If you feel adventurous and have a spare SD card, you can try the first non-Linux OS on MNT Reform here:
Enjoy!
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Finally, I’ve managed to enable most devices including WiFi and NVMe PCIe cards of the MNT Reform within the Genode OS framework. Pre-built ready-to-use SD-card images of Genode’s latest exemplary desktop incarnation named Sculpt OS 23.04 are now available for the MNT Reform too. You can find those images, as well as a short Quickstart tutorial here.
If anyone is giving it a trial, I would be glad about your feedback.
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This is awesome. Thanks for the great work.
Btw, is there any chance you would also make it work with the LS1028A module?
I’ve followed the quick start instructions, but I’m not seeing the “System” button appear after expanding the partition and setting it as “Default,” nor after connecting to a wifi network. Not really sure how to proceed.
Thank you for giving it a try!
Maybe the resizing did not work properly, or there is a general problem with the specific SD-card.
If you select the SD-card’s partition after booting, do you see a ‘Use’ button at all? That would be the alternative to choose the storage place just for once and not permanently via ‘Default’. Alternatively you might have a look at the system log, e.g., by choosing the ‘Log’ button in the top-right corner. This might be especially useful right after re-sizing the partition, as it might give indication what could have gone wrong.
If you have a different SD-card that might be an option too, or you choose a free partition of your NVMe if you have one. To try out small examples (e.g. the window manager example), you can of course ‘Use’ the RAM filesystem as storage place.
Surely there is a chance ;-). However, I do this whenever time permits it and porting drivers for all peripherals is quite time-intensive. Next planned item is to add some kind of shared filesystem/folder support for the virtualization solution to be able to exchange files easily in between the Genode host system and a Linux guest OS, and to enable the audio subsystem (write or port drivers for it).
But I’m interested in a more powerful System-on-module too. Until now, I own the i.MX 8MQ SoM only.
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Given how time consuming it is, do you think it even makes sense to focus on LS1028A? My understanding is that its main advantage is that it supports up to 16GB of RAM (the one I have ordered), but the multi-core performance is the same as of the current base SoM (although single core performance is twice as fast). If you think focusing on LS1028A makes sense (of course, after completing your current work… although, my guess is that the two things that you just listed are not all there is on your todo list, just the top of it), then I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is and order a module for you s.t. you can develop drivers that would benefit the community.
Returned to the problem and discovered the missing piece: before the “System” button will appear, you have to click the “+” button that appears after selecting your partition and then click the “Depot” radio button.
Well, I think it is not only RAM, but the Cortex A72 cores might provide more processing power in contrast to the A53 too. Anyway, I’ll keep your kind proposal in the back of my head, and will notice you if me or another person involved in Genode development starts to focus on this Layerscape SoM.
It’s good to hear that you could proceed. Anyway, it sounds strange and unexpected that you need to first select a ‘Depot’. The ‘+’ sign is used to “sculpt” resp. integrate single components together to form a specific runtime. It is not necessarily needed to try out a pre-defined runtime in form of a “preset”. I’ll have a look into this, and try to re-produce the behaviour that you observed. Thanks for the feedback!
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I got this to work pretty easily and run the included presets. Not sure what to do now… I’ve been interested in Genode for a while so I am excited to have a good platform for it.
If it helps anyone else I was able to write the image to a SD card using Gnome disks and expand the partition with gparted.
I see that Genode has now got its own Discourse forum. I am sure that community will be delighted to hear from those of us running Sculpt on our Reforms!
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Do you know whether anyone has tried this on a Pocket Reform?
I have no idea. It might be worth starting a thread to discuss Reform installations on the linked forum.
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AFAIK no one tried it yet. The Pocket Reform by default is shipped with a slightly different SoM resp. SoC , namely the i.MX 8M Plus, in contrast to the originally shipped one for the earlier Reform. But my team colleagues and me, we’re working on it.
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Great, happy to give things a try - I also have the RCM4 A311D SoC, and will have the RK3588 in the future, so interested in trying new things.
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The Autumn release of Sculpt has dropped. Their headline feature is a recast GUI stack which offers multi-monitor support - a feature likely to be of interest to Reform users.
I’ve given it a spin on PC hardware and I’m quite impressed. Is this also the opinion of those running Sculpt on their Reforms? The release announcement says “Sculpt OS 24.10 is available as ready-to-use system image for PC hardware, the PinePhone, and the MNT Reform laptop” (presumably the original iMX8 model).
The Sculpt image is available here.