Ubuntu on ARM and OMAP

Ubuntu on ARM and OMAP

Past presence and future of the Ubuntu ARM port


The Past Jaunty (9.04)

Initial Ubuntu ARM port using ARMv5 No other significant changes vs. Debian Supported SoCs: Freescale Babbage, Marvell Dove

Karmic (9.10) Switch to ARMv6 Turn on vfp Supported SoCs: Freescale Babbage, Marvell Dove

Lucid (10.04) Switch to ARMv7 Default to thumb2 Supported SoCs Freescale Babbage, Marvell Dove, TI Beagle


The Presence

Based on the 2D Netbook images to which we switched as default image with the lucid (10.04) release, there is now work going on to not require debian-installer/ubiquity but instead have the image preinstalled and ready to go after writing it to SD card.

The current development focus lies on OMAP4 hardware while OMAP3 support will go on.

The upcoming images will be prepared to easily install all necessary software for a smooth 3D experience.


The Future

Shortly after the Lucid release Linaro entered the stage.

Linaro works inside the Ubuntu infrastructure and develops things like cross compilation tools, toolchain improvements, more unification in the ARM environment (one kernel tree to rule them all, unified bootloader code etc) as well as providing 3D testsuites and work on graphics driver integration

The Ubuntu ARM team works closely with Linaro and will include works from the Linaro team in all future images (and indeed you will find the x-compile environment on x86 Ubuntu systems)


The OMAP images

With Lucid we provided very roughly made Beagleboard images using the typical ubuntu installation (which took about 2h for a netbook image on the 256M Beagles).

In Maverick the approach was completely changed, images are pre-partitioned and preinstalld, they just expand to teh full size of the SD card on first boot and then fire up a configuration tool to set up localization and user.

With 256M being far below the default HW specs for Ubuntu the focus for these images will be Beagle XM and the Pandaboard.


The OMAP images

To support multiple SoCs with the same image Scripts will be provided to replace the bootloader on the images while the kernel will support multiple SoCs on a per-subarch base(OMAP3/4)

The current OMAP4 kernel is directly maintained by TI on top of the Ubuntu git tree which guarantees the best from both worlds (Ubuntu kernel features and TI HW support)

While the images will default to the 2D netbook user interface we introduced in Lucid, there is also collaborative work between teh canonical DX team and teh TI graphics team going on to make the new clutter based Unity netbook UI work on top of the OMAP4 SGX


The 2D Netbook Launcher


The Unity Netbook Desktop


Resources

IRC: #ubuntu-arm on irc.freenode.net

Meetings: Weekly every wednesday at 13:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting

Images:Daily builds at: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-netbook/ports/daily-preinstalled/

Reach me under: Oliver Grawert <[email protected]>

mailto:[email protected]


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Ubuntu on ARM and OMAP

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