-----Original Message----- From: Bill Merriam [mailto:lists@billmerriam.com] Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011 9:58 PM To: opensuse-arm@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse-arm] timeline? Hans, I too (and others) have wondered about this. The recently approved openSUSE strategy said, I think, that mobile devices are not a goal for openSUSE. You and I know that most mobile devices use ARM processors but there are a few desktop class devices that do also. More ARM desktop and server devices are expected in the near future. Ubuntu has announced that they intend to support ARM servers. They are current testing using Pandaboards. In the mean time I believe the openSUSE project's response to your question is "Thank you for volunteering". That have said a port to ARM is welcome but they can provide only general assistance. The Linaro foundation has links to development hardware. http://www.linaro.org/low-cost-development-boards Compulab is offering discounts on their Trimslice desktops is you can convince them you will use it to port an open source project to ARM. http://trimslice.com/web/dev-kit Marvell has a number of development kits available for purchase. Most of them are ARM5 processors but the not-yet-available D2plug is an ARM7 processor. http://plugcomputer.org/development-kits/ As you know the OBS can build ARM packages. openSUSE uses kiwi to turn those packages in to deploy-able images. I don't think it has been tested on ARM but it is written in PERL and should be easy to port. So there you go. Talk your employer into buying a few development kits. Install another distribution on it. Port kiwi to that and try to build an openSUSE image for it. In days, weeks, months or years you will have a working openSUSE distribution. I am sure you win a t-shirt for that :). Bill -----Original Message----- Tnx for the reply Bill, Yeah, I think I can understand their strategy. For the end-user-market, there is little love to gain employing a full arm-based distro: few people will be willing to play with their phone this way. OTOH, seeing the rising popularity of tablets, we are at the starting point of a fast rising market share. And for larger organizations/companies, using those ultra-thin clients, could be an answer to rising maintenance costs for desktops/laptops. I got people who are fed-up with picking up their laptop from their locker in the morning, and putting them back in the evening. A cheap (sub $100) thin-client would be ideal: -all identical configured -no hardware maintenance : just replace faulty one's If (...) SuSE could produce a bootable thinclient, it could promote business for their remote desktops on SLES. Regarding hardware, I already got a couple of HP's and Athena boxes. They were given to my team with a note "see what you can do with them". Indeed I noticed the presence of ARM packages on the OBS, but I've got no idea how much is already there. I mean for a thinclient, you need networking (net-boot), simple X-server and remote desktopclient. (actually I wonder how the builders ever tested their packages.) As for kiwi, afaicr you can do a cross-build (at least I managed to create a bootable 32-system, created on a 64-bit build environment). But here also: I can not determine if everything kiwi needs is there. Perhaps I should ask Andreas Schaeffer on/or the kiwi-list. Kind regards, Hans ______________________________________________________________________ Dit bericht kan informatie bevatten die niet voor u is bestemd. Indien u niet de geadresseerde bent of dit bericht abusievelijk aan u is toegezonden, wordt u verzocht dat aan de afzender te melden en het bericht te verwijderen. De Staat aanvaardt geen aansprakelijkheid voor schade, van welke aard ook, die verband houdt met risico's verbonden aan het elektronisch verzenden van berichten. This message may contain information that is not intended for you. If you are not the addressee or if this message was sent to you by mistake, you are requested to inform the sender and delete the message. The State accepts no liability for damage of any kind resulting from the risks inherent in the electronic transmission of messages. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-arm+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-arm+help@opensuse.org