tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41162666349356029422023-06-21T00:55:24.645-04:00Mystical River~~~~~~~Life and Technology!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100942057487149114noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116266634935602942.post-46587940227679346622016-10-06T20:38:00.001-04:002016-10-06T20:38:23.489-04:00Why Google may be building Fuchsia<p dir="ltr">Looking at all the commentary going on about google building own silicon with the launch of Pixel phones, it makes you wonder if this is where Fuchsia fits in the larger picture.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Building custom silicon is one thing but if you can build custom kernel/os to go along with it rather than patch tuning existing kernel, it can make the whole system really sing...</p>
<p dir="ltr">It's not going to be a near term thing in my opinion but it's totally possible that Google may have started the work much earlier and we are only getting to hear about this now.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Future iterations of Pixel phone's are going to be really interesting and it's possible Fuchsia may come alive on Google designed silicon....</p>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100942057487149114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116266634935602942.post-11134389620140296272013-02-05T23:05:00.004-05:002013-02-11T12:37:19.995-05:00Getting started with Chromium OS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; text-align: left;">Love the Chrome Browser ? Have seen the shiny new Chromebooks at your local Best Buy (May be not since they are all sold out :)) ?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Wanting to play with Chromium OS on your laptop before you take a dive in the fantastic world of Chromebook, you can install it on a USB stick and take it for a ride...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">One important thing to keep in mind is that it's not exactly like Chromebook experience but very close. Chromebooks add a lot of value including secure boot and different plugins like Java/Pdf/Flash which are all sand boxed for security. Due to licensing requirements these plugins would not be present in the Open Source builds but if you look hard enough you can add them too.. Just google it...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I will stop beating around the bush and try to explain in a few simple steps how to go about it with due credit to people/website/content owners who have done all the hard work to make the builds available for everyone...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I will explain from the perspective of installing it on a USB stick...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Prerequisites :</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">1) Chromium OS builds from :</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> <a href="http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/">Hexxeh's site</a> or <a href="http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/">Arnold's site</a> or <a href="http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-guide">Build your own</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Note : Arnold distributes even ARM builds. Most probably you need X86 as you may want to try it on your X86 (Intel/Amd) based machines.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">2) USB stick of minimum 4 GB size. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">3) Some additional Linux drivers if you run into issues</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">4) Basic software for writing into USB like <a href="https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer">Windows Image Writer</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">So let's start :</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">1) Download the build</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">2) Unzip the file</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">3) Write the unzipped img file into the USB stick</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">4) Reboot and select boot from USB in your boot loader. Depending upon your BIOS you may have to go into settings to enable booting from USB. Some old machines may not support it but not sure if they are still alive :)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">And there you have it... A welcome screen from Chromium OS :)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">You may be first time lucky and able to enjoy the simplicity and power of Chromium OS with just 4 simple steps given above. But its entirely possible that you may get stuck due to lack of some drivers....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">To be honest I faced an issue with wifi (Intel Wifi (iwlwifi) / Broadcom) and my laptops's touchpad which simply refused to work.. I was disappointed but for time being I connected it through Ethernet and used a USB mouse to get my way around. Once the basic setup was done and I liked what I saw, I was determined to solve the touchpad and wifi issues.. As expected I googled about them and thanks to Arnold whose builds I listed above I was able to solve the touchpad problem. B</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">ut still there was no available solution for the wifi issue so had to dig deep into Chromium OS code and look into comments by some Googler's to figure out a solution.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Here are the solutions :</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">1) Touchpad : <a href="http://arnoldthebat.co.uk/wordpress/2013/01/08/how-to-get-the-touch-pad-working-in-chromium-os/">Arnold has a solution which worked for me..</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">2) Wifi : This is how I found the problem and solved it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">a) Login as chronos with password as either "facepunch" for Hexxeh's build or "password" for Arnold's build.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">b) In order to do this you would have to remount the root file system as rw which can be done by running these commands :</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> a.1) Change to su by typing this : sudo su</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> a.2) Enter password again on prompt</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> a.3) Type this command : mount -o remount, rw /</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">c) Check file /var/log/messages and search for wifi. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">In my case I saw errors because the request for driver files were failing as they were missing in the builds...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">d) I simply found my Intel Wifi drivers for Linux <a href="http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/iwlwifi">here</a>. You should be able to add other drivers as long as they are standard and in the linux kernel tree...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">e) I downloaded the gzip files for the drivers listed below and put them here : [<span style="background-color: #f3f5f7; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"># cp iwlwifi-*.ucode /lib/firmware</span>]</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 (2.6.30)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 (3.2+)</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">f) The last step to </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">test all of this is to just type : restart ui</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Hopefully everything will work and you will be able to enjoy the new OS. It's an amazingly fast and clean solution to your everyday computing needs...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Comments are welcome....</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100942057487149114noreply@blogger.com2