binaries should just work; if you have
sources, you can build packages in OBS just like for x86. I haven't seen
a single binary arm rpm download yet, but then again I haven't searched
for any either.

Post by Josua Mayer

Post by christophe
How is the support ?

Its do-it-yourself as far as I know, though some devices are beeing
cared for by opensuse staff.

We're not openSUSE "staff", and there is no commercial "support" for
openSUSE from SUSE.

Okay, it is the most amazing of volunteers that take care of boards such
as beaglebones, let me say thank you about the black one, I am happily
using it!

Post by Andreas Färber
Some ISVs may be contracted for supporting a
specific commercial project beyond the openSUSE maintenance cycle. Most
work on ARMv7 is volunteer work by people, SUSE or not, with those
boards/devices though. Thus testers are always welcome here, especially
with 13.2 coming up (cf. "JeOS image status" thread).
Cheers,
Andreas

[Matwey V. Kornilov]

Post by christophe
Will opensuse 13.2 be easy to install and run on such arm tablets ?

It depends on. ARM tables are different.

Post by christophe
To install, what is the procedure ? Copy a dowloaded iso on an usb key
and boot and install like on classic pc ?

Copy prepared disk image onto SD card.

Post by christophe
Will there be all the same packages than on x86 opensuse ? Like
packman, google-earth, etc...?

Mostly the same.