"Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined."
~ Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab
The Linaro 15.11 release is now available for download!
This is the penultimate release for 2011! The big surprise for this
release is a set of Debian 8.2 (Jessie) rootfses as well as a prebuilt
image for Snapdragon based boards. We have both 'ALIP' and 'developer'
flavours available for armhf and aarch64. Since they are generated the
same way as the ubuntu images, so follow those instructions below if
you want to use them.
Using the Android-based images
=======================
The Android-based images come in three parts: system, userdata and boot.
These need to be combined to form a complete Android install. For an
explanation of how to do this please see:
http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/ImageInstallation
If you are interested in getting the source and building these images
yourself please see the following pages:
http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/GetSourcehttp://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/BuildSource
Using the OpenEmbedded-based images
=======================
With the Linaro provided downloads and with ARM’s Fast Models virtual
platform, you can boot a virtual ARMv8 system and run 64-bit binaries.
For more information please see:
http://www.linaro.org/engineering/armv8
Using the Ubuntu-based images
=======================
The Ubuntu-based images consist of two parts. The first part is a
hardware pack, which can be found under the hwpacks directory and
contains hardware specific packages (such as the kernel and bootloader).
The second part is the rootfs, which is combined with the hardware pack
to create a complete image. For more information on how to create an
image please see:
http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/Ubuntu/ImageInstallation
Getting involved
============
More information on Linaro can be found on our websites:
* Homepage:
http://www.linaro.org
* Wiki:
http://wiki.linaro.org
Also subscribe to the important Linaro mailing lists and join our IRC
channels to stay on top of Linaro developments:
* Announcements:
http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-announce
* Development:
http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
* IRC:
#linaro on irc.linaro.org or irc.freenode.net
#linaro-android irc.linaro.org or irc.freenode.net
Known issues with this release
=====================
For any errata issues, please see:
http://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1511/Release#Known_Issues
Bug reports for this release should be filed in Bugzilla
(http://bugs.linaro.org) against the
individual packages or projects that are affected.
On behalf of the release team,
Koen Kooi
Builds and Baselines | Release Manager
Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs
It took a bit longer than originally planned, but we're finally able
to announce the first Reference Software Platform release (alpha).
The Reference Software Platform Lead Project is part of the Linaro
96Boards initiative. The goal of the project is to deliver Linaro
output for ARM SoCs using 96Boards products for use cases ranging from
the Embedded to the Enterprise segments. This release includes
bootloader, kernel, distributions (Debian) and AOSP. It comprise
loadable software for the current 96Boards products (HiKey and
Dragonboard410c), reference source code, and documentation on
installing the images and building the source code.
In case you are unfamiliar with the project, we had a great session
that was presented during Linaro Connect SFO15, and it can be found at
http://connect.linaro.org/resource/sfo15/sfo15-104-the-96boards-software-re…
Goals we had for this release:
* Bootstrap the CI jobs required to build and publish the components
and images (more details at
https://github.com/96boards/documentation/wiki/Reference-Software-CI)
* Single Debian root file system that could be consumed by both HiKey
and Dragonboard410c
* Recent kernel, even if not yet fully functional, since the goal is
to reduce maintenance and support overhead and accelerate ongoing
development by focusing on upstream feature support
* AOSP based on latest Android Release (6.0 Marshmallow), initially just HiKey
A lot was accomplished during last month, and we're happy to announce
that we're using a 4.3 based kernel for both HiKey and Dragonboard410c
(Debian). The builds are still not sharing the same branch (due
conflicts at the adv7511 driver), but we hope to be able to get this
fixed over the next few weeks (and published as part of our next
release).
While the release supports many of the available hardware features for
both Hikey and Dragonboard410c, it is in ALPHA state, so bugs are
expected. For a better user experience, please use the previous
releases available at
https://builds.96boards.org/releases/dragonboard410c/ and
https://builds.96boards.org/releases/hikey/.
Highlights for this release:
CE Debian RPBs:
- Debian 8.2 "Jessie"
- 4.3 kernel (with additional patches)
- OpenJDK 8 included by default
- 96Boards artworks and default settings
CE AOSP RPB:
- AOSP Android Marshmallow 6.0
- 3.18 based kernel
Install instructions, known issues, test reports and instructions to
build from source are all published at
https://github.com/96boards/documentation/wiki/ReferenceSoftware. We
should also see more progress into a more complete set of
documentation during the course of the next release.
For general questions or support requests, please go to the
96boards.org Community forum - https://www.96boards.org/forums/.
Please submit bugs to the 96Boards.org bugzilla
(https://bugs.96boards.org/). For IRC support, please go to the
#96boards channel @Freeode.
Make sure to check
https://github.com/96boards/documentation/wiki/ReferenceSoftware for
more information about this project and the release.
Challenges for the next release (15.12 - official date to be announced):
- Have both boards using a single kernel tree/branch and a single kernel binary
- Better understanding about the upstream gaps
- Adding support for CE AOSP for Dragonboard410c (with freedreno)
- Adding support for CE OE/Yocto
- Enterprise Edition
We hope you enjoy the release!
On behalf of the Linaro 96Boards team,
Ricardo Salveti
