Hi. Deciding weather to put a order in for a a20+devboard or too wait.
I prefer the specs of the upcoming cpu cards. I need all the ram I can get preferably but I also would like 3D/GPU for gnome-shell providing there's free drivers and firmware other wise I'd compromise for the most free cpu card.
So rough err ETA of the up coming cpu cards and I assume that very nice devboard from make-play-live will be possible to get without the a20 card in 2014?
Thanks muchly.
On Thursday, December 5, 2013 01:17:50 Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote:
Hi. Deciding weather to put a order in for a a20+devboard or too wait.
Ah, waiting. There will always be something better 6 months away. That’s just how it is.
One small problem with waiting is that if current products don’t sell, there will be no future products. Don’t wait yourself out of a future.
I prefer the specs of the upcoming cpu cards. I need all the ram I can get
Can you offer firmer guidelines? (I’d love an 8GB system, but .. yeah, probably not happening ;)
We’ve already been running Plasma Desktop with full compositing on the 1GB A20 boards and it works fine, so while more RAM would be nice, it’s not a requirement for running even a full feature desktop env.
preferably but I also would like 3D/GPU for gnome-shell providing
Out of curiosity: how well does GNOME Shell run on openGL ES (1.1 or 2.0)? I know it has support for OpenGL ES via Clutter, but I have yet to see any successful bring-ups of it on ARM hardware (which may mean I just missed them). I do know that LLVM was broken this year on ARM and nobody seemed keen to fix it, which may be problematic.
there's free drivers and firmware other wise I'd compromise for the most free cpu card.
It is unlikely for the foreseeable future that there will be a Free openGL stack for any competent mobile GPUs. This is one of those situations where a little pragmatism will get us further than puritanism: if we shun systems because they don’t have a Free openGL stack, even though the rest of the software is Free, we will continue to be ignored by the companies that make these systems. The server world was able to resolve these exact same kinds of issues through pragmatic work-with-you-towards-freedom approaches.
So rough err ETA of the up coming cpu cards and I assume that very nice devboard from make-play-live will be possible to get without the a20 card in 2014?
Yes, we will eventually be offering the feature board separately; right now it doesn’t make any sense to do so, since ~nobody has an EOMA68 CPU card, without which the Improv’s feature card isn’t useful ;)
That said, it’s a $75 decision, not a $500 one. You can get additional CPU cards when they come out and get stuck in right away with the A20 until then.
On 05/12/13 11:44, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
On Thursday, December 5, 2013 01:17:50 Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote:
Hi. Deciding weather to put a order in for a a20+devboard or too wait.
Ah, waiting. There will always be something better 6 months away. That’s just how it is.
One small problem with waiting is that if current products don’t sell, there will be no future products. Don’t wait yourself out of a future.
I know and don't want to contubut to that.
I prefer the specs of the upcoming cpu cards. I need all the ram I can get
Can you offer firmer guidelines? (I’d love an 8GB system, but .. yeah, probably not happening ;)
2gb is better than 1 and is the same as my netbook. With my web browsing habits I have a problem of hitting 2*% swap and my system becomes a craw. My swap is also encrypted to protect my encrypted home key.
We’ve already been running Plasma Desktop with full compositing on the 1GB A20 boards and it works fine, so while more RAM would be nice, it’s not a requirement for running even a full feature desktop env.
preferably but I also would like 3D/GPU for gnome-shell providing
Out of curiosity: how well does GNOME Shell run on openGL ES (1.1 or 2.0)? I know it has support for OpenGL ES via Clutter, but I have yet to see any successful bring-ups of it on ARM hardware (which may mean I just missed them). I do know that LLVM was broken this year on ARM and nobody seemed keen to fix it, which may be problematic.
Don't know.
there's free drivers and firmware other wise I'd compromise for the most free cpu card.
It is unlikely for the foreseeable future that there will be a Free openGL stack for any competent mobile GPUs. This is one of those situations where a little pragmatism will get us further than puritanism: if we shun systems because they don’t have a Free openGL stack, even though the rest of the software is Free, we will continue to be ignored by the companies that make these systems. The server world was able to resolve these exact same kinds of issues through pragmatic work-with-you-towards-freedom approaches.
I know but I was thinking if the next one is the iMX6 with better(?) working graphics then I might well wait for that.
So rough err ETA of the up coming cpu cards and I assume that very nice devboard from make-play-live will be possible to get without the a20 card in 2014?
Yes, we will eventually be offering the feature board separately; right now it doesn’t make any sense to do so, since ~nobody has an EOMA68 CPU card, without which the Improv’s feature card isn’t useful ;)
That said, it’s a $75 decision, not a $500 one. You can get additional CPU cards when they come out and get stuck in right away with the A20 until then.
yes but still. I guess I could sell it and get a new one when it comes out. So I guess I just get on with ordering one.
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross maillist_arm-netbook@aross.me wrote:
I know but I was thinking if the next one is the iMX6 with better(?) working graphics then I might well wait for that.
the design has been available, waiting for someone to contact me and provide the cash with order that will help to complete the design and get them the product, for over six months now. i have yet to be approached by anyone.
personally i will not be recommending the iMX6 CPU Card for mass-volume purposes to our PRC clients because the pricing on the iMX6 is just way too high.
so, basically, if anyone is reading this (now or in the future), i have the design pretty much ready to go: i am happy to provide quotes, any quantity, as long as you're happy to pay cash with order.
does that help hint at an answer, alexander?
l.
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 10:19 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross maillist_arm-netbook@aross.me wrote:
On 05/12/13 19:11, luke.leighton wrote:
does that help hint at an answer, alexander?
Ok. thanks. I guess the other cards are in the same state?
... yes, basically. summary here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4485207&cid=45525631
Oh look another Improv order, I wonder who ordered... hint hint :P
did you ever register on the preorders? if so you should have had an email from the eoma68-announce list pointing you to the page where you can get one. if not, email me directly, i'll point you in the right direction. you've been on this list long enough, and a part of this project for a while.
l.
On Thu, 05 Dec 2013 12:44:50 +0100 "Aaron J. Seigo" aseigo@kde.org wrote:
Out of curiosity: how well does GNOME Shell run on openGL ES (1.1 or 2.0)? I know it has support for OpenGL ES via Clutter, but I have yet to see any successful bring-ups of it on ARM hardware (which may mean I just missed them).
Do you need a video proof of the gnome-shell desktop running on a cubieboard or something? ;) Yes, it can run:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.netbook.arm.sunxi/3254
Albeit gnome-shell users are not very happy about its performance (it just needs a lot faster *CPU*, and GPU acceleration can't help much):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.netbook.arm.sunxi/4683
If somebody really wants a composited desktop, then KWin is a much better choice. Still the X11 desktop performance is naturally better when opting not to use any compositing window manager at all.
I do know that LLVM was broken this year on ARM and nobody seemed keen to fix it, which may be problematic.
Well, LLVMPipe is interesting from the academic point of view, but has almost no practical value on the low end hardware such as Allwinner A10 or A20.
On Thu, 2013-12-05 at 01:17 +0000, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote:
Hi. Deciding weather to put a order in for a a20+devboard or too wait.
I prefer the specs of the upcoming cpu cards. I need all the ram I can get preferably but I also would like 3D/GPU for gnome-shell providing there's free drivers and firmware other wise I'd compromise for the most free cpu card.
Something close - here is video of an EOMA68-A20 working with 3D on Ubuntu: http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/video-2013-10-21-15-06-42.mp4
And all the info about how it was built along with downloadable pre-built OS images and uSD bootable images and info on how to get it going:
http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/eoma_boot.html#working_lcd
On Thursday, December 5, 2013 13:48:33 joem wrote:
On Thu, 2013-12-05 at 01:17 +0000, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote:
Hi. Deciding weather to put a order in for a a20+devboard or too wait.
I prefer the specs of the upcoming cpu cards. I need all the ram I can get preferably but I also would like 3D/GPU for gnome-shell providing there's free drivers and firmware other wise I'd compromise for the most free cpu card.
Something close - here is video of an EOMA68-A20 working with 3D on Ubuntu: http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/video-2013-10-21-15-06-42.mp4
yep; the openGL stack works, in both X.org and Wayland.
looking at the various shots on the eoma_boot page, what desktop(s) / window managers have you successfully brought up with compositing?
looking through them it looks mostly like gnome2, though i see some mentions of (a composite- less?) gnome-fall-session and compiz as well?
Something close - here is video of an EOMA68-A20 working with 3D on
Ubuntu:
http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/video-2013-10-21-15-06-42.mp4
yep; the openGL stack works, in both X.org and Wayland.
looking at the various shots on the eoma_boot page, what desktop(s) / window managers have you successfully brought up with compositing?
looking through them it looks mostly like gnome2, though i see some mentions of (a composite-less?) gnome-fall-session and compiz as well?
The one OS image here has options that work to login under these different window managers (click on the round logo to the right of the password box) xubuntu, lubuntu, ubuntu gnome classic and openbox:
http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/eoma_boot.html#working_lcd
The normal Ubuntu unity desktop is also an option, but gives a blank desktop because composting is not working. I sorely wish to have compiz and desktop cube working, but util Allwinner release all the information for the graphics controllers libv and others have to do everything by guesswork.
(Also, the username/password jm/jm works - the other default username has problems and will return back to the login screen.)
There is option to upgrade from Ubuntu 13.04 to to Ubuntu 13.10. If taken, the ubuntu gnome classic will be replaced with something that sounds similar (I forget the exact name), but it is not the same as gnome classic. It also gives blank desktop (though the other window managers remain usable).
On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 9:09 AM, joem joem@martindale-electric.co.uk wrote:
Something close - here is video of an EOMA68-A20 working with 3D on
Ubuntu:
http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/video-2013-10-21-15-06-42.mp4
yep; the openGL stack works, in both X.org and Wayland.
looking at the various shots on the eoma_boot page, what desktop(s) / window managers have you successfully brought up with compositing?
looking through them it looks mostly like gnome2, though i see some mentions of (a composite-less?) gnome-fall-session and compiz as well?
The one OS image here has options that work to login under these different window managers (click on the round logo to the right of the password box) xubuntu, lubuntu, ubuntu gnome classic and openbox:
http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/eoma_boot.html#working_lcd
awesome, that's really helpful joe.
l.
On Friday, December 6, 2013 09:09:06 joem wrote:
The one OS image here has options that work to login under these different window managers (click on the round logo to the right of the password box) xubuntu, lubuntu, ubuntu gnome classic and openbox:
so xfce, lxde, gnome2 and openbox. cool.
The normal Ubuntu unity desktop is also an option, but gives a blank desktop because composting is not working.
Hm. We have compositing working:
https://plus.google.com/+Makeplaylivepage/posts/KBjnZRzKxxE https://plus.google.com/113935986078304377737/posts/JDuRvYXumwu
Note that it *does* require that the compositor (usually in the WM) supports openGL ES (as opposed to the straight openGL API found on desktop level GPUs). However, I was under the impression that this was the case for both Unity and GNOME Shell.
You also have to do the fun dance of running the openGL test app below once to get openGL ES actually running. we’ll be investigating what it is doing to make that happen, but i already have my hunches.
https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-mali/blob/master/test/test.c
I sorely wish to have compiz and desktop cube working
you mean like this?
http://notmart.org/Photos/improv/P1020019.MOV
that’s kwin with the desktop cube. Marco is switching between desktops and as he does so you can see the cube rotate. as with the compiz cube, you can also go into “cube mode” and move it around with the mouse, etc. but this video shows it is working and that the performance is even not so bad.
(the video is 43MB download, raw from the video camera, but good enough to demonstrate how well it works)
, but util Allwinner release all the information for the graphics controllers libv and others have to do everything by guesswork.
indeed; but we can and have made progress.
the ubuntu gnome classic will be replaced with something that sounds similar (I forget the exact name), but it is not the same as gnome classic. It also gives blank desktop (though the other window managers remain usable).
sounds like either gnome-desktop-fallback or GNOME Legacy, both of which are GNOME Shell with a gnome-2-ish configuration. as such they require compositing and as such they will also fail without 3D.
I sorely wish to have compiz and desktop cube
working
you mean like this?
http://notmart.org/Photos/improv/P1020019.MOV
that’s kwin with the desktop cube. Marco is switching between desktops and as he does so you can see the cube rotate. as with the compiz cube, you can also go into “cube mode” and move it around with the mouse, etc. but this video shows it is working and that the performance is even not so bad.
Wow!!! YES!!
Absolutely where I want to get to. Any documentation/images to try out?
My normal desktop is 16 sided translucent cube set at 25% translucency so I can work on dozen or more stuff at the same time and keep spinning that cube to speed up switching between work. No one can beat me on productivity when I am in full flight with that tool :)
I doubt allwinner has enough memory for that number of desktops, but to have 4 sided translucent cube is more than enough to be getting on with.
(I got cubietrucks with 2GB RAM - may be try increasing desktops on that and generate some documentation for future 2GB machines.)
On Friday, December 6, 2013 15:54:55 joem wrote:
that’s kwin with the desktop cube. Marco is switching between desktops and as he does so you can see the cube rotate. as with the compiz cube, you can also go into “cube mode” and move it around with the mouse, etc. but this video shows it is working and that the performance is even not so bad.
Wow!!! YES!!
Absolutely where I want to get to. Any documentation/images to try out?
Marco has images, he’s sorting out some remaining things[1] but then will make the images available online.
he’ll also be putting together some documentation for how to go from the images that the Mer SDK spits out to an image you can flash, since there’s the need to adjust the final image a bit for the partitioning fun required to boot these SoCs.
in any case, he’ll post here as soon as the images etc are available for download.
[1] he just got openGL magically working w/out running the mali-test app; not sure what triggered that exactly as it started working after enabling the nand drivers in his kernel build, and now things are lovely even without the nand drivers .. soooo ... still a bit of a mystery, but at least “it works”(tm)
arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk
-
Aaron J. Seigo -
Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross -
joem -
luke.leighton -
Siarhei Siamashka