Awesomely cool project, but I was somewhat dismayed by the choice of GNOME, as GNOME is quite bloated and a smaller window manager, instead of a DE, seems to make more sense while not detracting from usability.
I don't think there's any graphical usability whatsoever, as the only output is a serial line. He only mentioned X and GNOME to emphasize the fact that it can be started.
Linux on an 8-bit micro
51–60 of 80 posts
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#52Next Challenge get this working on my Z80
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#53This guy is definitely a genius... or insane. It boots the full graphical desktop in around 6 hours.
He's more on the side of genius, but less on the side of practical. I think he'd do really well if he tried a startup with someone who could help push him in the direction of building things with more practical use.
If this guy's not already hooked up with people like Dorkbot or Survival Research Labs or Burningman, then someone should introduce them...
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's more on the side of genius, but less on the side of practical. I think he'd do really well if he tried a startup with someone who could help push him in the direction of building things with more practical use.
I've done plenty of practical things a while back (palmpowerups in PalmOS days) but nowadays I am relaxing (I work at Google and I fly planes for fun). I'll go back to doing practical things with a purpose in a year or two :)
By any measure, Palm Powerups was very successful.
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#55All that's left is that pesky 32-bit CPU & MMU requirement. Well the AVR has no MMU and is 8-bit. To conquer this obstacle, I wrote an ARM emulator. So technically it's Linux running on a 32-bit "macro", just one which happens to be implemented in some seriously inefficient manner. There are some real ports of Linux for "limited" architectures, like uClinux (supporting few 32-bit micros, including some MMU-less ones)…
But is it actually Linux, or something that was based on Linux but is now so divergent as to be its own kind of thing?
"Oh, it's Linux. It doesn't have most of the APIs, including the ones 99+% of the application software depends on, most of the code is gone, what's left has been greatly re-written, and it will never contribute code back into the mainline kernel."
It's the Ship of Theseus: "This is the original ship. Every plank has been replaced at least once, the sails are all new, and all of the rope was replaced last month."
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think there's any graphical usability whatsoever, as the only output is a serial line. He only mentioned X and GNOME to emphasize the fact that it can be started.
Emulator supports framebuffer emulation, and I have run gnome on this. I have not tried KDE :)
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#57Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started writing one in Dart a couple of days ago, but I know others already exist, including ones that port existing emulators (such as QEMU) using Emscripten.
Will you open source it? :) Found you on Github, it's not there.
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#59All that's left is that pesky 32-bit CPU & MMU requirement. Well the AVR has no MMU and is 8-bit. To conquer this obstacle, I wrote an ARM emulator. So technically it's Linux running on a 32-bit "macro", just one which happens to be implemented in some seriously inefficient manner. There are some real ports of Linux for "limited" architectures, like uClinux (supporting few 32-bit micros, including some MMU-less ones)…
Microcontrollers currently supported by uClinux cost >$5. One interesting option to reduce the cost is to use a new microcontroller , the psoc 4(starting $1, 32 bit) which includes programmable logic, which might enable implementing the dram interface in hardware and to achieve good memory performance.
Re: Linux on an 8-bit micro
#60Then I realized the interesting thing isn't to run Linux, but some other more lightweight code that depends on the 32 bit arm architecture, but would run just fine on an 8-but micro, performance-wise.
Any idea what that use case might be?