The Ångström Distribution

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

http://gitorious.org/angstrom/angstrom-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://amethyst.openembedded.net/~koen/narcissus

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.

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.

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.

Firefox 3.0.1 in Ångstrøm, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

The firefox 3.0.1 browser now works in angstrom, but it's much, much slower and memory hungry than epiphany-webkit.

For people wanting to try Ångström on their beagleboard, you can now download a
demo! It includes e17 as window manager, the abiword word processor, the gnumeric spreadsheet application, a NEON accelerated mplayer and the popular NEON accelerated omapfbplay which gives you fullscreen 720p decoding.

The http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard directory should contain all the files you need:

• uImage
• MLO
• u-boot.bin
• rootfs

See the beagle wiki on how to setup your SD card to use all this goodness.

Lugradio live 2008, originally uploaded by koenkooi.

At Lugradio live 2008 the TI booth had a demo running Ångström on the beagleboard with DSP and 3D acceleration.

Also check the linux outlaws podcast for more info on the beagleboard.

The following articles don't mention the Ångström Distribution specifically, but they are using it on their Gumstix boards:

Mini-subs exploring Sacramento River

The researchers are working with propelled 4-foot-long submarines and floating drifters equipped with GPS-receivers for positioning, GSM-modules for communication, and sensors inside for recording temperature, salinity, and currents.

Linux robot plays frenetic clarinet

Australian research group NICTA and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed a clarinet-playing robot that runs Linux. The "Robo-Clarinet" won first prize at the Artemis Music Orchestra competition with a torrid rendition of "The Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Bolero.

Angstrom, originally uploaded by jadonk.

The Texas Instruments booth at LinuxTag 2008 had a Beagleboard prototype running Angstrom! The picture above shows Abiword, Gnumeric and Xmms running inside the E17 windowmanager. It's a very desktop like look&feel from a 8 by 8 centimeter board :)

Just so there is no confusion for people switching from from OpenZaurus there are currently only three Zaurus machines that have active support within Ångström.

These machines are supported: c7x0, spitz (C3X00), poodle (5600).

These machines are not supported: tosa (6000), collie (5500), akita (1000).

We will continue to produce images for the unsupported machines but fixes to them are likely to be slow in being worked on without active developer working on them.

The c7x- family install instructions have been updated.