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Now that we have kernel source... anyone see Ubuntu in our future?
I have unbuntu on my pc and in process of partitioning he for mac os x install 3 OS why not
Well, ubuntu netbook edition 10-10 would be the perfect candidate, but it seems someone already beat us to the punch:
http://techietonic.com/an-ubuntu-netbook-os-tablet-pc-edition-2011-the-tenq-p07-specs-features/#respond
If we could find a somewhere to download that version of ubuntu netbook, all the basic tablet specific work has already been done, might just need a couple tweeks. I have personally had no luck to even find the company's website though.
TheZedo said:
Well, ubuntu netbook edition 10-10 would be the perfect candidate, but it seems someone already beat us to the punch:
http://techietonic.com/an-ubuntu-netbook-os-tablet-pc-edition-2011-the-tenq-p07-specs-features/#respond
If we could find a somewhere to download that version of ubuntu netbook, all the basic tablet specific work has already been done, might just need a couple tweeks. I have personally had no luck to even find the company's website though.
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Click to collapse
That does not apply, there are no hardware similarities between an android tablet and that one other than form factor.
That machine uses an Intel Atom processor, ubuntu install image on a usb drive and you're pretty much done on that one. Not so much for us.
I see now why the lack of Linux support for Tegra tablets...
http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/linux-support-becoming-unsupported
(follow the link in his post for some udated info)
Its sad, but between the Honeycomb delays, and Linux being put on the back burner, we have very limited choices at the moment. Ultimately I would like to have Linux on my A7 too, as long as its not uncomfortably slow with only 512MB DDR2 RAM. It looks like Meego might be the distribution to watch for any kind of prebuilt distributable images, at least they have some big players still on board for backing, and they support a variety of platforms.
If you have access to the Nvidia Tegra 250 Developer kit, you could try building a custom Gentoo distro. I really like Gentoo for its configurability options, but honestly, I'm afraid of bricking my A7 with one little mistake.
Android still uses a Linux kernel though, so with kernel source and ability to compile for the tegra chip progress will not grind to a halt. Things just unfortunately won't move along as quickly as most of us would like.
I think a modified version of Ubuntu NBR would run fairly quick on an a7 though.
After some more digging around on the Nvidia Developers forum, I tracked down a few "work-arounds" to install linux...however, please note that most of these posts are very dated.
http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/workaround-run-ubuntu-now
http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/fedora-12gnome-running-tegra
http://www.elinux.org/Installation_Detail
I would dare to call this post, "Instructions for the Brave".
After reading those it does sound like we could have a unbuntu os
So as we all know soon we will have the files to access nvflash. This for one will hopefully allow us to install any OS we want.
Here is a guide to flashing ubuntu through nvflash onto a tegra 2 device:
http://tegradeveloper.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/workaround-run-ubuntu-now
Now lets hope once the nvflash tools get released in the coming days we will be able to do this.
You're my hero men !!!!
I love you
very nice, ubuntu with unity desktop would be great on tf
xufuchang said:
very nice, ubuntu with unity desktop would be great on tf
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Click to collapse
Definitely
Asus would dominate the tablet market with this due to the dock that makes it into a possible real pc now. Did asus give any indication on releasing tools for nvflash?
Will dual-boot be possible, too?
Otherwise that would be nothing for me, cause for multimedia Android is much better and I have a netbook.
cowballz69 said:
Asus would dominate the tablet market with this due to the dock that makes it into a possible real pc now. Did asus give any indication on releasing tools for nvflash?
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Click to collapse
RayMan and bumblebee already got tools set up, and they're releasing soon.
Will dual-boot be possible, too?
Otherwise that would be nothing for me, cause for multimedia Android is much better and I have a netbook.
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Click to collapse
It's been done on other Android devices so I don't see why not.
Ubuntu on this.....I am salvatating already....ooooooohhhhhh yea....this would definely rock my world
seshmaru said:
It's been done on other Android devices so I don't see why not.
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That would be amazing and probably with the dock one of the best devices ever!
When you really think about it.....Android IS a variant of linux.
Digiguest said:
When you really think about it.....Android IS a variant of linux.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the same as saying OSX is a variant of Unix.
Android borrows the Linux kernel, but aside from that the user interface and feature set is completely different from the typical desktop environments like Gnome and KDE in other Linux distributions. If Android was actually able to provide anywhere close to the same capabilities as a desktop Linux distribution, people wouldn't be asking for a way to install Ubuntu instead.
earlyberd said:
That's the same as saying OSX is a variant of Unix.
Android borrows the Linux kernel, but aside from that the user interface and feature set is completely different from the typical desktop environments like Gnome and KDE in other Linux distributions. If Android was actually able to provide anywhere close to the same capabilities as a desktop Linux distribution, people wouldn't be asking for a way to install Ubuntu instead.
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Click to collapse
"Linux" is the kernel, while Ubuntu, Android, Fedora is the distribution in full. But those are all powered by Linux... and btw OSX is Unix, since XNU (the kernel, funny enough it's open source) is certified as such.
Clearly if you cripple the potential of the platform with an interface and toolset suited for mobile use like Android or iOS, you lose some features and gain usability. A tradeoff most are happy with
Sent from my GT-P1000 using Tapatalk
AlexTheStampede said:
"Linux" is the kernel, while Ubuntu, Android, Fedora is the distribution in full. But those are all powered by Linux... and btw OSX is Unix, since XNU (the kernel, funny enough it's open source) is certified as such.
Clearly if you cripple the potential of the platform with an interface and toolset suited for mobile use like Android or iOS, you lose some features and gain usability. A tradeoff most are happy with
Sent from my GT-P1000 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Linux kernel that actually makes it into the final builds of Android is not the same kernel that you would find in desktop and server distributions. Mainly, it is missing the X Window system and doesn't support all of the GNU libraries, and has tons of other Android-specific additions and architecture changes for the sake of security and interoperability with certain mobile device standards. You can't just throw together the Android-ified Linux kernel with any desktop environment of your choosing like you can with the actual Linux kernel that ships with Ubuntu and Fedora. Furthermore, the changes that Google does make to the kernel do not get included into the mainstream kernel, and that fork has existed for quite some time. That is why Android is Linux-based, and not actually a Linux distribution.
ive had that page bookmarked since the week before i got my tab xD
Linux is just the kernel. Ubuntu, fedora etc are distributions with everything else needed to make the OS work.
earlyberd said:
The Linux kernel that actually makes it into the final builds of Android is not the same kernel that you would find in desktop and server distributions. Mainly, it is missing the X Window system and doesn't support all of the GNU libraries, and has tons of other Android-specific additions and architecture changes for the sake of security and interoperability with certain mobile device standards. You can't just throw together the Android-ified Linux kernel with any desktop environment of your choosing like you can with the actual Linux kernel that ships with Ubuntu and Fedora. Furthermore, the changes that Google does make to the kernel do not get included into the mainstream kernel, and that fork has existed for quite some time. That is why Android is Linux-based, and not actually a Linux distribution.
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<pedantic>
Pretty sure the Linux kernel proper does not come with X-Windows or GNU libraries (although it does rely heavily on the GNU toolkit, hence GNU's insistence that it be called GNU/Linux - http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html)
</pedantic>
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
jhanford said:
<pedantic>
Pretty sure the Linux kernel proper does not come with X-Windows or GNU libraries (although it does rely heavily on the GNU toolkit, hence GNU's insistence that it be called GNU/Linux - http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html)
</pedantic>
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Was that really necessary?
The point of this discussion is that Android is not Linux, does not include the vast majority of libraries found in standard Linux distributions, is thus incompatible with the vast majority of Linux applications, and is otherwise missing large portions of functionality. The fact that Android has some basis in Linux does not solve the problem of there being thousands of users out there that need to be able to do more than just basic word processing and web browsing on their mobile devices, but also want hardware that won't soon be neglected by developers.
Some people need VLC, Eclipse, GIMP, or various Oracle applications to get their work done. Telling people that Android has some similarity to Linux doesn't make those applications any easier to port, and would be pointless anyway if the same hardware can run Linux distros natively.
you made it to he news
earlyberd said:
The Linux kernel that actually makes it into the final builds of Android is not the same kernel that you would find in desktop and server distributions. Mainly, it is missing the X Window system and doesn't support all of the GNU libraries...
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Click to collapse
......
Your kernel has the GNU libraries in it? and X Windows? Must be pretty large...
earlyberd said:
Was that really necessary?
The point of this discussion is that Android is not Linux
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Click to collapse
Actually, it is.
Linux == The Kernel. Everything else is just the distribution. Honeycomb is basically a Linux distribution, just like Ubuntu, RedHat, and Gentoo are. It is just highly specialized. And if you think that because it doesn't have the GNU libraries makes it somehow not Linux, you are DEAD wrong. There are a plethora of devices and distributions that do not use the GNU libraries or toolchain.
Aside from this, the fact that you seem to continuously confuse the kernel with the distirbution indicates to me you aren't really qualified to discuss this topic, so I would stop arguing it.
earlyberd said:
Was that really necessary?
The point of this discussion is that Android is not Linux, does not include the vast majority of libraries found in standard Linux distributions, is thus incompatible with the vast majority of Linux applications, and is otherwise missing large portions of functionality. The fact that Android has some basis in Linux does not solve the problem of there being thousands of users out there that need to be able to do more than just basic word processing and web browsing on their mobile devices, but also want hardware that won't soon be neglected by developers.
Some people need VLC, Eclipse, GIMP, or various Oracle applications to get their work done. Telling people that Android has some similarity to Linux doesn't make those applications any easier to port, and would be pointless anyway if the same hardware can run Linux distros natively.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you even go to the gnu link? Linux is the kernel. Android uses the Linux kernel. It's the tools on top of it that are missing (hence busybody)
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Hi everyone,
I consider buying a this nice little tablet I just wonder if anyone managed to install a complete Linux distribution on it like ArchLinux ARM natively (not emulation/virtualization not even chroot) with everything working. I guess that even if it's not done up to now it will be quite easy to do as everything is open source.
Thanks
So as a few months passed since the Nexus 7 is available and I just bought one yesterday, I thought that I could do a little up...
Hope mods won't think it is offensive to make alive an old thread with some kind of what I think is a good reason.
If no one can help me, I will probably work on a native ArchLinux ARM on my nice new tablet in the next days. But first I have to make sure I can get it back fully stock from a fully rooted/unlocked/repartitioned state. If I have no choice I will dd my entire N7's internal memory to a slightly bigger USB stick to recreate exactly the partition table. But I am not sure I can have a complete access to the internal flash memory (all of the partitions with the boot loader, recovery etc). If someone can confirm if I have only one memory drive or more to backup or if there is no chance that I cannot recrate then entire Android stock system from a corrupted partition table for example... I would appreciate it right!
Thanks in advance!
Sorry if this is already answered I have to confess that I didn't search for the last part, I don't have time this morning.
Sent from my Nexus 7
Yeah installing Linux on the N7 has been done. I think the Ubuntu Distro is the one that was used for the successful install.
I did a little searching and found it for you:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1585009
Hope that helps
Wilks3y said:
Yeah installing Linux on the N7 has been done. I think the Ubuntu Distro is the one that was used for the successful install.
I did a little searching and found it for you:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1585009
Hope that helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your answer but I was looking for a native installation, not a chroot if possible that I can use hardware
acceleration (maybe that I still could with virtualGL though).
It is already a good point that it has been done in chroot, wich I am not surprised.
Sent from my Nexus 7
johnride said:
Thanks for your answer but I was looking for a native installation, not a chroot if possible that I can use hardware
acceleration (maybe that I still could with virtualGL though).
It is already a good point that it has been done in chroot, wich I am not surprised.
Sent from my Nexus 7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To be honest mate, I'm not into it all that deep, couldn't even tell ya the difference between chroot and a native client, perhaps you could explain for me?
the chrooted version is the android kernel with the ubuntu "programs" running. you can access the ubuntu desktop only via a vnc client, as there is no "real" x server running. think of it as ubuntu running as a service in the background which you then access via local network from your android.
would be interested in a native version as well.
kendong2 said:
the chrooted version is the android kernel with the ubuntu "programs" running. you can access the ubuntu desktop only via a vnc client, as there is no "real" x server running. think of it as ubuntu running as a service in the background which you then access via local network from your android.
would be interested in a native version as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That explains it, so basically on chroot the Ubuntu is a virtual machine in essence?
johnride said:
Hi everyone,
I consider buying a this nice little tablet I just wonder if anyone managed to install a complete Linux distribution on it like ArchLinux ARM natively (not emulation/virtualization not even chroot) with everything working. I guess that even if it's not done up to now it will be quite easy to do as everything is open source.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Has not been released yet, but definitely check out this: http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
Nooo there is a big difference between chroot and virtualization. On a chroot you still use the same kernel which allows to have the same speed or almost as a native client for what does not require hardware acceleration. the point in getting and Native Client working is that we could get advantage of the GPU after some more or less hard work. I bought this tablet to replace my sold laptop the best I could so that's why I'm interested in this.
When you do virtualization, CPU instructions are converted from a type to another and this is very heavy on the CPU and this way you cannot have good performances.
Think of a road: in chroot you only have to make the instructions take a turn without slowing down while in virtualization you have to stop the "convertible" instructions "remove the roof" and then you can continue. That's why virtualization is much slower than chroot.
Edit:
Chroot says what it does: it changes the root. This means that programs that run in the chroot environment will think that the / is another folder than what it is really. For example if you do chroot /sdcard/ and you have a file named derp.txt on your sdcard than type rm /derp.txt it will work since your / is now /sdcard/. The most come in case of uses of EC truth is when you have a Linux machine not booting anymore so you have to repair the boot loader, you will boot on a Live CD of the same distro (Ubuntu for example), mount the drive with the broken installation, chroot to this installation regular root and perform the same reparation as if this install would be booted, still using the kernel and binaries from your live CD (unless you specify that you want to use those from the chrooted environment).
Hope this is clear.
Sent from my Nexus 7
Stevenator21 said:
Has not been released yet, but definitely check out this: http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that's a very nice project but I want the desktop on my tablet, no docks and all. This is also in chroot I believe. Probably that I will install ArchLinux in chroot and try to make VirtualGL work but it's not really what I want.
Sent from my Nexus 7
johnride said:
When you do virtualization, CPU instructions are converted from a type to another and this is very heavy on the CPU and this way you cannot have good performances.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Small clarification. You're describing emulation here. Emulation is one processor pretending to be another. The Android SDK provides an android emulator that pretends to be an ARM device while running on your x86 PC.
Virtualization is a special feature of some processor architectures that allows multiple, virtual memory spaces to be created that are isolated from each other at a very low-level. I seriously doubt (but don't know for sure) that the ARM architecture has much support for virtualization. VMWare and its ilk use virtualization.
Anyway, virtualization runs at full processor speed. However, access to everything but main RAM and the CPU may be emulated in most implementations. Particularly, it's very tricky to get proper access to the GPU via virtualization, so it is often emulated.
Trivia-time: The presence of a primitive form of virtualization in the 386 is what allowed Linux to be written back in the day. The 286 didn't support switching between normal and escalated privilege modes (aka kernel vs user process space) on the fly. Oh crap. Now I'm starting to show my age. Um, get off my lawn!?!
The more you know...
Thanks for the clarification old chap!
I knew about material virtualization with some CPU's but did not realize that there was no emulation for the biggest part of the instructions. Will sleep less dumb.
Sent from my Nexus 7
kendong2 said:
would be interested in a native version as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mhmmm as we are probably not alone to be interested in this, I think I will open a topic in original development section to see how many would be interested and what direction I should take. If anyone supports that idea I will create the thread. I think it would be easier to put together all the good ideas in the dev section.
Ah you beat me to it!
Well we (the linuxonandroid team) have been running a device fund which has just finished.
One of the devices i will be getting from this is a nexus 7 which is being bought for two goals.
A) fixing tegra chip bugs with our chroot builds (after all chroot for many is a good way forward as it leaves android intact)
B) building native linux distro installs. Starting with ubuntu but expanding to as many distros that support ARM as possible (debian, backtrack, archlinux, fedora etc etc).
So prehaps you would like to PM me and maybe we can team up for this
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
zacthespack said:
Ah you beat me to it!
Well we (the linuxonandroid team) have been running a device fund which has just finished.
One of the devices i will be getting from this is a nexus 7 which is being bought for two goals.
A) fixing tegra chip bugs with our chroot builds (after all chroot for many is a good way forward as it leaves android intact)
B) building native linux distro installs. Starting with ubuntu but expanding to as many distros that support ARM as possible (debian, backtrack, archlinux, fedora etc etc).
So prehaps you would like to PM me and maybe we can team up for this
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am currently working on developing on booting ubuntu on the nexus 7. Check this thread out - > http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1842915
Okay so i think we know that windows 8 desktop os cant be done, but what if we took the phone os, are they different would it work, or would we get just a big phon
You would get big nothing. It is not possible to run Windows (Phone) 8 on Iconias and will never be as MS will never publish sources for the drivers etc which would be required to even start thinking about this.
This is a totallly different scenario than running Windows Mobile 6 on a device with Windows Mobile 5 device, as there already was support for windows mobile drivers for specific devices. Rom makers just had to do some magic with file mixing from different releases and they were able to make more or less stable roms. But here we don't have any Windows drivers for our tablets at all.
So just forget about it and stop asking such questions.
yaworski said:
You would get big nothing. It is not possible to run Windows (Phone) 8 on Iconias and will never be as MS will never publish sources for the drivers etc which would be required to even start thinking about this.
This is a totallly different scenario than running Windows Mobile 6 on a device with Windows Mobile 5 device, as there already was support for windows mobile drivers for specific devices. Rom makers just had to do some magic with file mixing from different releases and they were able to make more or less stable roms. But here we don't have any Windows drivers for our tablets at all.
So just forget about it and stop asking such questions.
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Click to collapse
Uhhh.... suppose I shouldn't ask about iOS?
But hey, they still have a ton of W500 and W501's for sale here. Wonder why?
MD
@Moscow Desire maybe it's the price? At least in my country cheapest w500 was about $150 more expensive than 64GB version of a500.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
yaworski said:
@Moscow Desire maybe it's the price? At least in my country cheapest w500 was about $150 more expensive than 64GB version of a500.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
It's definitely the price.
Over here, they will keep them at the same price forever. Even when the supposedly "surface" tablets come out.
Can you believe they want $750 for a W500/16 mb????? And they have a "ton" of these windows tablets they can't sell.
But a birdie in MS told me, they don't plan on upgrading the OS.
Heck, if they dropped the price to $250, I might get one just to add to the collection of unused gadgets I need some for a new business though.
Insane.
MD
It seems to be cheaper in Poland if you take memory size into consideration. Only the 32GB version is available in two options: with Window 7 Home Premium (about 690 USD without dock and 800 USD with dock) or Windows 7 Professional (850/880 USB without or with dock).
Those prices are from the largest polish computer shop network komputronik.pl (PLN/USD currency exchange rate from Google) and they even don't have the lowest prices on the market.
About the OS update, it is basically a PC hardware (AMD dualcore x86-64 processor and AMD Radeon graphics card) so I don't see a reason why couldn't it run Win8 desktop version. I don't know how hard it is to install new OS in w500 though.
jnktechstuff said:
Okay so i think we know that windows 8 desktop os cant be done, but what if we took the phone os, are they different would it work, or would we get just a big phon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1842228
haha lol no i dont see that happening anytime soon even if i dont see a port coming over maybe something like a chroot enviremont but not a port the only os's ive found runnable on the acer a500 are ubuntu, backtrack 5, some of the older mac os's, win95, bodhi linux, win xp (not worth it) and ARMEDslack
gears177 said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1842228
haha lol no i dont see that happening anytime soon even if i dont see a port coming over maybe something like a chroot enviremont but not a port the only os's ive found runnable on the acer a500 are ubuntu, backtrack 5, some of the older mac os's, win95, bodhi linux, win xp (not worth it) and ARMEDslack
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Click to collapse
I don't think that it is a good thing to mix natively running systems (Linux based) with those that require emulation (Mac OS, Win 95 or Win XP). In my opinion OS that requires emulator doesn't qualify to be categorized as "runnable" on specific hardware, as the hardware they are using are 100% software emulated and they are running on top of another OS after all.
Chroot won't allow you to run Windows, as chrooted environment is using currently running kernel, so you can only run Linux based systems this way.
yaworski said:
I don't think that it is a good thing to mix natively running systems (Linux based) with those that require emulation (Mac OS, Win 95 or Win XP). In my opinion OS that requires emulator doesn't qualify to be categorized as "runnable" on specific hardware, as the hardware they are using are 100% software emulated and they are running on top of another OS after all.
Chroot won't allow you to run Windows, as chrooted environment is using currently running kernel, so you can only run Linux based systems this way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that os's that equire emulation are slow and pretty much useless but i dont see any arm in running them
gears177 said:
I think that os's that equire emulation are slow and pretty much useless but i dont see any arm in running them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's all a matter of meaning of the "runnable" one chooses. For me to categorize system as a runnable on specific hardware it must be able to run natively on this hardware without the help of additional software layers, i.e. system's kernel and drivers must communicate with the hardware directly.
To run Windows on our tablets you need an emulator which presents additional software layers on top of a host system (Android/Linux) which create emulated hardware layer which is not equal to device's real hardware. This of course allows you to run the system on a variety of hardware which isn't supported by the OS itself, but this does not mean that it is runnable on this hardware.
I'm not against emulation. As a matter of fact I'm using VirtualBox a lot (in both ways: Windows guest on Linux host and Linux guest on Windows host). Of course to emulate different kind of hardware you need to have powerful enough real hardware. If you take into consideration that the host system also using CPU and RAM at the same time and emulator does full CPU emulation (x86 on ARM) you simply cannot expect that Windows XP will work efficiently emulated on Tegra2 with 1GB RAM.
yaworski said:
It's all a matter of meaning of the "runnable" one chooses. For me to categorize system as a runnable on specific hardware it must be able to run natively on this hardware without the help of additional software layers, i.e. system's kernel and drivers must communicate with the hardware directly.
To run Windows on our tablets you need an emulator which presents additional software layers on top of a host system (Android/Linux) which create emulated hardware layer which is not equal to device's real hardware. This of course allows you to run the system on a variety of hardware which isn't supported by the OS itself, but this does not mean that it is runnable on this hardware.
I'm not against emulation. As a matter of fact I'm using VirtualBox a lot (in both ways: Windows guest on Linux host and Linux guest on Windows host). Of course to emulate different kind of hardware you need to have powerful enough real hardware. If you take into consideration that the host system also using CPU and RAM at the same time and emulator does full CPU emulation (x86 on ARM) you simply cannot expect that Windows XP will work efficiently emulated on Tegra2 with 1GB RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
agreed completely thats why the setup is not even worth it but if you do go through the grunge work of setting it up then when you actually get it running its completely usueless win95 you can atleast play minesweeper at decent fps but winXP is nearly impossible to do anything on even move the mouse with decent fps but still the option is there
I have wanted to build for and wanted info on building environment. Like what do you use to build with a full Linux box or in virtual box on windows. Also what distro do you run. I heard years ago Ubuntu could give you errors that arch wouldn't.
Thank you in advance!
Sounds like you're new this, so I'd recommend Ubuntu.
Personally, I don't like Ubuntu's desktop environment (Unity) so I opted for Kubuntu instead (Ubuntu with KDE)
KDE often gets a bad reputation for being unstable, and while there's some truth to that, I like it. It's easy to customize and get used to. If you choose Kubuntu, I'd go with the 16.04 release though, it's more stable than 16.10.
I can't think of anything that being on Ubuntu has limited me for. For me, Unity feels kind of restricting in terms of UI, but Ubuntu has full Linux functionality.
Ubuntu is probably the most mainstream Linux distro, and therefore the most noob-friendly. You're more likely to find tutorials for Ubuntu; if you go with Arch you'll have to figure a lot of things out yourself.
Sent from my Axon 7