From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Timothy Sample Subject: Re: Guix on the ASUS C201PA Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:39:56 -0400 Message-ID: <87bm2cox3n.fsf@ngyro.com> References: <875zswjwoc.fsf@ngyro.com> <87ef78755h.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:55058) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h4r2w-0005m3-JV for guix-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:55:07 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h4qoL-0006v5-W5 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:40:03 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87ef78755h.fsf@gnu.org> ("Ludovic \=\?utf-8\?Q\?Court\=C3\=A8s\=22'\?\= \=\?utf-8\?Q\?s\?\= message of "Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:23:22 +0100") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Hi, Ludovic Court=C3=A8s writes: > Hello! > > Timothy Sample skribis: > >> I was able to get Guix to boot on an ASUS Chromebook C201PA. This model >> of computer is pretty neat. It=E2=80=99s an ARMv7 (32-bit) machine that= can be >> run with entirely free software. There is even a free graphics driver >> in the works [1]. >> >> I=E2=80=99ve attached a (messy) patch that adds a (hacky) bootloader def= inition >> for Depthcharge and a Linux-Libre package that works on the machine >> (using an unsupported version of Linux-Libre). All those parenthetical >> comments are supposed to suggest that this work is not really finished. >> Now that the computer runs Guix, it should be straight-forward (if time >> consuming) to fix some of these problems and arrive at something nice. > > Impressive work! Thanks! > The patch is really not what I expected given the qualifiers you gave > above. :-) It could use more comments to explain what=E2=80=99s going o= n but > apart from that it looks rather clean to my eyes. > > What do you think would be the best course of action to integrate it? > Wait for Vagrant to test it and fix a couple of things? ;-) Or=E2=80=A6? On the bootloader side, if you are okay with the way it works, then it is fine. I would just add some comments. Most importantly, I would want to write somewhere that it is okay for the bootloader installer to make use of the configuration file. Beyond that, there are some improvements that could be made, but they can come later. For instance, we could automatically roll-back one generation if booting fails. For the kernel, the patch currently uses an unsupported version of Linux-Libre, which is not great. I checked that we can switch to the 4.19 version developed by the PrawnOS project. However, they say that Wi-Fi is broken on that branch (I don=E2=80=99t have a dongle yet, so I don= =E2=80=99t know). Parabola has a working 5.0 kernel, but I=E2=80=99ve found that their configuration is not as reliable as the PrawnOS one (it fails to boot sometimes). Ideally, we could figure out which configuration options and patches are necessary and just augment what we already do, rather than having a completely separate kernel package. I=E2=80=99ve tried getti= ng there by trial and error, but that=E2=80=99s exhausting. I=E2=80=99m hopin= g Vagrant=E2=80=99s setup with the USB serial console will help, but I haven=E2=80=99t tried it= yet. In short, I would rather not rely so closely on what PrawnOS is doing. It would be better to follow their approach loosely while using our own kernel versions and configurations. Does that make sense? -- Tim