Category: Ubuntu

Linaro on ST-Ericsson U8500 Snowball development board

Posted by Charbax – February 28, 2012

Linaro is optimizing Linux software for the Snowball, includes full Android ICS and Ubuntu Linux.

Status of Ubuntu for ARM Laptops and Servers

Posted by Charbax – January 24, 2012

David Mandala, Manager of the ARM Team at Canonical talks about the status of Ubuntu Linux on ARM Laptops and Servers, and about their plans for Ubuntu on ARM until 2014 and beyond. Who wouldn’t want to buy an awesome $199 ARM Powered Ultrabook, 13.3″ screen, ARM Cortex-A9 1.5Ghz TI OMAP4460 or 1.8Ghz TI OMAP4470, thinner, lighter than Intel Ultrabooks, 2x longer battery life on a smaller thinner battery (10x with the sunlight readable Pixel Qi), 1GB or 2GB RAM for full speed Chrome and Firefox web browser speeds?

Talking about the status of Ubuntu on TI OMAP3 (beagleboard), OMAP4 (pandaboard), Marvell, Freescale, Calxeda, plans for Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 optimizations by Ubuntu 12.10, ARM Cortex-A15, ARM Cortex-A7, ARMv8 64bit, the imminent inclusion of full hard-float optimization in Ubuntu 12.4 on ARM:

With Ubuntu 12.04 on ARM there is also hard-float support (ARMhf), as previously talked about on Phoronix, and this will mean a huge performance boost for many workloads. Mandala said the performance boost they are seeing is between 5% and 30% improvement for floating-point operations. Also benefiting greatly for end-users is improved font-rendering, web-page scrolling, and other operations from this ARM hardfp support. Other code is also benefiting due to better use of the stack calling convention.

Source: phoronix.com

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Status of the Raspberry Pi at CES 2012

Posted by Charbax – January 17, 2012

Raspberry Pi expects to have volume devices on the market by the end of the month. That means $25 and $35 (with ethernet) Broadcom ARM11 ARM Powered Desktops are thus just about to be broadly available.

Always Innovating OMAP4 HDMI Dongle

Posted by Charbax – January 12, 2012

Always Innovating fits the Texas Instruments OMAP4 motherboard with all the needed features for a Desktop, Set-top-box and 3D home console into a USB stick sized device that connects to the HDMI port of your HDTV and gets power from USB. It has Bluetooth for Bluetooth keyboards and game controllers. Its USB can do USB host.

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FXI Technologies Cotton Candy, Samsung Exynos 4210 dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 with a Mali-400

Posted by Charbax – January 11, 2012

Here’s a super compact USB Stick sized ARM desktop computer, can be used as Set-top-box also, here demonstrating some advanced 3D gaming on a HDTV. Your next USB stick (HDMI stick) can actually be a computer, set-top-box, home console, all-in-one.

Variscite’s OMAP4460 SoM now supporting Ubuntu Oneiric

Posted by tdomf_6f838 – December 17, 2011

Variscite just released Ubunto 11.10 Oneiric support for the VAR-SOM-OM44 System on Module. The SoM is based on TI’s OMAP4460, 1.5GHz Dual-core Cortex-A9.

FXI Cotton Candy, Exynos 4210 computer in a USB stick

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2011

Norwegian FXI Technologies is showing their new Exynos 4210 ARM Cortex-A9 based computer in a 21 gram USB stick form factor. It has HDMI output, it powers from USB, has a built-in MicroSD card slot, WiFi and Bluetooth. It’s to be released next year.

Video by: booredatwork.com

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List of my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging:

Posted by Charbax – November 14, 2011

Andy Frame is interviewing me on ARM’s official YouTube Channel about my ARM Powered devices used for video-blogging and live video streaming from consumer electronics trade-shows.

List of devices featured in this video:

- Headmounted Display: Kopin Golden-i, OMAP3530 based, provides SVGA screen at eye-level for real-time monitoring of an IRC chat for asking better questions
- Headmounted Logitech c910 Webcam connected to the ARM Powered One Laptop Per Child XO-1.75, Marvell Armada 618 based, live-streaming the webcam video feed to http://ustream.tv (an optimal Headmounted computer, maybe Motorola’s next version, can include the webcam and Android based software to live-stream the video to any live video streaming service built-in)
- Archos 101 G9, OMAP4430/OMAP4460 1Ghz to 1.5Ghz tablet, similar specs as in the Galaxy Nexus but in a 10.1″ tablet form factor. Starts $269 unlocked no contract for 8″. This is probably my favorite high-end tablet at the moment. I’ll post my full video-review of the Archos 101 G9 in the next few days.
- Archos 70 Internet Tablet, OMAP3630 1Ghz single core, released about 13 months ago. I use this tablet every day as 7″ tablets fit in any jacket pocket. Thus I mostly use this for checking emails, web browsing, watching video, playing games, using apps when I am outside. I am looking forward to upgrade this to a dual-core 7″ tablet.
- My $87 FG8 Android Smartphone, it’s my main smartphone for the past 7 months since I found it in Shenzhen China. It supports Dual-SIM cards (so I can use my home and foreign SIM numbers at the same time, or use voice SIM and data SIM at the same time), has a decent 3.5″ capacitive touch screen, uses the wildly popular in China Mediatek MTK6516 ARM9 processor. I’m looking forward upgrading this to a Galaxy Nexus (because I am eager to try Ice Cream Sandwich) or to a newer faster 3G-capable sub-$100 Android phone.
- ZTE MF61 T-Mobile USA 4G HSPA+ Hotspot, $50 for 3GB/month pre-paid, $141 for the device, no contract.

Update on the ST Ericsson SNOWBALL ARM Cortex-A9 development board

Posted by Charbax – October 30, 2011

The SKY-S9500-ULP-CXX aka SNOWBALL has been available as a development board for the ST Ericsson ARM Cortex-A9 processor for about 4 months now. Here’s an update on how they are doing. Find more at http://igloocommunity.org

Ubuntu at ARM TechCon 2011

Posted by Charbax – October 27, 2011

They are showing Ubuntu 11.10 running on the Toshiba AC100, and Ubuntu 11.10 Server Edition running on the OMAP4 Pandaboard.