What other distros have been tried?

by **aymeric.augustin** on Fri Oct 05, 2007 4:39 pm

Yes, it can be done. In fact, all you need to know is explained in our documentation: http://www.zonbu.com/doc

1) use the "how to create a compact flash" tutorial to install the Zonbu OS on a 2"5 hard drive.
2) install the hard drive inside
3) follow the tutorials to install the "developer edition"

Obviously there's no "official support" for this, but the forums are the right place to discuss it.

by **Methanoid** on Sat Oct 06, 2007 12:40 pm

Thanks Aymeric, that's a friendly attitude I like! Now I am persuaded to have a play with all Zonbu editions. I'll try a VM version with the Free edition. Then perhaps the Dev one on a VM and if all works well then I'll go buy a Zonbu box.

by **KarenH** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:51 am

Kubuntu 7.10 beta - superb, no problems with sound or video.

Usual problems with getting codecs and suchlike installed*, but that's to do with Ubuntu, not the zonbu!

To my surprise, even Celestia ran creditably well, although with some visual glitches when the viewpoint was too close to a planet.

Will be trying a fresh install of the official 7.10 release when its available

Karen

* Yes, I know 7.10 is supposed to make Automatix and the like redundant. All I can say is that based on 7.10 beta and my experience, it's got a long way to go to match the ease and speed with which Automatix does the necessary.

by **Juno** on Thu Oct 11, 2007 8:01 am

I am currently using Debian Etch (current stable branch). Of course I had to do some custom "tailoring" like upgrading the kernel so I could get the OpenChrome experimental branch driver to work (which I had to compile myself), but it works like a charm right now. Even the Flash plug-in works flawlessly when watching videos at Youtube, Metacafe and sites alike using Iceweasel (Firefox).

by **marmor** on Fri Oct 12, 2007 1:30 am

We succeeded to run Morphix (a morphing live-CD Linux distro).

However, it required some changes in the way Morphix boots.

Copying the ISO (filesystem of CDs) image of Morphix into the flash, didn't work, contrary to other PCs, because Zonbu's BIOS doesn't support booting from ISO images.

Then we tried to create a partition table on the flash, put the ISO image on the first partition, and activate it; No success...

Then we tried to hack GRUB to support it nevertheless, but still - no success.

Then we created an EXT2 FS on the first partition, and put the ISO image in this FS, using initrd to load it, and it worked!

We could save 90% of the work, if the BIOS supported booting from ISO like all of the other BIOSes; I guess that your BIOS doesn't support ISO because the box will never contain a CD drive;

However, ISO can be put on the flash too (as well as on a USB-attached device), so it will be a smart step to return the ISO support to the BIOS.

Thanks in any case for a cool box!

by **Shagbag** on Sun Oct 14, 2007 10:21 am

Update to Archlinux on the Zonbu

I copied /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/via_drv.so and /etc/X11/xorg.conf from ZonbuOS 6.907 over to the same places on Archlinux and now 2D is working 100%. I guess it helps that both OSes use the same 2.6.22 kernel. It's a big difference from running the vesa driver! Mr. Green

Can one of the Zonbu devs please update the Documentation wiki for this?

by **Methanoid** on Mon Oct 15, 2007 3:35 am

marmor wrote:We could save 90% of the work, if the BIOS supported booting from ISO like all of the other BIOSes; I guess that your BIOS doesn't support ISO because the box will never contain a CD drive;

So I wonder how you could install Windows on the box? I thought you need to boot from Windows CD to install, putting CD in when an OS only used for upgrades?

by **DavidNielsen** on Sun Oct 21, 2007 1:38 pm

The problem I mentioned earlier regarding the lack of an OpenChrome driver on Fedora is being solved (likely reviewed tomorrow, built and pushed during the week).

Track this bug, once it's closed the problem can be removed from the page.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=338361

I personally have this running now and it's pretty damn functional.

by **Shagbag** on Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:34 pm

Further Update on Archlinux

Scrap what I said earlier about copying and pasting files. I now have the definitive solution:

1. To get a working 2D video driver, install the experimental branch openchrome video driver (ie. not from trunk) either direct from source or (much easier) use the PKGBUILD in the AUR; and
2. To get direct rendering working, install the extra/libgl-dri package from the repos.

Thats it. Please could one of the Zonbu Devs please re-write the Wiki entry to refect the above as it is a much more elegant solution rather than the ugly hack I suggested in my previous post?

by **KarenH** on Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:02 am

Having tried Kubuntu 7.10, and foud it to work pretty darned well, the only problem was the amount of space it took up on the flash drive. I therefore tried a fresh install of Xubuntu 7.10, added the Medibuntu repositries, and went from there. Have since added a Maxtor 320GB external USB hard drive. Works fine - means I can store sufficient music on the compact flash to keep me entertained, whilst having the bulk of my multimedia on the hard drive, which I only switch on when needed.

Only problems enconutered thus far - Amarok and Real Player dont seem to like each other; if one is in use, simply pausing it and starting the other tends to result in no sound on the newly started one. Miro seems to have serious issues playing any kind of video - but that appears to be a common problem with Miro on 7.10, it's not a specifically Zonbox problem.

What other distros have been tried?

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