Linux on any device

The resourceful guys at Nokia have apparently done to Ubuntu what the resourceful guys at Red Hat have been doing to Fedora for some time already: they have compiled the whole distro to ARM. The project is called Mojo. Subsequently, Omegamoon reports to have generated installable Ubuntu images for Sharp Zaurus. Obviously, any other ARM machine can use these packages just as well.

Neither project (Fedora or Ubuntu/Mojo) provides any kernel, as this is very dependent on the target hardware.

And how have they solved the problem of cross-compiling all the software? They havent. Both initiatives use native compilation to produce the packages. Specifically, the Mojo project created custom-built ARM hardware boards to be able to compile the software. By my means, the solution does not sound very elegant - also, this kind of limits the ability of your average Joe to tinker, no?

As Omegamoon also suggests to use IceWM as the window manager rather than a GNOME desktop, the user experience is not obviously quite the same as your usual Ubuntu. Just makes me wonder, how “Ubuntu” it really is without the kernel, hardware support and the user interface and experience?

Still it makes good headlines: “Ubuntu ported to ARM”, even if its not quite the Ubuntu you thought it would be.

The work continues. Clearly, everybody is excited about ARM machines these days.

Tags: News and headlines