[Acer Iconia A500] blackthund3r:
We have had native Linux on our Iconias for quite a while now but the builds and kernels are getting outdated, Unity is here and there is no real direction as to what needs to be accomplished.

This thread has been started principally for two kinds of people:

Kernel and Linux developers whom can offer advice or indeed actual code

Iconia enthusiasts for suggestions / ideas as well as any logic they may have

This thread does not aim to make Linux on our Iconias poof out of nowhere. It requires a huge amount of work to get going although with proper information exchange it should be much easier to get the project going.

The current ToDo list is as follows (feel free to post me more):

RootFS on /data/linux

Kernel initrd which will chroot to /data/linux

Linux Kernel will boot off mmcblk0p7

Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 (although RootStock is now deprecated, we can just download a pre-built bundle for the arm-eabi FS, use live-build or get a pre-made RootFS. There's lots of options for this)

Build the kernel from scratch (this is kind of obvious anyway). Building for armhf sounds like a good idea

Full graphics acceleration from the Tegra 2 for Unity

Perhaps a build of Backtrack (this shouldn't be too difficult - they offer an image for arm. If it can share the kernel then we should be okay)

A501 3G Modem

USB Huawei Modems (although initial Googling seems to imply the compatibility of usbserial.ko and hence OOTB compatibility so long as a udev rule is added)

Camera, sensors and non-patchy wifi (issue on 2.6.38 although the nvidia drivers below should fix this)

Latest Linux kernel (ie 3.1.x)

We have plenty of resources at our disposal such as:

Dual Boot Bootloader: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1619913

ICS Kernel source: http://global-download.acer.com/GDF...AB&Step3=A500&OS=a08&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=EMEA_27

A 2.6.x chromeos-based kernel with quite a bit of functionality implemented: https://github.com/astarasikov/iconia-gnu-kernel

Linux for Tegra which provides many drivers for porting Linux to the Tegra chips: http://developer.nvidia.com/linux-tegra

Kexecboot - a bootloader on a kernel image system which could be placed on mmcblk0p2 and can give us huge flexibility in terms of launching a kernel (http://kexecboot.org)

I've looked inside the Linux for Tegra package and a HUGE amount is in there including x configurations, hardware drivers, Broadcom wifi firmware and the list goes on.......

There's also a codec package so we can have native video acceleration in loads of formats.

The bootloader will, at least initially, probably be the default Acer one. We could utilise kexecboot in the future as noted above

What we need:

A system for organising the code. CI & trac?

Perhaps a wiki.... or at least somewhere to organise ideas and reversed data

Either role assignment or a huge number of 'issues' with the code on a system such as trac and anybody can fix any issue

What works without kernel hacking:

Sound: The Wolfson WM8903 sound chip has driver provided by Wolfson which have been integrated directly into the official Linux kernel source (source: http://opensource.wolfsonmicro.com/content/linux-drivers-wolfson-devices)

Wi-Fi (almost) - the broadcom drivers are available with a simple apt-get. They are also available through Linux for Tegra

Graphics Acceleration (Hardware) - the drivers and codecs come from Linux for Tegra

armhf - Support for the hard float capabilities is built right into the Tegra2 and both Ubuntu and Linux for Tegra provide this support alongside the (seemingly legacy!) armel

The RootFS can now be built with qemu-debootstrap

Please let me know if I forgot anything else (which I undoubtedly did!)