BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

bard · 2019-12-23 13:39:17

Hi all,

New thread for a new project. Title says it all. Love BL so try to install it on all my machines...

I have 3 RPis (One RPi 1 256 Mb RAM - Tor Relay when it's not broken..., One RPi 3B - Media Center and One RPi4 4 Gb RAM).

I've been trying to install BL on RPi4. Succeeded with a Raspbian Buster Lite install with few more utilities (Openbox, Synaptics, LAMP, Guake,...).
For some reason, the experimental repo didn't work (probably because of the ARM arch), so I had to download each package (arch-all) according to the repository list, tried to install each package by itself (dpkg -i), had to solve missing dependencies most of the time but overall installed fine (only exception was maybe meta package since it has intel and some other microcode issues, so had to force install it).
Then looked for arch-specific packages (armhf) in Debian and BL repos (or googled it).

Rebooted, logged in, startx for GUI and voilà!
I am in the process of tweaking things a little (Tint2, Conky, ob-menu-generator,...) but overall works great.
Even installed my bluetooth headset and it works fine (no A2DP sink yet but no big deal).

A small issue I have (but it may be my fault...) is that Wifi connections are not managed by nm-applet ("device not ready"...) but Wifi works fine (set in Raspi-config). If I plug or unplug an Ethernet cable, nm-applet sees it fine... Still investigating this one.

Just my experience, so thought I would share and maybe help make BL-Arm a more popular "standard"... ;-)
Still have to test a Samsung Q35 and a 2006 Macbook (both running Helium for now) but this will be discussed in another thread.

hhh · 2019-12-24 04:30:31

Mod note, recommending this thread to continue discussion on the subject because the original thread is from 2015.

I can't comment on ARM, I don't have the hardware. @johnraff is mostly away-from-keyboard for at a least 2 weeks, but I'm not sure if he has ARM hardware either. @twoion should be able to shed some light re: ARM he sees this thread.

bard · 2019-12-26 14:40:13

Hi hhh,

No pb for me. Looks like not too many people tried it yet.
I can test anything and report if needed.
Let's wait and see.

gennargiu · 2019-12-27 14:36:36

Hi Bard can you create a testing image bl lithium arm for raspberry pi 4 ? Best regards and happy holidays from Naples italy. smile

gennaro

twoion · 2019-12-27 17:03:35

@bard the experimental repos are built by John and only have amd64 and/or i386 packages. This is not indicative of what the final repo setup will look like and support.

It is no problem to support ARM architectures for official lithium packages as long as there is a current Docker Debian image available for the architecture (our new build flow will be container-based and no longer use pbuilder because it is broken on Buster for ARM crosscompilation) (additionally, our 2 binary packages, tint2 and jgmenu, must compile on these architectures for full support -- if they don't, then it'll be possible to use the architecture-independent BL packages regardless as long as the architecture is enabled for the repository to generate the correct index files).

armhf (arm32v7, if I read this correctly) is something we had partial support for in the past; it should be possible to support it in the future as well. The pi4 seems to require Debian arm64 (arm64v8), there is an image on Dockerhub so I can look into enabling this architecture for the final release.

https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi claims that raspbian actually builds 1 image for all Pis and that it is only running an armel (fixed-point 32bit) kernel -- what is the debian architecture running on top of that kernel? always armel? What Debian architecture do you need to support current-gen Pis? Just do dpkg --print-architecture && dpkg --print-foreign-architectures on the Pi.

(None of us devs have a Pi or other ARM device as far as I know, so it is unlikely that we can get into this topic 'deeply'. Our main concern are the i386/amd64 Debian architectures.)

dumetrulo · 2020-02-07 08:05:19

I would very much like BunsenLabs for ARM, I have a Pinebook Pro which would be very suitable.

My thoughts for installing it for now were as follows: use the unofficial Debian installer you can find in the Pine64 forums to install a minimal Bullseye, then add the BL packages to it. Do you think that should work?

ohnonot · 2020-02-07 19:53:25

Which binary packages are in the BL repositories? tint2, jgmenu - that should be about it, no?
So, install Debian for ARM, then add bunsen repos. Compile those 2 packages yourself...?
I have compiled tint2 on a Pinebook, btw. It was easy-peasy.

xgpt · 2020-02-19 15:10:34

I'd love to help test this, I've got various SBCs, rpi-zero, pi-3B, a few pi-4's, and an orangepi PC (not PC+, not PC2, PC)

they all run raspbian or armbian, which are pretty much just debian with small numbers of tweaks to make them work on these things. making a list of binary packages in the repos would help me immensely in testing for y'all. also a meta-package to install in a single step. something like bunsen-meta-desktop or whatever that calls in everything in the repos

damo · 2020-02-19 15:37:43

@xgpt

bunsen-meta-all - Metapackage for the full BunsenLabs install

bunsen-meta-all/debian/control

#1 2019-12-23 13:39:17

BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#2 2019-12-24 04:30:31

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#3 2019-12-26 14:40:13

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#4 2019-12-27 14:36:36

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#5 2019-12-27 17:03:35

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#6 2020-02-07 08:05:19

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#7 2020-02-07 19:53:25

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#8 2020-02-19 15:10:34

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

#9 2020-02-19 15:37:43

Re: BunsenLabs Lithium ARM edition...

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