Hi

ARMedslack 12.2 has now been released!

There are two ARM platforms officially supported - the "ARM Versatile" board, through the QEMU emulator -- so x86/64 users can try out Slackware ARM; and the Marvell SheevaPlug. The SheevaPlug is a $99 USD device - 1.2GHz CPU, 512MB RAM with a 1Gbit NIC and USB port. You can install a full installation of Slackware ARM onto either a USB stick or hard disc, which could make a great miniature media server.

Thanks to the people on this forum who helped test and provide feedback - it's greatly appreciated!

Download and installation instructions can be found on the ARMedslack web site

Cheers
Stuart

I wonder, could this run say on the Pandora ?
http://www.openpandora.org/

If so, it might make it more worthwhile for me to buy one.

drmozes, any chance of supporting the Sharp Zaurus line, e.g., Intel XScale PXA255 at 400MHz (ARMv5TE)?

Lots of those platforms have potential. The kernel has configurations for many, or most, and maybe all of those. Then it would be a matter of teaching the installer to deal with them, and the organization. Endian differences is an issue. I've worked on IXP425 and IXP435 running in big endian. Right now I don't have any ARM hardware. If you have ARM hardware with a working bootloader that can read from a pluggable device like USB or SD, you won't need the more involved embedded tools like JTAG.

Skaperen is right -- it's not usually a big issue to get Slackware working on those devices - it took me about 1 week to get the SheevaPlug support working properly, which included adding support for an additional architecture into the ARMedslack build scripts, some more work on the Slackware installer, and updates to a few packages to allow logins over serial, and not ask to be configured from the installer.

Most of these devices already have people putting Debian and Gentoo on them, who usually write up the steps for booting their new Kernels, and any necessary boot loader configuration changes; this helps a lot.

If can build yourself a new ARM Kernel with the "old ABI" boot into it, then you've already achieved a big step.
What I did to add support for the SheevaPlug was to take an existing Slackware installation inside QEMU, and copy it all to a USB stick; build a Kernel for the SheevaPlug; build an initrd inside the QEMU installation; update the SP's boot loader (U-Boot) and boot my kernel with the correct parameters so the kernel could find the OS on the file system.

Assuming the kernel.org kernel has support for these devices already, it's probably not *that* hard to add support, assuming the devices have enough on-board storage, or like the SheevaPlug where you can add a USB stick/disc.

I won't add anything to Slackware ARM 12.2 now - my efforts are on making a new EABI port; but once that's done I'd be happy to work with someone else who has one of these devices so that the next release of Slackware ARM can support it "out of the box".

Excellent. When the time is right, let me know how I can help on the Zaurus end.