[Prometheus]

That's fantastic, thanks viridior - I don't have many cards that are less than 2GB, so I guess I'm all set.

[viridior]

That's fantastic, thanks viridior - I don't have many cards that are less than 2GB, so I guess I'm all set.

You are very welcome, and I hope more and more people will become excited about his. Of note also is that when I say < 1GB that is our goal with whatever default software we are going to include. You can easily add your own software after the fact. Or, if you are really trying to get size down, we have documentation on how to make your own varient from the ground up to fit your exact needs.

[viridior]

For those of you that are tracking this project...

We have restructured from the Gentoo Pandora Project and included a few more developers. Our new name is Neuvoo and our goal is to provide a Gentoo solution to embedded platforms. Our focus is the ARMv7a core, but the software can be easily moved to other cores. My focus is the Touch Book and OpenPandora, so you will see a lot of merger between the two communities on our OS.

What does this mean?
Well, simply put, we will be using the power of Gentoo to build and tweak our custom OS images. We are Gentoo users and we are an extension of the Gentoo embedded community from which we our coordinating our efforts in order to be able to build a complete desktop environment for embedded devices.

What do you provide?
Our immediate goal is to routinely provide two Gentoo-based images that can be immediately used on embedded devices. No reading of the extensive Gentoo Handbook is necessary. Tools will be installed and configured as you would expect from a corporate OS. The first image will be a "minimal" build that advanced Gentoo users can start with and then configure to build a completely custom OS from the ground up to fit their needs. No fat, bloat, or excess. The second image will be a "desktop" image and it's purpose is what most users would consider a multipurpose modern desktop.

What makes you different?
Gentoo gives us the flexibility and resources to make a highly efficient and customized build that can be tailored specifically for our needs. There is a large library of software to pick from. "I heard that you need to compile everything for Gentoo!" The default method is to compile, however we are providing a binary repository, similar to Debian/Ubuntu/Angstrom/etc. We have developed a cross-compiling tutorial if you wish to use it. Not all packages will cross-compile, so we will also compile packages for you if necessary. "Why not just use Debian/Ubuntu/Angstrom/etc and its software?" We can. Gentoo has support for debs/rpms/ipkgs and its own ebuild system. Another thing that we hope to offer is a large collection of community packages, software, and customizations from across the many devices out there. Such as: Beageboard's hardware support, OpenPandora's extensive game emulation projects, and Touch Book's netbook software library.

Not really convinced yet, but where can I learn more?
The Neuvoo devs are already in your community. You can find us in the forums and in IRC channels. We also have our own, please visit us in IRC @ FreeNode#neuvoo and you can visit our website at http://neuvoo.org We will provide instructions for setting up a dual-boot system, if you want the option of keeping your default system. Hope to see you.

Cheers!

[Wheels]

Looks like the project has grown a bit. :)
So does the "minimal" Gentoo build mean the user gets a very basic command-line Gentoo pre-compiled for the platform (one for Pandora, one for Touchbook, etc.), and the user compiles their own window managers and so on?

[viridior]

Wheels, on 06 September 2009 - 04:14 PM, said:

Looks like the project has grown a bit. :)
So does the "minimal" Gentoo build mean the user gets a very basic command-line Gentoo pre-compiled for the platform (one for Pandora, one for Touchbook, etc.), and the user compiles their own window managers and so on?

You have pretty much described it. The minimal build is to get you from boot to a command prompt with the necessary tools for you to start adding the software you want immediately. So basically a few portage tools, networking support, and some hardware support to get you started. After you login, you should be able to start 'emerge ...' and packages should start flying in ;) While our binary repo may have an extensive list of packages installed, it may not include all packages that can possibly be installed (and the options enabled for each) so we will also be providing a binary repo format for people to use so others can share their custom repos. We have all of the tools that we use to set up cross-compiling, etc on our wiki and I will be more then happy to show you the ropes (its fairly easy).

The advantage to a minimal install is that you will have complete control over how you build your OS and therefore you can decide on what software packages, window manager, etc that you want. I will warn you though, it can be complicated for certain packages to cross-compile right (which is what we are spending our time fixing) so we also have a Gentoo overlay with all of the cross-compiling ARM patches to fix whatever problems we have ran into.

Please join us in IRC and I can give you a much more detailed overview of what we have experienced in our project.

[Wheels]

Well, I thought at first that you compiled the packages ON the Pandora, but I guess that would take forever and a half so the actual compiling gets done on a desktop and then put on an SD card for the device?

This post has been edited by Wheels: 07 September 2009 - 08:49 PM

[viridior]

Wheels: Cross compiling so far is working fairly well for us. For the Gentoo portage tree I would guess around 90% of the programs that I attempt to cross-compile actually work start-to-finish. The other 10% is where we spend most of our time working on. Some of that is just poor coding or missing ARM compatible code. Sometimes is just a Gentoo issue and the package doesn't know how to work with a cross-compiler. Most of the time you could then compile those natively to resolve the issues, but we are still working on patching so theoretically we could cross-compile a complete system end-to-end. One of our eventual goals is to have a web interface where you could specify exactly what your requirements are for your embedded OS and our system would cross-compile all of it for you and give you the tarball.

Hope this answers your question.