The Ångström Distribution

Kernel 3.0 on a hx4700, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

After years of being stuck with 2.6.21 there is some movement on the hx4700 port again!

For people wanting to do development on/for Ångström have a look at these blogs:

• Xora's kernel workflow: This blog walks you through the steps Graeme takes when hacking on a kernel.

• Toolchain tutorial: This blog shows how to use and extend the pre-built toolchain to build small applications like nano.
• Gstreamer plugin selection: This blog shows how you can reduce your rootfs size without changing the buildsystem

People can now access the angstrom feeds using:

feeds.angstrom-distribution.org

with mirrors at

us.feeds.angstrom-distribution.org
eu.feeds.angstrom-distribution.org

In the near future feeds.angstrom-distribution.org will start rotating
through the mirrors automagically to spread the load.

No configuration changes are needed, unless you want to pick a specific
mirror. In that case, update the URLs in /etc/opkg/*-feed.conf.

A special thanks to Tom King and Philip Balister for setting this up.

With the 2011.3 release of OE we are taking the opportunity to retire
angstrom 2008.1 into a maintenance branch, which is going to created
soon, and move ahead with 2010.x in openembedded-core and
org.openembedded.dev. This will give us some more freedom to stabilize
2008.1 without keeping 2010.x back.

If you follow the recommended instructions then you will get the maintenance branch automatically.

This means that only bugfixes will go into 2008.1 and the more crazy
stuff will happen in 2010.x. The exact lifespan of the maintenance
branch isn't clear yet, but it will be there for at least 6 months.
Angstrom 2008.1 will get deleted from org.openembedded.dev before the
end of this month.

Your friendly Angstrom maintainers,

Graeme 'Xora' Gregory
Koen Kooi
Philip 'Crofton' Balister

The server angstrom is hosted on is also hosting some popular android downloads that are sucking up all the bandwidth :(
We hope those downloads become unpopular real soon, but till then we'll have to live with the reduced bandwidth.

For people wanting to setup a development environment for Ångström things got a lot easier. Hop over to:

http://git.angstrom-distribution.org/cgi-bin/cgit.cgi/setup-scripts/

git clone the repo and run the script. It is mostly self documenting and automates a number of steps from http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/building-angstrom that people struggle with.
It has seem a fair bit of testing, but it isn't "1.0" quality yet, so feedback to the angstrom-devel is very welcome.

If you only need a toolchain things are even easier, check http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/toolchains/ for prebuilt toolchains and instructions.

Another option is to use narcissus to generate a toolchain for you. Select 'advanced' on the narcissus page:

and select 'toolchain' or 'sdk' in the SDK type section:

Archos released an Ångström image for the generation6 devices (Archos 5 and 7) and the news got picked up by engadget and slashdot!

Read the original archos press release after the break

The online builder have moved into the official Ångström domain. You can now access it with the "online builder" tab at the top.
Please share your ideas on improving it on the mailinglist, see the contact tab at the top.

As part of my zoom2 work I needed to format SD cards so they would boot on zoom2 and beagle.

The results of my work can be found here.

Thanks to a generous donation of an OMAP Zoom2 board to me Ångström now supports omapzoom as a target board.

The Ångström feeds have been populated with packages compiled for this machine and the narcissus image builder has been updated to create unstable Ångström images for this board.

Linuxdevices tells us:

NthCode announced an embedded media player for IP-ready DVD players, TVs, and other Linux-based devices. NthCode Player automatically connects to home networks, and then catalogs available media, offering WebKit-browser access to media, plus feeds from BitTorrent and RSS, says the company.

Built on a Maemo and Angstrom base, the player is designed to work with any standard Linux distribution used by the device vendors.

As linuxdevices points out:

Israeli SBC (single board computer) specialist CompuLab announced an "enterprise digital assistant" that enterprises can use to build custom devices with Android or Angstrom Linux. The "Exeda" has a 3.5-inch VGA touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, touchpad, two-megapixel camera, microSD slot, GPS, and optional cellular capabilities, says CompuLab.

Ångström on omapzoom, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

After some trouble with serial cables that needed rewiring and a battery that refused to charge, angstrom is finally running on the omapzoom.

Recent kexecboot on an iPAQ hx4700, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

You can get kexecboot for your machine from http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/kexecboot/

Slides from Maemo on Beagle Board, originally uploaded by Fifi314.

movie

After a few weeks of hacking and testing I am proud to announce the online image builder:

http://narcissus.angstrom-distribution.org/

You can select a machine and packages you want and the image builder will create a tar.bz2 image using the packages available in the feeds. That means you can create an up-to-date image at anytime from anywhere!

The autobuilder tries to keeps the feeds populated for all machines evenly, but some packages aren't in all feeds, e.g. kismet is missing from the armv7a feeds since it breaks with gcc 4.3.x. When that happens the image builder will display a big red X on the screen next to the package that failed to install. It will continue to install the other packages you selected so you can still use generated image, but without the missing packages.

If you have suggestions, feedback or bugreports, send a mail to the angstrom-devel mailinglist.

The source is available from:

http://dominion.thruhere.net/git/?p=narcissus.git;a=summary

Patches welcome, especially to improve the look & feel

From the Atmel press release:

A Linux distribution based on Linux v2.6.27 is available from Atmel's AT91SAM Linux portal at http://www.linux4sam.org. It includes the complete Linux v2.6.27 kernel, the Linux patch for the AT91SAM9G20-EK, device drivers, pre-built demonstrations and the Angstrom/OpenEmbedded building environment.

Linuxdevices.com reports that "World's smallest humanoid robot" is being powered by Ångström! From the article:

A popular talking toy robot from Tomy Corp. runs Linux on a PXA-270-based single-board computer (SBC) from Mobisense Systems. The 6.5-inch tall i-Sobot has been dubbed "the smallest humanoid robot in production" by Guinness World Records, says Tomy.

The i-Sobot offers four basic operating modes, featuring bipedal walking action and eight-directional movement. It also boasts individual actions including walking, dancing, martial arts, push-ups, and soccer moves, says the company.

More information can be viewed at the i-Sobot website.

Mozilla Fennec browser running on a Openmoko gta01 phone, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

This screenshot shows the Fennec browser running on an gta01 phone. This is running under the pure Ångström distribution, not the openmoko version of it.
Thanks to Vlads pixman magic fennec has gotten a lot faster, but there are some downscaling and sizing issues on the gta01 screen.

For all the gaming enthousiast out there: The Pandora gaming handheld will run Ångström by default!
As one of the developers is quoted saying:

"We derive our current filesystem from Ångström with lots of custom Pandora buildrules and string the whole lot together with Open Embedded."

Read the complete Linuxdevices.com news entry.

The Opie user environment is now officially supported in Ångström, for the following devices:

• iPAQ h2200 series (h2200)
• iPAQ h3900 series (h3900)
• iPAQ h4000 series (h4000)
• iPAQ h5000 series (h5000)
• iPAQ hx4700 (hx4700)
• Zaurus SL-5600 (poodle)
• Zaurus SL-C1000 (akita)
• Zaurus SL-C3000 (spitz)
• Siemens Simpad (simpad)

Support for other machines is in the works. Read on below the fold for details.

Fennec Mobile Browser running in Ångström, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

With some help from Vlad I managed to get fennec built and somewhat packaged. Sadly fennec seems to suffer from the same 16bpp bug as firefox, so it is slow as hell, even on a 500MHz Cortex-A8.

You can get the angstrom 2007.12-r18 release images for for Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 aka 'poodle' machines from:

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/releases/2007.12/images/poodle

These Images are now based on the 2.6.24 kernel.

See the Poodle Status Page for more info.

Now there are new stable r18 images available for SIMpad.
I am glad to tell you that there is also an opie image for your beloved device.

The opie image works fine except of the brightness control and the two extra buttons (joypad works).

Please report bugs related to those images to the bugtracker and make them block bug no 2186 if it is an opie related or bug no 2595 if it is SIMpad related.

Sugar running in Ångström, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

The sugar interface can be installed now in angstrom, although it's missing some modules to have it fully working.