2 guys a CF U1, and internet connection to Linux

Sheepman and I have been exploring Linux ad nauseum on CF U1's Mk1.
Mk1 more because it has only 1gb ram.
It has been very frustrating and educational.

The first part is all U1's use an Intel GMA500 video chip.
This becomes the problem because Intel never created a Linux driver.
The great majority of distros fail. They never make it to login or the desktop.

We have found a couple that do seem to work fairly well.
Pear OS 8 is nice and works and looks great. Only issue is that it is old. Firefox 26 old.
MX 17 seems to work well also. Personally I dont care for the MX menu, but I am working on a fix.

We got Cairo dock working and Vara global app menu working.
Sheepman got Slingscold launcher going. I have not got that going yet. It's a bit funky because it's not really for MX.
With those 3 tweaks, MX 17 will be very manageable on the tiny touchsceen.

They dock creates a row of large icons at the desktop bottom. Easy access with your finger touch.
The global menu uses the taskbar on the top of the screen as a menu bar for whichever program you are running.
And Slingcold takes all the programs in the menu and creates pages of large icons for them, like OSX or Android.

 

Some random info
Intel GMA500 "Poulsbo" based on the PowerVR SGX 535 graphics core.
Unfortunately the support for this hardware is extremely limited on Linux. There are several drivers, but all lack certain basic features, such as future and current maintenance or support for suspend and hardware acceleration.

Last night Sheepman tried updating MX 17 to "buster" 1600 updates and 3hrs later it crashed.
I had a similar experience with Pear. I had changed the repositories to 14.xx from 12.xx.
If you actually have a clue with Linux, you might have better luck than me. It did partially work.

I do suggest you setup and try the distros on a real notebook first. It's way too difficult to tweak everything on a 5" screen.

Porteus works and screams on the U1,BUT, it is very difficult to actually install it on a SSD or HDD.
It has other issues because it is designed to be run from a usb stick.

Side note, I have found a distro called Mintymac. I like it and can adjust it to my desires.
It won'trun on the U1, but I like it enough to possibly replace W7 on my CF 52.

 

I must admit you two just don't give do you. Great job so far.

 

Give up? What's that?

MX-17 Horizon is working on CF-U1. 386/PAE.

MX is the only distro that did not require tweaking for GMA. Pear was quick and fast but not modern enough for Firefox. Porteus required too much thinking at the time...too much learning curve. Not hard just different. (the package manager).

I have Horizon installed on a Live Persistent USB that is running on CF-54 MK2 as we speak. Looks like this on my U1 just before installing cairo dock from MXTools Package Manager.

The big desktop icons are for my Fire Department U1. GPS and Maps.


CF-54 LOOKS LIKE THIS WHILE GETTING READY TO INSTALL SLINGSCOLD LAUNCHER.

 

I would edit the above file but I'm scared to.

Here's edited version (final?) with little launchy thing. (Slingscold)

 

MK1 working very slowly from LiveUSB.

GUVCVIEW installed with package "v4l". Clunky. Maybe cheese works now.

Photos saved in /home/m17/Pictures.

 

Looks great.
Makes the most use of the limited screen real estate on the U1.

Cheese or chocolate usually works for me when I feel sad.

 

Tweaked a bit more. I have the basics working. I did delete some unneeded stuff to reduce the clutter some. MX includes duplicates of several programs. I removed Libreoffice and will install the lighter abiword.
I cleaned up the grub menu and changed the background on it and login. The top menubar no shows the running program. When on desktop it also show categories. I want to get that for all running programs such as Firefox.
I am now making a system backup to save my work so far.

 

9

 

The final tweaks are done.
I don't really care for the Whisker menu, I can tweak that later on.
Actually, since I have Slingcold running, I could eliminate that applications menu.
Other than adding GPS/Navigation packages, my custom MX-17 OS is ready to test on the U1 mk1.

I am prepping the live usb now. Maybe later tonight I will test it on the U1.