What’s more it’s surprising to see how many packages are FTBFS post mass rebuilds even though it’s advertised that packagers need to fix their build failures post mass rebuild. In fact post F-17 mass rebuild there’s still nearly 300 packages that are FTBFS in F-17 and that’s just doing a basic grep against the latest f-17 tagged packages so it doesn’t take into account packages that were built in the f17-build prior to gcc 4.7 landing but are FBTFS with gcc 4.7.0, ruby or some of the other F-17 features.

I know of the last 3-4 months I’ve personally fixed into the 100s of broken packages, and I know spot fixes a lot too but it still amazes me that maintainers don’t fix the build failures for their packages. A lot of fixes, especially for the older build packages, are basic things like patch fuzz so shouldn’t be hard to fix!

A list of the current < f17 packages currently tagged into F-17 stable (sorry if there’s already a fix in the works via updates-testing):

Mayavi-3.4.0-2.fc15
Panini-0.71.103-5.fc15
PyKDE-3.16.6-7.fc15
Temperature.app-1.5-8.fc16
UnihanDb-5.1.0-7.fc15.3
alacarte-0.13.2-3.fc16
alevt-1.6.2-16.fc15
amanda-3.3.0-2.fc16
apache-commons-fileupload-1.2.2-2.fc15
apache-commons-jxpath-1.3-6.fc15
apache-commons-launcher-1.1-7.20100521svn936225.fc15
ape-1.1.0-3.fc15
aplus-fsf-4.22.4-21.fc16
async-http-client-1.6.1-1.fc16
audtty-0.1.12-3.fc15
autoarchive-0.2.0-3.fc15
ax25-apps-0.0.6-8.fc16
barcode-0.98-17.fc15
base64coder-20101219-2.fc16
blahtexml-0.8-3.fc16
boolstuff-0.1.13-2.fc15
bwa-0.5.9-1.fc16
cargo-parent-4.7-1.fc15
chronojump-0.8.14-1.fc12
cmucl-20b-1.fc15
cobertura-1.9.3-3.fc15
compat-flex-2.5.4a-6.fc12
coredumper-1.2.1-10.fc12
crossvc-1.5.2-7.fc12
ctemplate-0.97-1.fc14
dhcp-forwarder-0.9-1501.fc15
diveintopython-5.4-19.fc16
driftnet-0.1.6-21.20040426cvs.fc15
dvipdfm-0.13.2d-42.fc15
eboard-1.1.1-7.fc15
eclipse-anyedit-2.3.3-2.fc15
eclipse-collabnet-merge-2.2.1-2.fc15
eclipse-emf-query-1.4.0-2.fc15
eclipse-emf-transaction-1.4.0-2.fc15
eclipse-emf-validation-1.4.0-2.fc15
eclipse-m2m-qvtoml-3.0.0-2.fc15
eclipse-mdt-ocl-3.0.0-2.fc15
eclipse-mdt-uml2-3.1.0-2.fc15
eclipse-mercurial-1.8.2-1.fc16
emacs-common-proofgeneral-3.7.1-5.fc15
email2trac-0.13-6.fc12
erlang-ebloom-1.0.2-5.fc15
erlang-js-0.5.0-3.fc16
esc-1.1.0-14.fc15
ext3grep-0.10.2-2.fc15
ezmorph-1.0.6-3.fc15
fbdesk-1.4.1-7.fc15
fbida-2.07-8.fc15
fedora-idm-console-1.1.3-3.fc15
felix-parent-1.2.1-6.fc16
felix-shell-1.4.2-3.fc15
fillmore-lombard-0.1.0-5.fc15
flickcurl-1.18-2.fc15
freenx-client-0.9-11.fc15
fuse-emulator-1.0.0.1-1.fc16
fvwm-2.5.30-4.fc16
fwbuilder-4.1.2-1.fc15
g-wrap-1.9.11-4.fc12
gant-1.8.1-5.fc15
gconf-cleaner-0.0.3-2.fc15
gdmap-0.8.1-8.fc15
gengetopt-2.22.3-1.fc13
gforth-0.7.0-5.fc16
gimmix-0.5.7.1-2.fc15
gmpc-0.20.0-4.fc15
gnaughty-1.2.4-2.fc15
gnofract4d-3.13-2.fc15
gnome-do-docklets-0.8.2-4.fc15
gnome-speech-0.4.25-5.fc15
gok-2.30.1-1.fc15
goldendict-1.0.1-4.fc16
gooddata-cl-1.1.9-2.fc15
google-gson-1.7.1-3.fc16
grace-5.1.22-9.fc16
gshutdown-0.2-8.fc16
gtkglextmm-1.2.0-10.fc12
gtkmm-utils-0.4.1-3.fc15
gtksourceview-1.8.5-8.fc15
gtksourceview-sharp-2.0.12-14.fc16
gtksourceview2-sharp-1.0-10.svn89788.fc16
gtksourceviewmm-2.10.2-2.fc16
gwget-1.0.4-5.fc15
hardinfo-0.5.1-3.fc15
healpix-2.13a-2.fc14
ibus-table-cangjie-1.2.0.20100210-18.fc15
ibus-table-cantonese-1.2.0.20100305-3.fc15
ibus-table-code-1.2.0.20100305-8.fc15
ibus-table-others-1.3.0.20100907-6.fc15
ibus-table-xingma-1.2.0.20100305-3.fc15
ibus-table-yinma-1.2.0.20100305-7.fc15
icewm-1.3.7-1.fc16
ini4j-0.5.1-1.fc16
ipe-6.0-0.32.pre32patch1.fc12
jaffl-0.5.9-1.fc16
jgraph-5.13.0.0-2.fc13
jmol-12.0.41-1.fc16
jpoker-1.0.16-2.fc15
json-lib-2.3-5.fc15
kadu-0.6.5.4-5.fc15
kaffeine-1.2.2-1.fc16
kismet-0.0.2011.03.R2-1600.fc16
komparator-0.9-5.fc15
krecipes-1.0-0.2.beta2.fc15
ksplice-0.9.9-2.fc15
latexila-2.3.0-1.fc16
lekhonee-gnome-0.11-4.fc15
libAfterImage-1.20-2.fc15
libbsr-0.2-4.fc12
libcrystalhd-3.5.1-1.fc14
libfc14audiodecoder-1.0.2-3.fc17
libfwbuilder-4.1.2-1.fc15
libgdbus-0.2-6.fc15
libgdiplus-2.10-2.fc16
libgtkhotkey-0.2.1-4.fc15
libgtksourceviewmm-0.3.1-7.fc15
libharu-2.1.0-3.fc15
libhid-0.2.17-6.fc15
libinfinity-0.5.0-2.fc15
libkml-0.6.1-8.fc15
libmnetutil-0.8.0-0.3.20100629svn3775.fc15
libofx-0.9.4-1.fc16
libopensync-plugin-opie-0.22-5.fc15
libpano12-2.8.6-5.fc15
libqttracker-6.11.0-2.fc15
libsoup22-2.2.105-9.fc15
libvpd-2.1.1-2.fc15
licq-1.3.5-10.fc15
links-2.2-13.fc15
lsvpd-1.6.8-3.fc15
maven-changelog-plugin-2.2-7.fc16
maven-changes-plugin-2.6-2.fc16
maven-invoker-plugin-1.5-5.fc16
maven-license-plugin-1.8.0-5.fc16
maven-plugin-cobertura-2.5.1-1.fc16
maven-stage-plugin-1.0-0.3.alpha2.fc16
mercury-1.0-0.4.alpha6.fc16
metapixel-1.0.2-7.fc15
mimetic-0.9.6-2.fc15
mod_scgi-1.13-5.fc15
mod_security-2.5.12-4.fc15
moksha-0.5.0-5.fc15
munipack-1.2.10-2.fc15
nagios-plugins-rhev-1.0.0-2.fc16
natus-0.1.5-2.fc15
ndesk-dbus-0.6.1b-1.fc13
node-0.3.2-8.fc15
notify-sharp-0.4.0-0.14.20100411svn.fc15
ntfs-config-1.0.1-13.fc15
numptyphysics-0.3-0.6.20080925svn.fc15
ocaml-augeas-0.4-9.fc15
ooo2gd-3.0.0-1.fc16
openoffice.org-diafilter-1.7.0-6.fc15
openvrml-0.18.8-2.fc16
ovaldi-5.9.1-1.fc16
parole-0.2.0.2-6.fc15
perl-Config-Augeas-0.701-5.fc16
perl-Crypt-CBC-2.29-8.fc16
perl-Log-Any-0.11-6.fc16
perl-MD5-2.03-10.fc16
perl-Module-Starter-Plugin-CGIApp-0.30-6.fc16
perl-Test-Refcount-0.07-1.fc16
perl-XML-Filter-XInclude-1.0-9.fc16
pgp-tools-1.1.3-4.fc16
php-ezc-Authentication-1.3.1-2.fc15
php-pear-File-Find-1.3.1-1.fc15
php-pear-Payment-Process-0.6.6-7.fc16
pianobooster-0.6.4b-3.fc15
piccolo2d-1.3-9.fc16
pino-0.3-0.3.20101112hg.fc15
pioneers-0.12.3-3.fc15
pki-java-tools-1.3.1-1.fc14
plexus-sec-dispatcher-1.4-4.fc16
pmd-4.2.5-11.fc16
pngcrush-1.6.10-7.fc15
pngnq-1.1-1.fc16
pnmixer-0.3-1.fc16
polyxmass-bin-0.9.8-2.fc12
postgresql-odbcng-0.99.101-0.5.test1.fc15
postgresql-pgpoolAdmin-2.2-2.fc12
postgresql_autodoc-1.40-2.fc14
printoxx-2.8.1-2.fc15
professor-is-missing-0.1-6.fc15
putty-0.60-7.20100910svn.fc15
pxe-kexec-0.2.3-3.fc15
pysvn-1.7.5-1.fc16
python-GeoIP-1.2.5-0.4.20090931cvs.fc15
python-HTMLgen-2.2.2-14.fc14
python-bitarray-0.3.5-4.fc15
python-blinker-1.1-1.fc16
python-blist-1.3.4-1.fc16
python-catwalk-2.0.2-4.fc15
python-cclib-1.0.1-1.fc16
python-cement-0.8.18-2.fc16
python-cerealizer-0.7-3.fc15
python-cherrypy2-2.3.0-15.fc15
python-cherrytemplate-1.0.0-12.fc15
python-chm-0.8.4-10.fc15
python-clientform-0.2.10-2.fc15
python-cloudservers-1.2-3.fc16
python-coffin-0.3.5-2.fc16
python-compositor-0.2b-4.fc15
python-configobj-4.7.2-3.fc15
python-couchdb-0.6.1-4.fc15
python-cpio-0.1-12.fc15
python-cssutils-0.9.7-2.fc15
python-ctags-1.0.5-4.fc15
python-daap-0.7.1-7.fc15
python-daemon-1.6-1.fc16
python-dialog-2.7-14.fc15
python-dictclient-1.0.1-6.fc14
python-dmidecode-3.10.13-3.fc15
python-dns-1.9.4-1.fc16
python-dotconf-0.2.1-12.fc15
python-dpkt-1.7-2.fc15
python-drizzle-0.08.2-7.fc15
python-dtopt-0.1-8.fc15
python-durus-3.9-2.fc14
python-empy-3.3-7.fc15
python-enum-0.4.4-3.fc15
python-epdb-0.11-6.fc15
python-exif-1.0.8-6.fc15
python-formencode-1.2.2-4.fc15
python-modjkapi-0.1.2.28-7.fc15
python-mpmath-0.17-2.fc15
python-pywt-0.2.0-3.fc15
python-unidecode-0.04.7-4.fc16
qalculate-kde-0.9.7-3.fc15
qbrew-0.4.1-7.fc15
qtparted-0.4.5-26.fc15
quesoglc-0.7.2-2.fc15
qwtplot3d-0.2.7-10.fc15
ragel-6.6-3.fc15
raul-0.8.0-2.fc15
rinputd-1.0.4-1.fc16
rmic-maven-plugin-1.1-7.fc16
rpmdepsize-1.0-7.fc15
scite-2.22-2.fc15
selenium-core-1.0.2-0.5.20100324svn.fc15
selenium-remote-control-1.0.3-8.20100318svn.fc15
sinjdoc-0.5-10.fc15
snoopy-1.8.0-1.fc16
sofsip-cli-0.16-3.fc15
specto-0.3.1-3.fc15
sphinx-0.9.9-6.fc16
spor-1.0-4.fc15
sshfp-1.2.0-1.fc16
stardict-3.0.2-2.fc16
stratagus-2.2.4-9.fc15
subcommander-2.0-0.7.fc15.7
surf-0.4.1-3.fc15
svnkit-1.3.4-2.fc15
symkey-1.3.0-4.fc13
synapse-0.2.6-1.fc16
synfigstudio-0.62.02-1.fc15
tesseract-3.00-2.fc15
testng-6.0.1-1.fc16
tilda-0.9.6-6.fc16
tomoe-0.6.0-19.fc15
tucnak2-2.31-1.fc13
txmpp-0.0.2-3.fc14
txt2man-1.5.6-1.fc15
tyrion-0.1.0-1.fc15
ucblogo-6.0-8.fc15
umlgraph-5.4-2.fc15
uncrustify-0.58-1.fc16
vifm-0.5-5.fc15
vorbisspi-1.0.3-3.fc15
winwrangler-0.2.4-2.fc15
wmdrawer-0.10.5-11.fc16
wmfire-1.2.3-4.fc15
wmweather+-2.11-3.fc15
wormux-0.9.2.1-5.fc16
writer2latex-1.0.2-6.fc16
xaos-3.5-2.fc15
xdrawchem-1.9.9-15.fc15
xesam-glib-0.5.0-5.fc15
xmlbeans-2.4.0-7.fc15
xulrunner-python-2.0-1.20110406hg.fc16
xxdiff-3.2-14.fc15
yaws-1.89-4.fc15
zhu3d-4.2.2-3.fc15

Development Boards: all these devices are currently available, there will no doubt be new releases or refreshes in the coming months, likely as Cortex-A15 chips become more widely available.

• BeagleBoards: There’s three main varieties of these single core Cortex-A8 devices consisting of the original BeagleBoard, the BeagleBoard xM and the new tiny BeagleBone. They range from 800Mhz – 1Ghz and 256-5126Mb RAM with a few other options.
• PandaBoards: There’s the PandaBoard and the PandaBoard ES. Bother at dual core Cortex-A9 processors the former at 1Ghz, the later at 1.2. From there the specs are similar with 1Gb RAM, WiFi, BT, 100Mb ethernet and various other features.
• Raspberry Pi: The little baby that took the world by storm taking pre orders in the order of 200K boards and taking a couple of sites offline. There’s a model A and B based on a Broadcom ARMv6 chip the later has ethernet, both have 256Mb of RAM. Fedora is the recommended OS by the Foundation
• Snowball: A ST-Ericsson based dual core Cortex-A9 with 1Gb RAM, wifi, BT, GPS, ethernet, 4/8Gb emmc and a raft of other fun stuff. It also has a MALI GPU which has development on the open “LIMA” driver
• Origen: based on a Samsung dual core 1Ghz Cortex-A9 processor which can be replaced, it has 1Gb of RAM, wifi and number of other bits including the same MALI GPU of the igloo
• Freescale i.MX53: A single core 1Ghz Cortex-A8 Freescale board 1Gb RAM, SATA, ethernet, with options of LCDs etc

SmartBooks, SmartTops, Terminals: These devices are the equivalent of the x86 netbooks and nettops, all are mostly available now.

• OLPC XO 1.75: Initially shipping with Fedora 14 but we’ve already got dev images running F-17 and it will be the basis of the June stable release. The first production shipment of this device will be 60,000 units. There’s various SKUs but it’s a 1ghz Marvell processor with either 512Mb/1Gb RAM, 4/8Gb emmc, wifi, and the usual XO features, it should have in excess of 9 hours of battery life.
• Efika SmartBook: a 800Mhz Cortex-A8 Freescale processor, 512Mb RAM and with all the usual 10 inch Netbook style of features
• Efika SmartTop: the same specs as the smartbook
• Toshiba AC100: A dual core Cortex-A9 1ghz processor with 1gb of RAM, and all the usual 10 inch netbook options, very thin and light with great battery life but the device wasn’t widely available but is sought after
• ASUS eeePad Transformers: These devices are a combination tablet and netbook. Depending on the model they either come with a dual core 1ghz Tegra2 or a quad core Tegra 3 CPU with various specs. They are a tablet with the option of a keyboard dock which makes them into a netbook. With touchscreens, quad core processors, an interesting form factor and an unlocked bootloader they’re an interesting format.
• HP t5325 thin client: A Marvell 1.2ghz Cortex-A8 512Mb RAM thin client
• Trimslice: A Tegra 2 based smarttop desktop device with a couple of different modes all with a dual core 1ghz Cortex-A9 processor with 1Gb of RAM, 1Gb ethernet plus a couple of options including dual HDMI, 11n wifi.

Tablets: these aren’t readily available at the moment but should be available this year.

• OLPC XO 3: Similar specs to the XO-1.75 but in tablet form factor, it will ship the Fedora derived OS all touch based UX it will likely be one of the first production devices using the new gtk3 and XInput 2.2 touch support in Fedora 17
• Vivaldi: A 7inch tablet running KDE Plasma tablet UX on Mer the HW is a 1ghz single core Cortex-A9 processor with 512Mb of RAM and a MALI GPU it’s not the highest spec device but it should be easy to run Fedora on it

Servers:

• HP Moonshot: In conjunction with Calxeda this is a quad core processor server with 4GB of RAM with up to 288 servers in a 4U chassis. Includes all the expected server features with things like a fully reconfigurable switch backplane with each device using a mere 5 watts of power.
• Dell: has announced it’s intention to enter the ARM server market, there’s not much detail as yet
• Seco Carrier Boards: these are various boards using Tegra processors used in things like the Barcelona Super Computer

Plug Computers: There’s a number of plug computers out there based on the Marvell Sheeva Plug generally a 1ghz ARMv5tel processor with 512Mb RAM. These devices are low power, generally quite cheap and come in a number of different devices.

So I think that gives a reasonable overview of ARM based devices that will be available in the coming months, if not already, that should be easily able to run Fedora on ARM without too many problems. This covers but a few of the available ARM based devices but they are a subset that should be relatively easy to run Fedora on them in the coming releases. ARM processors have a number of interesting advantages hardware wise. Firstly they are generally very low power with a lot of quad core devices needing only 5 watts to run, but some of the other advantages is HW encode/decode support for things like MPEG2/4 out of the box which would enable HD decode without having to ship encumbered codecs in Fedora as well as HW crypto as well.

I’m also sure this isn’t a definitive and there’s a lot of other devices that should be able to run Fedora on ARM without too many problems if someone is prepared to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in.

So down below is a pair of minimal root fs for ARM hardfp (ARMv7hl) and softfp (ARMv5tel) but first a few notes about known issues:

• It’s not for the faint of heart! If you don’t like to roll your sleeves up and get dirty, it’s time to back away and go and buy an iPad. While the ARM team is happy to help out with queries we don’t have the time to walk you though step by step. Google is your friend!
• SELinux is disabled by default. It should work just find but as it’s a tar file the file system would need to be re-labelled. I suggest you enable it but get your device booting first
• root password is “fedoraarm” (no quotes)
• There’s some known annoyances with the kernel. It’s not a major problem, just annoying having BUG messages on the console. We’re working to get a fix for the next kernel
• There’s 4 kernels installed by default the base “versatile” for qemu, and one each for OMAP (3 and 4), tegra and IMX. Remove which ever one you don’t want once you have a working system.
• It boots to run level 3. We’re working to get GUI interfaces but we’re not quite there yet, see below for more details
• A lot of ARM devices don’t have battery backed RTCs so you need to ensure you check your time hasn’t regressed to the 70s as it will cause havoc with yum amongst other things, ntpdate can assist you with that.

So some quick links to get you started on various devices. First there’s the Fedora ARM SIG Page, it’s a little out of date but a good spot to get started. For boards you can get Trim Slice HOWTO, for the various OMAP boards (Beagle* Panda*) here and for the various plug devices here.

Now on the missing GUI interfaces and “your favourite desktop”. We’re working as quick as we can to get all the mainline packages built. I would ask if you please don’t just go and build random packages in koji. We have scripts handling the build process to ensure it’s built identical to Mainline Fedora so everything works as it should but this takes time. The quickest way to get these appearing for use if for you to fix broken packages in mainline Fedora. If they don’t compile there they certainly won’t on ARM. These breakages block the build process of packages higher up the stack as the needed dependencies aren’t there. Again please just don’t go and compile random packages in koji.

That being said there’s been a LOT of work done by a few people to get us to this point so I do hope you jump in and enjoy the ride

Now for what you really are after:

• Fedora 17 ARMv7hl (hardfp) alpha 1 Minimal rootfs for tegra, OMAP, IMX5 and other ARMv7 devices
• Fedora 17 ARMv5tel (softfp) alpha 1 Minimal rootfs for various Marvell plugs and other ARMv5 and ARMv6 devices

We’re progressing well and there’s a lot of stuff going on. Of course you’re all going to be up be up at 06:00 GMT tomorrow (Wed) to order your Raspberry Pi running Fedora 14… aren’t you! I’m sure those of you that got a voucher for one at FUDCon Blacksburg will be ready and waiting.

In terms of raw package building of rawhide and F-17 branches we’ve been progressing well since we kicked off the mass rebuild shortly after the aforementioned FUDCon. In terms of numbers of a total 11348 packages in F-17 we’ve built 8861 of them giving us around 2487 left to go. Of course that’s not an exact number as there’s a number of x86 only packages and between now and the final beefy F-17 release there will be lots more releases of the packages that will need to be built. We’re already building rawhide to ensure we stay up to speed on that front too! One thing that is slowing us down is having to spend a lot of time fixing broken upstream packages and of course fixing ARM specific issues.

In terms of devices that will be supported for the Fedora 17 release the number will be quite small. The list at the moment will likely be PandaBoard (including ES), all modern BeagleBoards, Trimslice, Efika SmartTop and SmartBook, Raspberry Pi and the OLPC XO 1.75. The last two will be Fedora re-mixes. In most cases of pure Fedora the support will likely be console based or accelerated 2D UX. The device market and associated support is moving pretty quickly at the moment so that could easily change between now and release, this is very much a moving target. It’s also not to say that Fedora 17 won’t run on all devices, it’s just that Your Mileage May Vary and it depends a lot on the state of the mainline kernel support.

So what else are we working on? We’ve been doing a lot of planning in preparation for the Proposal to primary arch. We’ve also been working with various tools teams like Anaconda to get some features for building images. In this regard we also need to work with the appliance-tools and livecd-tools teams to see what can be done to allow them to support image creation. It would be cool to be able to use the appliance tools to create an qemu image that can be directly reported into libvirtd and virt-manager (hint hint ). I’m also slowly starting to investigate what’s needed to support DeviceTree so we can build less kernels and support more devices but I’m not sure it’s all quite there yet.

So what can you do to help? The most simple and best thing is to ensure your package has been built properly for mainline as part of the mass rebuild, or if we file a RHBZ bug with ARM issues to fix it or assist us in fixing it quickly. Most people have been fabulous with quick fixes and attention on bugs. Lastly we should have some minimal rootfs files available soon for F-17

In summary we’ve got nearly nine thousand individual packages already built for ARM supporting both ARMv7 and ARMv5tel architectures. For our Fedora 17 release will be on a reasonable number of innovative and interesting devices. We’re aiming to release as close as is humanly possible to the Mainline Fedora release. Users should be able to run anything they would on similar x86 devices. We’re running and fast catching up

So having got involved in the ARM project one of the less nice things at this point in time is the complete lack of decent X drivers for 3D, and in most cases for 2D the best you can do is a FBdev driver. A few off us discussed the sorry state of drivers for ARM based devices at FUDCon Blacksburg.

So what is out there? Do we have the mass variety of GPUs like the older x86 days, or is it more like big three of today with a few minor players on the side? Most definitely the later. For the devices we’d like to support within Fedora ARM we have the following devices to contend with. Firstly ARM themselves make the MALI GPU, they’re used in Samsung, ST Ericsson and other platforms. Then we have the NVIDIA ULP GeoForce used in Tegra 2 an Tegra 3 systems, apparently its nothing like it’s older brothers. Next up is the Imagination Technologies PowerVR as included in, amongst others, the TI OMAP, Samsung Hummingbird, Apple Ax. Those three seem to be the major ones we encounter at the moment. There’s also the GPUs used in the Marvell, Freescale, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Broadcom, and what ever the many other ARM platforms use, I’m not exactly sure of all those details.

At the moment the state of accelerated drivers is very similar to the time when AdamW would rant about Poulsbo drivers. Basically you grab a download of a system that ships binary only drivers and attempt to make them work with the current Fedora X and hope that it works and is mostly stable. Not ideal!

A week ago at FUDCon the state seemed dark and horrible and not about to change at any time soon. A week later it seems there’s a ray of light poking its way over the horizon that may indicate the winter might be starting to thaw on the way to a warmer spring. So why do I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel?

Firstly there’s a FOSDEM talk entitled Liberating ARM’s Mali GPU by Luc Verhaegen. Having a Nouveau style driver for the MALI GPUs will be a massive improvement for Linux on ARM as this is the core that ARM develops themselves and companies can then license it to use without having to develop their own. I think we’ll see this GPU design in a lot of devices in the coming years.

Next up there’s hints from Arnd Bergmann, a kernel developer at IBM/Linaro (according to LinkedIn), that the traditionally frosty relationship NVIDIA has with Linux X drivers might change for the Tegra platform with the comment of “see them in the same boat as Intel and AMD regarding their support for free drivers in the near future”. Which while isn’t any form of guarantee it sort of indicates they might well be at least considering it.

Samsung has also had their Exynos 4210 DRM driver merged into kernel 3.2. It’s a basic, un-accelerated DRM driver which supports KMS. It’s some forward movement, although there’s no mention yet of what the user side driver will consist of. There’s also a project for an open S3C6410 driver which is a earlier gen Samsung SoC.

Texas Instruments is also working on it’s omapdrm driver which also provides a similar basic DRM/KMS functionality. There’s also a matching X.Org driver which in conjunction with omapdrm can provide a 2D DDX driver. No 3D yet though. Not really holding my breath on that one to be honest. The FSF has had PowerVR on it’s high priority list for quite some time and as the GPU in every generation of iDevice Imagination Technologies Group has no financial incentive to support any form of X based 3D driver as they’re already selling silicon hand over fist whether it’s iOS or Android based. The working 2D driver for the aforementioned SGX derived Poulsbo plus the OMAP bits might be enough for some smart hacker to glue bits together to at least get a decent general purpose 2D SGX driver though.

Well the open drivers on ARM aren’t great, but at least there’s a few upcoming improvements to look forward to. Maybe the smaller companies might realise that an open driver will at least allow them to sell some silicon designs where they can’t get their foot in the door with the likes of Apple. Maybe people like Luc will just hack them before they do and make it a mute point.

The hardfp image comes with kernels for OMAP (BeagleBoard/PandaBoard) and Tegra devices (primarily Trimslice) where as the softfp image comes with OMAP and Marvell (plug computers). The root password is fedoraarm and there’s various instructions for devices all over the place.

You can get the hardfp rootfs here and the softfp rootfs here.

This will likely be the only rootfs for Fedora 15. The GUI bits are coming along slowly but from here on pretty much everything that’s working will be installable using yum.

I’m not concentrating most of my time on getting ARM rawhide on the coat tails of mainline. More on that very soon

Again most of my day revolved around ARM bits and pieces including the Secondary Arches session. We gave away vouchers for 20 Raspberry Pi’s for people to hack on when they are released. I’m looking forward to those 20 people getting involved in the ARM project and blogging about all the cool things they do with them.

In between all the ARM sessions and lots of random hallway discussions about ARM, OLPCs and just about anything Fedora I managed to sneak off and sit in on a Gluster session to have a break from ARM related stuff. In between all of that I was hacking on rawhide for ARM but that’s another blog post entirely so stay tuned.

FUDPub was a good opportunity to have a break from the laptop and discuss various things and catch up with various people I hadn’t managed to spend much time with and get to know them a little better. I was somewhat surprised that the beer ran out so quickly.

Sunday morning was a slower kick off and was some serious ARM hacking and some further discussions. Things started to slow down as people departed to head home. Mid after noon was the second board meeting. We discussed a number of things from SOPA/PIPA support options through to Christoph’s Fedora Council proposal. In ended up being quite a long but fairly productive meeting.

Overall as always I found FUDCon very useful, this time in particular it was good to get some high bandwidth discussions over ARM related stuff with people that I’ve been speaking with daily on IRC and telephone over the last couple of months. It was also good to get it some more attention in the wider Fedora community to give people opportunity to hear about the things that we’re doing, the things we’re aiming to do and to ask questions about things like aim to promote ARM to a primary architecture.

From 16:00 we had a Fedora Board meeting to discuss board goals and Fedora goals and the success and/or failure of the current goals. We also discussed board communications with the rest of the community and projects for the board for the comming year.

Other than that even the hallway discussions were fairly high bandwidth as well and it was a very busy. I very much enjoyed sitting down for a few beers in the evening to discuss some of the many things I do within Fedora and other side projects and hobbies.

I then discovered I’ve left my laptop charge behind in the early morning rush to get out of the house So if anyone has a spare Dell Latitude E-Series or D-Series laptop charger they could throw in their bag I would be for ever grateful (my laptop is a E6410 but I’ve used all E and D series with it).

Repeat: Anyone coming to FUDCon that has a spare Dell charger I can borrow over FUDCon I will owe you beer (or what ever your fave beverage is!).