Uros Popovic looks to run mainline Linux on $5 dollar hardware (well, if it’s the board above, $11.70). The Lichee Nano is an SD card sized Linux development board powered by an Allwinner F1C100s ARM9 processor.
We’ll look at a fairly minimal set up that should run the latest mainline Linux. I’ve previously written about running Linux on hardware without an MMU, but that exercise was done entirely virtually and more or less only verified theoretical ideas. This time we will take very cheap physical components and put them together into a reasonably powerful Linux set up (which doesn’t exclude MMU this time!). We’ll use the latest mainline kernel and deploy it on a real device.
If you are curious, like I am, about how much can we minimize our devices but still stay able to run a full blown Linux, I think you have your answer. With just 2 very cheap chips, we managed to get the full computing system. Building your own tiny PCB with these concepts should be fairly easy knowing this.
While I do think Allwinner could do a better job at providing easy-to-digest English documentation on using their chips, and I would hope they do some serious work about mainline Linux support, and supporting the open-source projects that provide the Allwinner tooling — I think it’s still absolutely stunningly amazing that they provide Linux-ready SoCs at those low prices.
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About 10 years ago one of the first web/ssh connected smartplugs, the KanKun KK-SP3, had a board with a microprocessor that runs Linux. I still have about 10 in use. They run OpenWRT. Boot time is about 30 seconds. 32M RAM, 16MB storage. Everything old is new again.
About 10 years ago one of the first web/ssh connected smartplugs, the KanKun KK-SP3, had a board with a microprocessor that runs Linux. I still have about 10 in use. They run OpenWRT. Boot time is about 30 seconds. 32M RAM, 16MB storage. Everything old is new again.