ubuntu for mipsel

I think this is a wonderful idea.

There is at least one company (Lemote) that offers mipsel-based hardware (mini-desktops and netbooks) married to a GNU operating system (gNewSense), and I am sure this number is going to explode.

A quick search online will reveal that Gentoo is pursuing a MIPS-compatible version as well. So it's already garnering interest from another camp...only a matter of time before other well known distros come on board.

So just to correct some slight errors / add a bit more information:

(a) Lemote will probably sell with gNewSense pre-installed soon, but does not at the moment (I own the US reseller for Lemote - not including URL or name as not sure of advertising limitations here, but should be easy to find - and we do preinstall gNewSense, provide US power cord, etc.)

Lemote provides primarily to the Chinese market, so as far as I know preinstalls with China-specific distributions, such as "Lemote Loonux" and "Open Rays", both of which I believe are Debian variants.

(b) I don't know about generic MIPSel on Gentoo, but there are non-mainline loongson2f (the mips64 compatable CPU in the Lemotes) overlays that may be the best current option from a technical point of view for the Lemote machines, such as the yeeloong netbook / laptop / notebook and fuloong mini-desktop. Work is being done to get this work into Gentoo mainline.

(c) NixOS is also pursuing a loongson2f port.

(d) mipsel != loongson2f. Generic mipsel o32 abi stuff (other than linux) will run on loongson2f, but it will be slow and sometimes trigger bugs in earlier loongson2f processors. For best performance and support for all production dates of loongson2f chips, you need to compile everything with certain flags and toolchains, and with n32 abi. See "Current loongson2f linux version / compiler / version flags wisdom?" at http://groups.google.com/group/loongson-dev/browse_thread/thread/b5a981eb8b0d5f95 has more on this.

(e) I think some Debian people are thinking about better loongson2f support; I'll be trying to have conversations about this topic at debconf in a few weeks. Currently there is significant variance from Debian in gNewSense with regards to loongson2f support.

(f) Lemote has already sold loongson2f based machines in the millions of units within China. They seem to be doing quite well. There should be loongson2g machines out later this year or next year, as well as loongson3 (which is much faster than loongson2 and has built-in support for accelerating x86 emulation under qemu); but loongson3 will initially be targeted only at the server market.

Thanks Daniel. Very informative.

Thanks Daniel. You've given a wealth of information (and thanks for correcting me when required).

It's interesting to see that Debian is also exploring the matter at some level.

Unfortunately, adding a PPA is likely one of the last steps in enabling a new architecture, as it requires that architecture to be fully supported in Ubuntu, and have working virtualisation.

So, based on ports that have appeared in the past, the following things seem to need to happen in order for it to be done.

1) Someone needs to be maintaining an Ubuntu kernel for the architecture (using all the Ubuntu sauce, etc.)
2) Someone needs to be actively maintaining the Ubuntu toolchain to ensure it works on that architecture
3) Someone needs to have bootstrapped a good chunk of the archive (Ubuntu Desktop is often the first target)
4) The architecture needs to be supported in Debian (although compiler defaults, etc. may differ)
5) There need to be a sufficient set of folks willing to test on that architecture

Once all those conditions are met, it's mostly a matter of getting trusted buildds into the Canonical data centre. I don't know the precise procedure for that, but I'd guess that if the 5 conditions above were met, and hardware was available, one might start by making a request to rt.ubuntu.com. Note that this may take a long time to get a response, as there are many more time-critical tasks that the folk who process the RTs need to do.

    All that said, I'll note that someone had a working toolchain port for Intrepid, so it's not infeasible to do something.

Hi Kip,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 605694

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

    [This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

On Wed, 2011-01-12 at 21:46 +0000, Jeremy Foshee wrote:
> This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity
> in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you
> try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are
> available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

Thanks, but I'm assuming this was an automated message since there
aren't any images for mipsel at the aforementioned.

--
Kip Warner -- Software Engineer
OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred
http://www.thevertigo.com

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 605694

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

Brad, debugging logs aren't relevant at this point. I'm assuming your post was automated.

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 605694

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

Brad, debugging logs aren't relevant at this point. I'm assuming your post was automated.

Kip Warner, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. As per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/32bit_and_64bit#A32-bit_and_64-bit MIPS/MIPSEL is not Ubuntu supported architecture. However, a MIPS team exists in Launchpad, many from Debian team working on MIPS/MIPSEL, whom you are welcome to coordinate with: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mips . As well, the Debian MIPS/MIPSEL information may be found at http://www.debian.org/ports/mips/index.en.html . I'll mark the Status Won't Fix Wishlist as a placeholder for further request discussion.

Hey Chris. Thanks for the followup. We look forward to the day when there is an official port. Personally, I think it is more promising than ARM.