Pandaboard ES Newbie...First Steps

[Buqpa]

Dear all,
First of all let me thank you for your attetion.
I have just bought a Pandaboard and I would like to ask you for some advice.
My aim is used the pandaboard as a very simple multimedia player and then add some more performance like synchronization, action response... But first things first!
I have to deal with a Linux distro, but i have my doubts: I will program under Ubuntu on my PC, but since I want the pandaboard to by playing the file as fast as possible, I would like to have the fastest set up. Then I guess Minimal-FS is the option, but i do not know if all the libraries needed for video playing (GL, 3D and that stuff) are available for that distro.
Also, I would not like to start from the scratch and use some opened code.
Then, my questions are two:
1-. Which is the best distro for a cleanfast start up, but with all the needed libraries available?
2-. Is there any simple multimedia player opened code available? (Just something that play h.264)
Thanks a lot for your support,
Diego

[adityagandhi]

Hi,
I believe you have come to the right place for a minimalistic but powerful distro, arch linux gives you only what you need, so its super optimized!
Community packages can be downloaded in the form of source and be auto compiled on the panda board, so its nice and easy!

But butt but, Its not booting on pandaboard es as yet, I plan to compile from panda board branch of the arch linux and patch the boot loader and kernel. It might take some time as I am also a newbie to Arch linux cross compile, but none the less determined.

Till then I would suggest linaro ubuntu builds, they are more optimized for panda board in general.
The links are here,

http://www.linaro.org/downloads/

Good luck,

PS: Hope to post a full tutorial on arch linux booting on Pandaboard Es soon.

[Buqpa]

Thanks a lot for the info Adityagandhi!
I will keep intouch for more
Best,
Diego

[JewFro297]

Hey, anyone get arch working on pandaboard ES yet?

[jaxad0127]

I have. I used the official validation image, resized rootfs, put the rootfs image for the original PandaBoard on it, and booted.

[fpolpeta]

Hi;

Since you made archlinux running on PandaboarES, any feedback about deploying OpenGL ES 2.0 apps? Did you already got the GPU working on its best?

Thanks in advance

[jaxad0127]

I've been having problems getting any kernel modules to load. lsmod always returns an empty list, even after explicitly using modprobe.

[WarheadsSE]

Compare uname to the contents of /lib/modules to be sure you're not in need of a reboot.

[jaxad0127]

They are quite different. uname returns "Linux". /lib/modules has 3.2.7-1-ARCH, extramodules-3.2--omap, and 3.0.4+ as a symlink to the first.

EDIT: as for rebooting, I rebooted before posting all of that.

[WarheadsSE]

My apologies, uname -a