[LetuxOS] LetuxOS: new updates

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Dear all,

one week later there are additional announcements for LetuxOS:

a) kernel 5.14-rc1 is on its way

I have already compiled it but it is pushed to the servers
together with the updates of the stable kernels (5.4.y, 5.12.y etc.).

There had been some minor compile fixes and I hope that I did
resolve them properly. As usual, -rc1 version need more careful
testing.

b) LetuxOS for x86

I got a small Z8350 based mini PC and after some tests I was
able to get GRUB load the Letux kernel compiled for x86 but then
the setup fails. Most likely I have no USB drivers in the kernel
so that it can not find any rootfs...

But supporting x86 machines would be the first distro that runs
everywhere: from Desktop over Smartphone to Embedded.

Preliminary support by the "makesd" script is already available.

c) cross compilers

As already indicated last week, LetuxOS is usually cross-compiled
because that is faster than doing it natively. Typically by factor
5-10. But this needs a battery of cross-compilers with the same setup.
And in addition to the gcc itself we usually need linux headers and
library headers - and .so files to link against.

So bulding multiple toolchains for different architectures is
not easy. And now I have extended it for another dimension of
choice: to which major release of Debian the toolchain should
be compatible. E.g. which glibc or libjpeg version is supported.

This has got a lot of progress and I now have toolchains for
armel, armhf and arm64 for Jessie, Stretch, Buster and Bullseye.
mipsel and x86 so far only work for Jessie. RiscV and amd64
only have binutils so far. Fixing problems is usually not very
difficult - but very time consuming since I may have to rebuild
the full gcc.

In the long run this should allow to test kernel builds with
newer gcc version (sometimes there is even better optimization)
but also support QuantumSTEP on newer Debian releases and even
for new hardware like X86 machines.

Thats it for today. Let's see what happens until next week :)

d) 3G turned off in Germany

Some countries have done it before, but German operators have
now also turned down 3G support in its major networks. This
means the WWAN modem of the GTA04 has to fall back to 2G i.e.
GPRS or EDGE which limits speed to 384 kbit/s. No longer
a "high speed" modem...

That is the fate of pets growing older :)

But it still works...

BR,
Nikolaus