Kinnison
24/7/03 1:39PM |
Having read their somewhat sparse descriptions, it looks like eQ are rebadging Simtec's ARM board offerings, without much in the way of value-add. |
guestx
24/7/03 2:41PM |
Yes, it would be much more interesting seeing them actually doing something innovative with Simtec's designs.
Having read the render-farm article in this month's Linux Journal, with comments about minimising heat generation from the racks, one would have thought that the hardware innovators in the ex-Acorn scene would be trying to get in on the clustering act (albeit with some improved ARM CPU derivatives). |
diomus  (-0.1)
24/7/03 7:27PM |
Hm. I did wonder if they were rebadged Simtec boards.
Chris, drobe.co.uk |
epistaxsis_RISC OS (-0.1)
25/7/03 6:40PM |
well that looks like eQ leaving the RISC OS market then... |
AMS (-0.1)
26/7/03 4:03PM |
I wouldn't worry about it, there are many more organisations still participating in the RISC OS market.
I'd also point out the eQ can always return later if/when things do an upturn (or SCO put linux out of business  )
--
Annraoi McShane, |
dfeugey
28/7/03 8:07AM |
Yep, it's Simtec boards... For now we currently just provide them "as is". But we try to use our knowledge to make a fast and easy to set up Linux distribution to make a ROS like system (for now Linux/Epia is simply the fastest distribution to install and boot in the world)
Of course I prefer not to talk too much about that for now. We don't like to speak about things that are not available...
On the other hand, we don't wan't to leave the ROS market, but it seems that some people really wan't us not to use ROS  |
nunfetishist (-0.1)
28/7/03 10:10AM |
I bet Knoppix is easier to install.  |
dfeugey
28/7/03 4:53PM |
Not sure... Our distribution is not hard to install since it's made for Epia M motherboards. You boot on a Linux system, you do a partimage to reinstall the disc image and 4 minutes later you're under XFree |
guestx (-0.1)
28/7/03 5:49PM |
Don't take those Simtec comments too negatively - at least you're taking a quick route to market, as opposed to designing everything from scratch and debugging it for the next n years. |
nunfetishist (-0.1)
28/7/03 7:00PM |
Knoppix you just pop the CD in, and turn the machine on.
Is your distribution based on Debian? If so, I assume it's just a tarball with the base install on it that you uncompress over your directory structure? First thing I'd do at that point is a dselect update, and check for any security patches.
In reply to guestx:
Thing is, Simtec already sell their own boards in boxes, with a copy of Linux that's easy to install. |
guestx (-0.1)
29/7/03 1:02PM |
Oh yes, I forgot about that. Now, what was that I said about adding value? |
dfeugey (+1.6)
3/8/03 10:37AM |
Nope, our current Linux/Epia (that we would like to port to ARM motherboards) is a disc image that we copy on harddisc with tools as partimage. It's not based on Debian. In fact it's a "vanilla" Unix, with no internet services at installation (so no security holes). It was designed for a desktop use.
But for now you're right : we sell the simtec board with the simtec version of Linux. the interesting point is that we live inside the "Euro enabled" part of Europe... This part of Europe has now big problems to pay things with another currency...
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dfeugey (+0.1)
3/8/03 10:50AM |
For RISC OS market... We do not leave it ! We hope also to be a reseller for Euro countries.
I can say also that we plan to make the same Linux distribution as the one we did for ARM7500FE motherboards : a distribution sold as a disc image that you simply copy to a RISC OS disc (so no partition will be needed to install and use Linux). |
mavhc
3/8/03 10:19PM |
That would be cool, ages ago there used to be a version of linux that did that. Of course there's the 2GB file size limit, but if one can read and write filecore partitions to access data that shouldn't really be a problem. |
nunfetishist (+1.5)
6/8/03 7:15PM |
The easy way of doing it that doesn't effect performance is to have an initrd that mounts your FileCore partition, and then mounts a big image file loopback, and then pivots onto it for root. Yummy. |
dfeugey
7/8/03 10:17AM |
That's exactly what we did
Performance was a bit strange (sometimes file access can be very slow), but it was working great! |
mavhc (+0.1)
9/8/03 11:42PM |
Does the filecore patition have to be E format then?
Does writing to the linux file use the filecore code?
You'd have to be slightly careful about framentation of the linux file. |
dfeugey (+1.6)
11/8/03 11:36AM |
In fact it's a an ext2 image file mounted inside an acorn partition (any format). It works quite well.
We put it as a goal of the ROSfr program. So if many people register, it'll be developped faster |
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