Gentoo on the OLPC XO-1.75

Currently at the Gentoo Miniconf 2012 in Prague, we have two OLPC XO-1.75 devices and are working to install Gentoo on them.

These XO-1.75 is based on the Marvell Armada 610 SoC (armv7l, non-NEON), which promises countless hours of fun enumerating and obtaining obscure pieces of software which are needed to make the laptop work.

One of these is the xf86-video-dove DDX for the Vivante(?) GPU: The most recent version 0.3.5 seems to be available only as SRPM in the OLPC rpmdropbox. Extracting it reveals a "source" tarball containing this:

.:
total 1364
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users 423968 12. Sep 14:39 aclocal.m4
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users     80 12. Sep 14:39 autom4te.cache
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users    981 12. Sep 14:37 build_no_dpkg_env.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users      0 12. Sep 14:37 ChangeLog
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     37 12. Sep 14:39 config.guess -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/config.guess
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2120 12. Sep 14:40 config.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   1846 12. Sep 14:40 config.h.in
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  43769 12. Sep 14:40 config.log
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users  65749 12. Sep 14:40 config.status
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     35 12. Sep 14:39 config.sub -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/config.sub
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users 440014 12. Sep 14:40 configure
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2419 12. Sep 14:37 configure.ac
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users   1325 12. Sep 14:37 COPYING
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users    262 12. Sep 14:37 debian
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     32 12. Sep 14:39 depcomp -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/depcomp
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users    252 12. Sep 14:37 etc
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users     44 12. Sep 14:37 fedora
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     35 12. Sep 14:39 install-sh -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/install-sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users 293541 12. Sep 14:40 libtool
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     35 12. Sep 14:39 ltmain.sh -> /usr/share/libtool/config/ltmain.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  27005 12. Sep 14:40 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   1167 12. Sep 14:37 Makefile.am
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  25708 12. Sep 14:40 Makefile.in
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users     76 12. Sep 14:40 man
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chithanh users     32 12. Sep 14:39 missing -> /usr/share/automake-1.12/missing
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   4169 12. Sep 14:37 README
drwxr-xr-x 1 chithanh users   1192 12. Sep 21:48 src
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users     23 12. Sep 14:40 stamp-h1

src/:
total 688
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   3555 12. Sep 14:41 compat-api.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    805 12. Sep 14:37 datatypes.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  55994 12. Sep 21:22 dovefb.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  32160 12. Sep 15:11 dovefb_cursor.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    278 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb_cursor.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   6052 12. Sep 14:41 dovefb_driver.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    974 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb_drv.la
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  13856 12. Sep 14:37 dovefb.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    264 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users 128733 12. Sep 15:11 dovefb_xv.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 dovefb_xv.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2548 12. Sep 14:53 list.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  22242 12. Sep 17:08 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2121 12. Sep 14:37 Makefile.am
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2134 12. Sep 14:37 Makefile.am.sw
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  21742 12. Sep 14:40 Makefile.in
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  18584 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_crtc.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    856 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_crtc.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_crtc.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    851 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_cursor.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2509 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_debug.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   2284 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_debug.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    272 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_debug.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  32528 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_edid.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   5794 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_edid.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_edid.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  84262 12. Sep 17:07 mrvl_exa_driver.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    282 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_exa_driver.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  10388 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_exa_fence_pool.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    290 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_exa_fence_pool.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   9189 12. Sep 14:51 mrvl_exa.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   4258 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_exa_profiling.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  46583 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_exa_utils.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   3768 12. Sep 15:06 mrvl_exa_utils.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    280 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_exa_utils.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  20622 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_heap.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   3256 12. Sep 14:53 mrvl_heap.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    270 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_heap.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users   1774 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_offscreen_memory.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    235 12. Sep 14:37 mrvl_offscreen_memory.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    294 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_offscreen_memory.lo
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users  47286 12. Sep 15:11 mrvl_output.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 chithanh users    274 12. Sep 17:09 mrvl_output.lo

More pictures of the Gentoo Miniconf can be found at the Google+ Event page.

Nigeria dumps Linux, or: Mandriva in bed with the wrong people

It's all over the news, Mandriva closes a deal to deliver thousands of laptops to schoolchildren in Nigeria with Mandriva Linux preinstalled. Then suddenly the customer decides to replace Linux with Windows. Mandriva CFO cries "foul" and the usual frenzy ensues.

A sad day for Mandriva? Certainly. A sad day for education in developing countries? Not particularly. For their project, Mandriva chose the Classmate PC, a laptop project which was envisioned by Intel after the latter missed out on the OLPC educational project and had to hack together something cheap. The folks at OLPC however realized from the very beginning that selling stripped-down ordinary computers below cost would bring them nowhere.

Now the whining is all about how hard it was to coordinate everything, how much work went into it, and so on. But they chose an inferior and unsustainable platform. The OLPC's visionary design required a clean software design to complement it, something Microsoft has had a hard time to achieve. Making the Classmate PC run Windows doesn't cost Microsoft a thing, so it's hardly surprising that they opted for piggybacking into Nigerian classrooms.

I hope Mandriva have learned their lesson and stop being bad losers. They have interesting products in the pipeline. Had their laptop been based on the same CPU as their upcoming Loongson Box, they wouldn't be in that position now.