And Now for Something Completely Different...

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And Now for Something Completely Different...

Postby tokafondo » Wed Apr 13, 2016 7:05 pm

Hi all. I'm Tokafondo.

I'm here because I'd like to get info to create a 'port' of Archlinux ARM for the HTC Chacha.

This is a keyboard phone that currently runs Android and I think it could be a good candidate to have Arch ported for it.

This phone remembers me of the Nokia N900 and its Maemo platform: a *real* linux in that phone.

The specs of HTC Chacha can be seen here:

http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=2 ... _chachacha

CPU: Qualcomm MSM7227T
RAM: 512MB
ROM: 512MB

Do you think this project is feasible? Also... could Archlinux run on the stock kernel?

Thanks all.
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Re: And Now for Something Completely Different...

Postby WarheadsSE » Wed Apr 13, 2016 8:03 pm

You want to shove Arch into 512MB compressed ROM ?
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Re: And Now for Something Completely Different...

Postby tokafondo » Thu Apr 14, 2016 8:51 am

In low memory devices even in Android it's a standard to have a external sdcard with ext4 partition to have installed there all things that doesn't fit in main memory.

Maybe /boot and some other partitions could be fitted in internal memory and the rest to sdcard.

So I wonder: is arch arm a direct port of arm x86_64, intended for desktops or can it be tuned for mtd/flash devices?
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Re: And Now for Something Completely Different...

Postby moonman » Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:15 am

What do you mean ”direct port of arm x86_64"? arm is arm, x86 is x86. We compile packages for arm architecture.
No android device to my knowledge has raw flash (mtd).

Minimum kernel version to run alarm is 3.7 due to systemd requirements. It may be possible to boot with lower kernel versions but some important things will not work.
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Re: And Now for Something Completely Different...

Postby tokafondo » Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:09 pm

Arch is arch, ok. You get the source code and compile it for different platforms.

We have x86, x86_64, arm and so.

Do the same source code compiles for any platform? Or do the source code has to be tuned so it can run on any of them, apart from compilation itself?
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Re: And Now for Something Completely Different...

Postby WarheadsSE » Thu Apr 14, 2016 4:55 pm

Actually, separate distributions.

Arch Linux supports i686 and x86_64, we, Arch Linux ARM ARMv5, ARMv6, ARMv7, ARMv8 (aarch64). Tweaked and tuned all over the place.

moonman covered the rest of your needs.

Kernel, bootloader, perhaps some oddball vendor drivers & firmware.
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