Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Now go and have dinner or a few drinks: this is going to take a while. Once the DHCP client is installed or you
have configured a static IP address you can reboot your system and log in via SSH.
The last step I am going to do is copy the kernel build root from the host machine across to the Gentoo
installation. Some packages need a valid kernel source tree to build. On the host machine change into the directory
with the kernel source and copy it across. I have used
scp
with the following command:
# scp -r linux-rpi-3.2.27/ root@192.168.0.46:/usr/src/
This will take a while as there are a lot of files to copy. Once that's done, log back in to the Raspberry Pi and create
a symlink to point the current kernel source to
/usr/src/linux
:
# ln -s /usr/src/linux-rpi-3.2.27/ /usr/src/linux
Using Gentoo
Now that the Raspberry Pi
-
specific parts of the installation are done, I would recommend you read though the Gentoo
handbook and finish off the install so that it suits your needs; after all, it's your custom system and only you know how
you want to use it. Gentoo offers a lot of customization in the install process. You can find the handbook at this site:
Summary
This chapter has been wide-ranging and I hope you got something out of it. First up we looked into the current state of
Android on the Raspberry Pi. This was a sad start because we found out that the official Broadcom version of Android
is unlikely to ever be released. This means Android will never get any optimization or support for the GPU. Right now
you're stuck with an unusable version of Android 2.3 with no support. This is far from ideal. At least you can say that
you have at least installed Android once rather than just buying a device with it already installed.
Next up was a nice surprise with RISC OS. The RISC OS distribution hails all the way back to the original ARM platform
and is still very usable as a lightweight desktop. In this section you found out about CMT-based systems and the benefits
that CMT may bring you and your applications. You also found out where a lot of the ideas for some of the modern desktop
user interfaces came from. In addition to this the RISC OS comes with a large online repository of applications.
After spending some time inside RISC OS I then showed you one of my favorite experiential operating systems
called Plan 9. Plan 9 is where Unix may have ended up; after all Plan 9 set out to fix what were seen as the shortcomings
of Unix. Plan 9 is a very good example of a grid computing platform system and it has been executed very well in this
regard. Plan 9 takes the concept of everything as a file and acts on it with vigor. You really need to get your head around
this concept to get into Plan 9. Plan 9 won't be your replacement desktop anytime soon or most likely it will not even
remain on your Raspberry Pi but it's an excellent learning tool (or at least an excellent demonstration of what could
have been the future of Unix).
Last was Gentoo, my personal favorite Linux distribution. Gentoo is built from the ground up to be exactly what
you want it to be. This is an amazing feature in that you get a lean, clean, and fast distribution. This exact advantage
also has its downsides in that you are going to need to do a lot of your own support work and be able to fix the system
when it crashes. Gentoo is a good teacher of Linux (if a little unpractical for all purposes). I hope this chapter has
whetted your knowledge of other operating systems and why there is no one best operating system. Every operating
system has its good points and its weaknesses.