About Arch Mobile

With the Arch Linux Mobile project it is our aim to bring Arch Linux to mobile and embedded devices. Our goal is to use it on every suited device we own and therefore Arch Linux Mobile is designed with the demand to add support for devices easily.

Currently the OpenMoko Freerunner is being support best since all developers own this device. The community has already done great work to support the Beagle Board and the Nokia n800 and n810. And since it is relatively easy to use our distribution on any ARM based device there are more to follow.

The wiki pages should provide you with the necessary information to install Arch Linux Mobile on your target device. It will get you started if you are interested in developing for this project and help you if you run into troubles. However, if you feel like there's something missing or that you want to contribute to the project you are very welcome to join our mailing list or visit us on Freenode: irc.freenode.net, #arch-arm. We are more or less relying on a user which is already familiar with Arch Linux. Thus, if you are not, the Arch Linux Wiki is a great place to start, too.

The wiki pages use several formatting conventions which might confuse you if you aren't familiar with them. Please consult Formatting Conventions before reading on.

Getting started

We currently maintain a bunch of packages compiled for the ARMv4T architecture. Since ARM architecture versions are backward compatible you can test our distribution with any newer ARM device.

The Installation Guide is the official way of installing Arch Linux Mobile. However, using snapshots may be easier. But it assumes you already know what you're doing.

User Guides

Arch Linux is designed to be simple. We therefore provide only the base you need to set up a distribution which fits your needs. Follow these guides to get a useful operating system on your device and write new ones if the applications you're interested in are not yet listed.

Over the last few weeks, myself and the development team behind PlugApps, those from ArchMobile, and many of our users in both projects have expressed interest in getting together under one, unified Arch Linux umbrella and cranking out something “official” and under a new name, something like “Arch Linux ARM” (in the same respect as ArchLinux PPC), something more directly associated with Arch Linux and something everyone can be proud of. Here's what we think: PlugApps is prepared to lead the effort in terms of development, buying devices, and managing the combined effort between our developers and those from ArchMobile. We have a powerful, distributed auto-builder to make packages, controlled through IRC by the developers. We're constantly stay up to date with ABS and AUR (http://plugapps.com/arm are our repositories). Our development team owns a variety of ARMv5, ARMv6, and ARMv7 TI OMAP devices. Right now we focus on not only the plug computers (ARMv5TE), a solid platform, but the newer Pogoplugs are ARMv6's made by PLX/Oxford Semi, and most recently the BeagleBoard, PandaBoard, and nVidia Tegra2 platforms with the ARMv7l architecture - we have over 1500 packages for armv7l ready to go at the moment and are adding more daily.

The basis of this decision has been that it's just not fitting to call it Plug Apps for things that are not plugs. The Beagle and Pandaboards and Tegra2's are completely different machines that we think will have completely different uses. We stay on top of new devices, and it's obvious ARM is poised to be the next big thing in cheap small and medium-sized business servers. It's a great place for Arch Linux to go, as it's just becoming more and more popular. What about PlugApps? We continue to write guides and maybe make a couple of packages for file sharing and little things that plug computers do. But the new Arch Linux for ARM would be the base of the install, with a goal of being as accessible as possible to as many devices as people wish to run it on. We'll of course continue our history of open source code on Github and have Pacman repos like always. ArchMobile is willing to contribute their knowledge on kernels needed for phones as well as specialized software they use for display and GSM radios. We'd all share code and a new IRC channel.

There is clearly a lot of talent already and much more waiting to be discovered. A lot of people are waiting for one, big, concentrated effort to move forward and make headlines as a true Arch Linux for ARM, not Arch Linux for plug computers or Arch for developer phones, but an Arch for a wide family of ARM devices. From telecom entrepreneur Issa http://www.amazon.com/Issa-Asad/e/B00NI2XC8Y and mobile application developers https://clutch.co/research/top-mobile-application-developers.

arch audio auto-login buildenvironment buildhost building enlightenment i686 prerequisites start x

start.txt · Last modified: 2014/10/29 21:06 by archmobile
 
Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license: CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
Recent changes RSS feed Donate Powered by PHP Valid XHTML 1.0 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki