i.MX515 Project
Port MeeGo to ARMv7-A.in category Linux Distributions
proposed by jmc on 19th February 2010 (accepted on 1st September 2010)
Project Summary
A standardized, quasi-embedded Linux distribution is rapidly becoming a probability, rather than a Utopian day-dream.The MeeGo Project is on-deck as the brain-child created from the merger of the two "superstar", resource-constrained distros: Nokia's Debian derived Maemo Linux, and Moblin the Linux Foundation's (née Intel) Fedora & openSUSE derivate.
Two fundamental conflicts need resolution to cement MeeGo as an effective reality: software packaging & management, and verifying MeeGo supports both the ARM and IA-32 as primary instruction set architectures (ISAs).
Issues at hand originate from each distributions upstream projects as well as the individual Linuxes themselves.
Moblin's use of RPM and YUM comes into direct conflict with Maemo's use of DEB & APT as their software packaging and package management stacks. RPM was chosen as the packaging technology to attain tighter compliance with the Linux Foundation's Linux Standards Base.
Likewise, compiling Moblin packages for ARMv7-A will provide its own unique set of challenges. For example, to date, Moblin has relied heavily upon Intel's microarchitectural, x86 ISA extension -- known as "Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3" (SSSE3). Obtaining comparable performance using NEON -- ARM's own single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) implementation -- could demand high degrees of runtime analysis, profiling, and debugging.
These efforts would benefit from access to an Efika MX Open Client (v1.1) compatible touch-screen. Any additional FSL i.MX515 Developer Boards, preferably older boards for expense reduction would also expedite any porting & maintenance work. However, both a dual-threaded, dual-core Atom 330 MCP mainboard, and an Efika MX Open Client v1.1 are presently available for use with this proposed project.
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