Other Linux distributions that Debian? Ubuntu?

MNT Pocket Reform
1

I am considering to order an MNT Pocket Reform. It seems the MNT Pocket Reform is supposed to support other Linux distributions besides the pre-installed Debian. However, I did not find any detailed information about the support for other distributions - Arch Linux support for MNT Pocket Reform seems to indicate that quite some manual work is needed.

I’d be interested in particular in Ubuntu. Is Ubuntu arm64 desktop supposed to just work?

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2

Hi,

we don’t have an easy straight-forward way to deploy non-Debian Linux distros on MNT (Pocket) Reform yet, as the following issues are unsolved and need to be done manually at the moment:

  • Not all required kernel and DTS patches for all module and device combinations are upstreamed. So you need to install our kernel (patches) and dtb (device tree) somehow. Others have done this by integrating our patches in special kernel packages for their distro. Maybe it’s possible to just install our Debian kernel packages on Ubuntu, but AFAIK this hasn’t been attempted yet.
  • We have a script reform-hw-setup that does some post-boot hardware fixups, which is not strictly necessary though.
  • We have a driver for the system controller, the reform2-lpc-dkms package. It provides the means for battery percentage/status reporting and the poweroff command. You can probably install this on Ubuntu, but this is also untested.
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3

This seems similar to Raspberry Pi or Librem 5, which also have their own repositories for the Linux kernel.

In NixOS - a non-derived Linux distribution - one can source the kernel from such external repository.

I’m pretty sure somebody who actually owns an MNT has NixOS running.

Maybe the kernel setup for my - currently not working - Librem 5 can serve as inspiration:

boot = {
    initrd = {
        includeDefaultModules =  false;
        kernelModules = [ "bq25890_charger" "dwc3" "imx_dcss" "imx_sdma" "mtdblock" "ofpart" "phy_fsl_imx8mq_usb" "snvs_pwrkey" "spi_nor" "tps6598x" "xhci_hcd" "usbcore" "usb_storage" "uas" "xhci_plat_hcd" ];
    };
    kernelParams = [ "console=tty0" "ignore_loglevel" ];
    kernelPackages = let
        linux_librem5_pkg = { fetchgit, buildLinux, ... } @ args:
            buildLinux (args // rec {
                defconfig = "librem5_defconfig";
                version = "6.6.32-librem5";
                modDirVersion = version;
                src = fetchgit {
                    # git ls-remote https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux.git | grep latest
                    url = "https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux.git";
                    rev = "870167351553569338eeba27f3e1abd9ce4a05be";
                    hash = "sha256-YNrQ1MljcCctreGHsijetX33p1kDnjOIKw++91zmvHk=";
                };
                kernelPatches = [];
                #extraMeta.branch = "pureos/latest";
            } // (args.argsOverride or {}));
            linux_librem5 = pkgs.callPackage linux_librem5_pkg{};
        in
            pkgs.recurseIntoAttrs (pkgs.linuxPackagesFor linux_librem5);
    loader = {
        generic-extlinux-compatible.enable  =  true;
        grub.enable                         =  false;
    };
};
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4

Great - thanks a lot for the quick and thourough information! :green_heart:

5

Yes, it’s not ideal. :frowning_face:

On top of what Lukas said, there is also the tweaks that we do in our initramfs and it’s important to boot with the correct kernel cmdline which differs depending on the CPU module.

If somebody wants to get Ubuntu running on the Reform I can help them do so.

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6

At the risk of going off-topic, my impression is that user choice takes a slightly different form on Reform. Instead of lots of different flavours of essentially the same thing (linux distros) the focus seems to be a smaller number of niche operating systems.

Obviously it comes with factory installed linux because that is the mainstream system that most of us will be familiar with and can get up and running straight away. For those more adventurous there are off-the-peg images available for 9Front and Genode/Sculpt.

A more complete list of different operating systems on Reform (including linux flavours) is here.

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Thanks for the pointer! A probably stupid question: That thread talks about the non-Pocket Reform. Is there a different w.r.t. operating system support betweent the non-Pocket and the Pocket Reform?

8

Not really as compatibility is mostly related to the modules, not the form factor.

One has to perform the same tricks regardless of the module. That is, integrate the kernel/devicetree changes from MNT in the OS of your choice.

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