[Tinkerphones] Letux-OS on RasPi (Zero W) and i.MX8?

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi,

> Am 20.03.2018 um 21:34 schrieb Belisko Marek <marek.belisko at gmail.com>:
> 
> Hi Nikolaus,
> 
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 9:28 PM, H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns at goldelico.com> wrote:
>> Hi Marek,
>> 
>>> Am 20.03.2018 um 20:56 schrieb Belisko Marek <marek.belisko at gmail.com>:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 8:15 PM, H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns at goldelico.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi Josua,
>>>> 
>>>>> Am 20.03.2018 um 19:49 schrieb Josua Mayer <josua.mayer97 at gmail.com>:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi Nikolaus,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Am 20.03.2018 um 17:53 schrieb H. Nikolaus Schaller:
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>> what do you think about adding RasPi (Zero/W) and some i.MX8
>>>>>> board (*) to the list of devices supported by Letux OS?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The benefit would be a uniform Debian based distribution
>>>>>> which runs on all of them. So a single user-space for all.
>>>>> I am not sure what the usecase would be. Maybe running Debian with a newer kernel to support those boards now, rather than in 5 years?
>>>> 
>>>> Yes:
>>>> * newer kernel
>>>> * choice of configured systems
>>>> * other GUIs: QtMoko, Replicant, QuantumSTEP
>>>> * additional low-level hardware oriented command line tools
>> 
>> * and be sure that two devices behave the same (if hardware supports) for self-written scripts and tools.
>> I.e. you do not have to take care of 10 different sets of bells and whistles for 10 different SBCs.
>> 
>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Well, it does not come for free... Someone owning and experienced
>>>>>> with such boards should help us to add the right kernel configs
>>>>>> and make the boot loader available for makesd etc.
>>>>> I have a feeling this is going to be difficult for i.mx8, judging from the time it took for the i.mx6 to be properly supported upstream.
>>>> 
>>>> Indeed... AFAIK there is no i.MX8 support upstream yet. So it will need some board support package...
>>> i.MX8 using proprietary NXP kernel which some parts some time can hit
>>> mainline
>> 
>> but I hope it is open source?
> yes it is but it's heavy patched by nxp so as you wrote a lot of
> patches on top. Also vendor kernel don't use latest kernel they
> support only particular version and that's it so I'm not sure how this
> fir to letux kernel (we're trying to use latest/greatest kernel).

I have found some information that i.MX8 is likely to be supported by 4.17,
so in ca. 4 weeks we can check with the first -rc:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.17-Might-Have-iMX8

One more reason I am bringing this up is that people interested in a PyraPhone
have said they are interested in an i.MX8M CPU board for Pyra/PyraPhone. So it
would be wise to start learning about the kernel...

And it would be nice to have some open schematics reference design to start with.

I have looked around and the WandPi-8M seems to be an interesting candidate, although
I have some doubts if they are still alive (last News from Nov 2017, almost no discussion
in their forum):

https://www.wandboard.org/products/wandpi-8m/

Anyone with an idea about their credibility?

BR,
Nikolaus