Tag Archives: Arch Linux ARM

Blender is usable on ARMv7 (32 bits) without 3D acceleration thanks to LLVMpipe.

blender-17:2.76-1.0001-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz (Archlinux ARM package, december new version : blender-17:2.76.b-3-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz)

This works pretty well with Asus Chromebook C201 and its fantastic Rockchip RK3288 ARM SoC.

Still need to install OpenCL, to hardware accelerate Cycle render computing (second rendering in the video).

Qemu for Arch Linux ARM

Own compilation of Qemu for Arch Linux ARM, as it’s still in official repository (I need to verify the Yaourt repository). At the moment I desactivated Spice support Spice(On english Wikipedia), that allow to graphically control desktop of the Virtual Machine. That’s still possible to access to console.

Now obsolete, prefer official package.

This package is on my repository, you need to install these packages (there are other dependencies that can be found on official Arch Linux ARM repositories) :

* libseccomp-2.2.3-1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz
* iasl-20150408-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz
* leveldb-1.18-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz

You also need the SeaBIOS « any » (architecture independant) package, that can be found here:
* https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/seabios/. Click to Download From Mirror in the right box.

I made a locale copy of this package in case of need:
* seabios-1.8.2-1-any.pkg.tar.xz

And finally you also need the Qemu package itself:
* qemu-2.3.0-3-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz

To install them after that, in root account (or with sudo):

pacman -U libseccomp-2.2.3-1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz iasl-20150408-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz \
  leveldb-1.18-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz seabios-1.8.2-1-any.pkg.tar.xz \
  qemu-2.3.0-3-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz

That’s not optimized for 3rd generation Cortex-A (Cortex-A7/a15/a17), The works then on any Cortex-A architecture, not only on the Cubieboard2.

I hope to have soon a smartbook based on Rockchip RK3288 for further experiment. Several vendors build 11″ models with about 10 hours autonomy they sell for 150 to 250$ depending on configuration (2 to 4 GB of RAM 16 or 32GB SSD). They are powerfull enough for web, terminal, office work) and several Linux distributions (including Arch Linux ARM, Debian and Ubuntu, can be installed on it):
* Asus (C201 11.6″ Chromebook and Chromebook Flip C100P (10″), this one can be used as a tablet too)
* Haier Chromebook C11
* Hisense Chromebook C11
* CTL H4 Chromebook for education

Due to succes of this plateform, MediaTek, made a similar solution based on MT8173, 64-bits, big.LITTLE, Quad-core.

Linux 4.0 (4.1 on june 25) kernel on Allwinner A20/Cubieboard2

Thanks to the hardware and software development work of AllWinner, to the Linux mainlining effort of the Linux-sunxi community to improve and push driver into main line Linux kernel sources and to the integration work of ArchLinux and ArchLinuxARM communities, the Cubieboard2 (using Allwinner A20 SoC) since this night officially use 4.0 kernel as default with ArchlinuxARM. Before this date an old Linux kernel 3.x branch was used.

* Linux XXX 4.0.5-2-ARCH #1 SMP Fri Jun 12 20:03:44 MDT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

This means that :
* Lots of NAND flash can be used for system
* CPU frequency is well managed now
* Most of driver are integrated and probably really stable.

25 june update, 11 days after the 4.0 : A new update occured today with linux kernel 4.1
* Linux XXX 4.1.0-1-ARCH #1 SMP Tue Jun 23 23:24:14 MDT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux).