The Pandaboard is a nice little ARM powered device which is meant for development and suited for example to test KWin on real OpenGL ES hardware. This weekend I decided to set it up again, I had done it before, I had installed KWin on the PI, so I’m not a complete NOOB for ARM hardware. I wanted to test a few things and see how the latest changes to master do on a non x86 architecture.

I got the memo about Linux is for normal users and not for LEET, but I do not understand why it has to be so difficult to setup a device which is meant for development. In the past it was as simple as dd an image to an SD-card, plug it in and done. Well those times are over.

My requirement for a base distributions are rather small:

• Up to date kdelibs, because compiling is slow on the device
• Working drivers for GL hardware

With this combination we can rule out most distributions like for example Debian (issues with both) or openSUSE (no drivers). I decided to try Linaro 13.02 which offers an image for Pandaboard and is Ubuntu 12.10 based, which means we can easily install KDE packages.

Linaro is still rather simple: dd to SD card, plug in and go. Just that you don’t get any output on the screen. I already thought my Pandaboard was broken. What’s a little bit tricky is that the Pandaboard has two HDMI connectors (one as HDMI, one as DVI) and at least openSUSE reports that only the real HDMI works. But with Linaro I did not get anything on either screen or TV.

So I had to connect to the Serial port to get some output. And look there: it boots. Once I was logged in I was able to figure out that the system is pretty basic, e.g. no X installed. But even after installing X I did not get anything on the screen: it complained about missing /dev/fb0. That was then the point where I considered trying a different distribution. (Search did not help).

Next choice was Kubuntu. This also used to be rather simple: dd to SD card. Downloaded daily build of 13.04, dd to SD card, plugged in and screen turns on. But instead of starting the system, the installer is started. Well since 12.10 you need to install. Obviously the system is not able to install to the SD card which is plugged in. So I got an USB stick, dd to stick, plugged in and nothing. The pandaboard doesn’t boot from USB stick. Now it got difficult: search for a second SD card. Found one, dd image to the second card, moved the first SD card to a card reader, plugged everything in and installed to the SD card at the card reader.

After installation, I swapped the SD cards, plugged in and nothing. System doesn’t boot. Well maybe the system expects at a different device, so I plugged the card reader …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE