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Further adventures in mobile Linux
I picked up a couple of cheap Linux devices at the weekend. First of all, a $99 Android tablet from CVS, made by Craig. It's a generic RK2818 device and of course it's lacking any kind of GPL offer in the documentation. As far as I know the only company that's released any Rockchip source so far has been Archos, and even then they haven't released the tools you need to actually build an image - they seem to be floating around the internet anyway. But it's straightforward to get it to run the Android market, and it runs Shortyz quite well, so fit for purpose from my point of view. I am, obviously, attempting to contact Craig to find out how they're going to satisfy their obligations but haven't got past their bizarre text-to-speech based support menu system that dumps you to answerphone after 5 minutes of being on hold. Next attempt will involve pressing more buttons.
The other one was a Sharper Image Literati e-reader, $49 from Macy's (on clearance, obviously). This one's interesting by virtue of not being an Android device. Instead it's got a fairly recognisable Busybox-based Linux environment that's even got udev and dbus running. It brings up a framebuffer and just dumps a QTE-based reader (from Kobo) onto it. Other than being woefully underpowered and slow, it actually seems very competent. There seem to be several versions of the hardware - the one I got has an ARM SoC from SiRF on it. SiRF make GPS chipsets, and it turns out that their Atlas 5 platform is actually intended for Linux-based GPS units. The embedded world always seems to find a way. What surprised me more is that it's probably the most polished looking Linux I've bought for under $300. No bizarre kernel spew. echo mem >/sys/power/state works. Standard backlight interface.
Oh, and no source. Obviously. But an interesting device regardless.
The other one was a Sharper Image Literati e-reader, $49 from Macy's (on clearance, obviously). This one's interesting by virtue of not being an Android device. Instead it's got a fairly recognisable Busybox-based Linux environment that's even got udev and dbus running. It brings up a framebuffer and just dumps a QTE-based reader (from Kobo) onto it. Other than being woefully underpowered and slow, it actually seems very competent. There seem to be several versions of the hardware - the one I got has an ARM SoC from SiRF on it. SiRF make GPS chipsets, and it turns out that their Atlas 5 platform is actually intended for Linux-based GPS units. The embedded world always seems to find a way. What surprised me more is that it's probably the most polished looking Linux I've bought for under $300. No bizarre kernel spew. echo mem >/sys/power/state works. Standard backlight interface.
Oh, and no source. Obviously. But an interesting device regardless.
Kobo
Since it sounds like the lower level parts of the platform are not based on a Netronix part (EB600 like the original Kobo, or otherwise) only some of it will apply, but it might still be interesting.
FWIW, Kobo publish full sources at https://github.com/kobolabs , and have been seriously impressive about their GPL responsibilities. Most unlike almost any other company I've ever dealt with. After talking with them, I even got them to push full build scripts (!!), their QTE configuration, etc, so it's possible to build almost the full environment from scratch with the published sources. About the only things they leave out are the Epson display init sections (easily dumped from the firmware of an existing Kobo) and the sources to the closed source Kobo "nickel" application that runs on the platform.
Pretty much the opposite of HTC, Motorola, and that bunch, really.
(BTW: commenting on this weblog using OpenID involves a truly bizarre number of hoops to jump through. It would've been simpler to create a DreamWidth account than use OpenID, I suspect.)
Re: Kobo
I think I've fixed the openid issue.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12605067
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The general rule of repurposed devices being more hacker-friendly seems to hold. Also the cheaper something is, the less it will try to differentiate by adding antifeatures.
(Could you friend me on DW please?)
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(Anonymous) 2011-03-29 02:31 am (UTC)(link)They obviously have no concerns about the availability of GPL source code whatsoever.