Hi,

I've seen a lot of talk about releasing a newer kernel than 2.6.31 for the smarttop and smartbook.
The current kernel is one minor version too old for the use I was planning.
Without access to the LCD controller-module sources it's pretty much impossible to make a working kernel for the smartbook.

Does anyone know if a newer kernel will be released some time?

Thanks!

Hi there,

Yes, we are working on it. Since the new kernels use device trees and several supported devices aren't fully working with devices trees (mainly the display..) this is taking some time. The expected kernel version is 3.5 and we will roll it out with a new U-Boot too on a unified SD card possibly with a new Linux distribution for all the old systems. This is just because too much changed in the past few years to maintain compatibility properly.

As for the driver for the MTL017 on the Smartbook, this actually looks like it will be a fairly easy write (the docs explain things in an extremely overcomplicated way but some math proved that it's all pointless work when you design your systems properly :) - the binary blobs will go away and everything will use EDID properly from the panel. Problem is the framework to glue DRM panel drivers ("connectors" and "encoders") to the actual framebuffer driver in a system like the i.MX51 doesn't exist so there's still some work here to make it something that will benefit everyone upstream (and including the i.MX53 and i.MX6 designs).

It took a while for the Linux community (and Linaro) to actually get to the point where a single kernel could be built for i.MX51, i.MX53 and i.MX6 and this was pretty much our best starting point. With some of the features in 3.5 like CMA, tmem/zcache, dma_buf, GEM/PRIME, ARM auditsyscall, we can provide some performance updates and several new features (like plugging in USB displays) too.

While the work is going on internally right now there will be no public release until we can provide a system that works "out of the box" for all users (that is, plug an SD card and it images the system to a working point with new firmware and new kernel and new Linux distro updated to meet modern standards). The kernel alone won't be released until 3.5 gets out of Release Candidate, plus a couple weeks for testing, and then everything will be opensource.

That's great!

Thank you very much for a lenghty answer.

I'll just be patient another little while. :)

All of my doubts have been answered in this thread, and I have been convinced that the Efika is the mobile computer for me, even if this does mean waiting a little while for the update.

Any news on this? 3.5 has been stable for a little while now. :)

It's still being worked on. I believe we are waiting on a new uboot to be debugged and tested among other things. It's not something we forgot about. :)

I hope all is proceeding well. I just noticed during an update of my Smarttop that udev now requires a kernel >= 2.6.32, so things just got urgent (ok, a bit exaggerated since I could probably reinstall Debian and track something other than unstable; not sure if the wheezy udev is still ok or not though). :)

That said, take your time! Better to have a rock-solid kernel than something rushed out the door...especially with the kernel.....

Actually, it does not on the Efika. I ran into this issue too, a couple of weeks ago on debian wheezy, but udev itself works without issues so far. All I did was to change /etc/init.d/udev such that the function supported_kernel() always returns 0

Having said that, a 3.x kernel would be greatly appreciated!

HTH
Riggs

Ah good tip. I had been running into problems with my smarttop not connecting to the network (a big problem since it's running headless and I have no keyboard or monitor); finally after re-installing Debian yet again, when the new /etc/init.d/udev is in conflict with the old, I just kept the old. The only differences were in this kernel version checking section, so I see I inadvertantly took the same strategy as you. It seems to be running ok and connecting fine now.

Is there any news about this new kernel? I would love to test this on the Efika MX! I currently run Ubuntu Quantal armhf on the device and would like to complete it with a newer kernel. If any testing is required, maybe I can help, altho I don't have a debug connector, but am able to test / boot it.