Debian based Linaro 16.09 release

Products Support DragonBoard410c
#1

Hi there,

We are please to announce the Debian based Linaro 16.09 release for Dragonboard 410c.

For more information about this release, please check out the release notes:

http://builds.96boards.org/releases/dragonboard410c/linaro/debian/16.09/

If you are using our OpenEmbedded recipes, they will be sync’d up to the same kernel shortly. There is no change in the build instructions, just upgrade your git tree to the tip of the branch. I recall that we no longer update the ‘jethro’ branch, the recommended version to use is ‘krogoth’ (or master for the brave).

A few notes about upcoming changes:

  • Next release is planned around end of the year, and we are upgrading the user space to Debian ‘testing’, aka ‘stretch’. The main reason for that is the cost (and pain) of backporting too many core packages. It turned out that we need to stick to bleeding edge version of quite many components (xserver, mesa, gstreamer, bluez, … ) so it makes much more sense to stick to a more up-to-date version of Debian. The kernel version will still be based on 4.4 LTS. For this release we expect the following changes to land:

** LeMaker panel support
** end to end video record use case with Gstreamer and CSI camera
** end to end optimized video decoder pipeline (aka ‘0 copy’)
** Audio/GPS coexistence
** A few updates in the initial (proprietary) bootloader (more on that later)
** We are investigating to switch the default desktop from classic LXDE to lxqt with kwin. we need to evaluate the desktop performance more before doing any conclusion.

  • And in the next release (around March 2017), assuming that the Linux kernel v4.9 will become LTS, we will be switching the kernel from 4.4 to 4.9. So this is likely a quite large update… We will provide test builds as early as possible.

Cheers
Happy hacking.

#2

Hi @ndec,

Thank you for the great release.
:slight_smile:

#3

hi there,

we were initially hoping to have a new release before the end of the year, well, it will be shortly after the beginning of the new year instead… Our release requires a new firmware update which hasn’t made it on the Qualcomm website yet. While most of the release has been tested internally with the new firmware, we must wait for the firmware to be released with the appropriate redistribution license.

I wish you all a merry xmas and a nice holiday break (hopefully).

cheers

#4

Hi @ndec,

Could you share the next release plan for reference?
Will 16.12 be released soon? or the next version for Debian/OE is 17.03?

Thanks,
Daniel

#5

hey Daniel,

I am sorry, I thought I had clarified that… but i think i forgot… the 16.12 has been simply canceled. it was initially postponed to after the holidays, but since there was no progress on the firmware side , then we just canceled it.

So the next release will be 17.03, toward the end of March. We still haven’t received the new firmware from QCOM , but we are hoping they will be released on time… Anyways, with or without the firmware, 17.03 will happen, and with quite a few changes…

  • kernel is being migrated over to 4.9 LTS , from 4.4 LTS. There is a work-in-progress release branch available at the usual place. We do not recommend to rely on it yet, but you can check our progress there.
  • Debian user space is migrated from Jessie to Stretch (and moving forward we will be using Debian testing, instead of Debian stable more generally).
  • The default Desktop GUI will be LXQt instead of LXDE. It provides an improved visual user experience.

There might be a few new features / bug fixes, from here and there, i don’t have a list right now.

Also, we are going to resume APQ8064 (Snapdragon 600) releases, in the same timeframe (they were kind of stalled since last year…). We will be using the same kernel branch for both SD600 and SD410.

For APQ8096 (SD820) we will not be using the 4.9 branch, and we will use specific/dedicated branches until the launch of the DB820c is formal. We will keep upgrading the kernel until that time. The kernel branches will be called db820c/qcomlt-vx.y, at the usual place.

We also continue to bring enhancement to our OpenEmbedded based builds/releases, which we call OE “RPB”. We have upgraded from OE krogoth release branch to morty branch, and keep adding features/bugfixes there. The kernel for Dragonboard used in OE based builds is the same than the one used for Debian based builds.

Hope it clarifies.

#6

Hi @anon91830841,

Could you share when the 17.03 will be released? We are looking forward to it. ^^

Thanks,
Daniel

#7

hi @daniel-hung,

sorry if it was’t clear. i think i have mentioned it on a couple of posts, but maybe not explicitely. the March release has been postponed to April because of some internal high priority things we had to deal with. So expect new release by end of April now, and it will be called 17.04 :wink:

the latest ‘snapshots’ builds are already set with 4.9 kernel and latest user space, we are now testing/fixing issues and adding a few last missing pieces.