Johannes' Blog

I have prepared an updated Arch Linux image for the Pandora. It is more user-friendly than the previous version, as I have preconfigured more things. It also comes with the updated kernel that I had released a while ago.

Major changes since the last version:

• Updated kernel (with properly working keyboard support)
• Display brightness control works with the same buttons as used by the Pandora OS
• The Openbox menu can be opened by pressing the Pandora button
• The Openbox menu's contents can be easily updated to consider newly installed programs (from the openbox menu under openbox3 select "update menu" to recreate the menu's contents, then "reconfigure" to tell Openbox to use the new configuration)
• I have included the wicd network manager with its GTK+ interface for easy network configuration
• Preconfigured touchscreen and nubs

As all of you who have tried the PlugApps image for the Pandora have probably noticed, the kernel shipping with that image has a bug causing the keyboard to behave strangely.

I was able to track down the bug to the gpio_keys driver and more precisely to a patch, which introduced that bug. I have reverted that patch and built a new kernel. With the new kernel the keyboard works much better. So I highly recommend to install the new kernel package.

kernel26-pandora-2.6.37.2-1-arm.pkg.tar.xz
(4.8 MB, md5sum: 478eeab8be42a9edefb830f71dbbd6cd)

To install the new kernel, download the package and then run as root:

# pacman -Uf /path/to/kernel26-pandora-2.6.37.2-1-arm.pkg.tar.xz

PlugApps is an Arch Linux port for the ARM architecture. Recently I have installed PlugApps Linux on my Zipit Z2. Today I have installed it on my Pandora console.



As it seems that quite a few people are interested in running Arch Linux on the Pandora, I have prepared a ready-to-run rootfs for the Pandora.

Plugbox Linux is a port of Arch Linux to the ARM platform. It is mainly targeted at those Plug computers. Since the Zipit Z2 uses a ARMv5 CPU just like most Plug computers do, running Plugbox Linux on the Z2 is possible.



Here I'll describe how to install Plugbox on a Zipit Z2.

If you want to try this yourself, you need a PC with a working card reader running some kind of Linux. Your Zipit Z2 needs to have U-Boot installed.