Git repository for "Legacy" 2.6.31 kernel moved..

We have finally abandoned gitorious.org for hosting our kernel git tree and moved it (with a significantly less confusing branch history, and much better performance on using the repo) to our GitHub account.

You can now access the kernel source from http://github.com/genesi/linux-legacy

Instructions on how to access the repository are on the above page (new URLs etc.)

Maverick October

Minor update to fix some annoying bugs and pull in some performance updates

No kernel update. Just userspace fixes to improve user experience:

• Preinstall NEON optimized libc functionality. Note this means that TO2 systems may become unstable unless users edit the installed filesystem /etc/ld.so.preload file to remove the library location (you do not need to uninstall the imx-libc-neon package as any updates will only change the file on TO3+ systems). This will improve system performance on very large memory copies, string searching and so on (not so much on tiny amounts of data, in fact system performance may slow down on these). Multimedia and Xorg are the biggest beneficiaries.
• Preinstall libpixman 2.23 for enhanced performance on Xorg fallbacks (this significantly speeds up things like changing the backdrop in GNOME. Unfortunately other apps that use pixman (firefox is the biggest example) use an internal version and do not directly benefit except from improved system graphics performance.
• Updated packages for imx-boot-scripts fixes some PulseAudio problems, SPDIF module loading, and bumps the compressed swap cache to 128MB (ramzswap default)
• Uninstall and remove cache for "prelink" as it seems to do more harm than good for performance (including spending a lot of time scanning the system every week, and soaking up compressed swap cache for no good reason)
• Fix software-center not running
• Maverick Updates that were pushed the day we released the image (including apt, tzdata and firefox update to fix the DigiNotar SSL certificate security issue)

For users not willing to reinstall, you can fix software-center by running the following in a terminal (this will take around 10 minute to complete):

sudo update-apt-xapian-index
sudo dpkg-reconfigure software-center

Maverick September, Linux Kernel 2.6.31.14.26

New Linux release with a new kernel (2.6.31.14.26) with the following fancy updates:

• Reinstated reservation of framebuffer and GPU memory due to quirks in the Linux kernel limiting the amount of DMA-capable memory you can allocate in a single block (and a lack of contiguous memory causing a crash rather than returning an error and letting drivers work around it). This means systems which were getting the full 512MB of memory in the last update will now be getting 448MB again. Sorry. We will revisit this again in a later kernel revision.
• Fixed the "HDMI display goes into blank and never comes out unless you hotplug the HDMI cable" issue, which was down to overly aggressive power management.
• Align framebuffer stride to 32 bytes to allow it to be GPU accelerated reliably (Z430 only)
• Mainline: pull in unwinding support for div0 (now we can see what causes the Wireless Div0)
• Mainline: pull in an optimization for copy_page
• Don't wait to run the HDMI hotplug handler, and don't turn off the HDMI chip to solve an issue in particular with the Samsung SyncMaster E1920 which didn't like it when we did either.
• HDMI now defaults to using IT modes instead of CEA modes where reasonable duplicates existed (tech: siihdmi.useitmodes=1 by default, siihdmi.useitmodes=0 for old behavior). This should make sure that if your TV does it by the specifications, most people should now have "underscanned" modes instead of "overscanned" modes. Also fixes a ton of very badly designed TVs.
• "siihdmi.seventwenty" and "siihdmi.teneighty" options to the HDMI module now run through an extended list of possible modes, rather than restricting to exactly 1280x720 or 1920x1080 - now the switches are slightly misnamed as they will find the nearest native mode to these resolutions (such as 1360x768 which is a common plasma panel size) if the monitor reports them as preferred. This means most people won't need to disable siihdmi.seventwenty to get native panel resolution. 1080p now equals 1440x900, 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 if your panel supports it. For televisions which usually report exactly 720p or 1080p the behavior is absolutely unchanged, and if none of the native modes are found, it will pick 720p or the closest to the preferred mode (in case it was culled for being an incompatible mode) as before.
• GPU kernel driver simplified and optimized
• BFS scheduler patched in, PREEMPT disabled, CONFIG_HZ tweaked for i.MX timers. Gives us some performance back. CPU frequency driver disabled (locked to "performance") due to the driver being rather flakey. Smartbook battery life should be only minimally affected.
• SPI NOR works again (thanks BoundaryDevices)
• SGTL5000 audio is now a little more efficient (thanks BoundaryDevices)

Driver updates

• Xorg driver: PictOpAdd, PictOpIn blend modes
• Xorg driver: less memory hungry, more efficient (code size) allocation of memory
• Xorg driver: Xv optimizations.
• GPU: OpenVG: should now work without crashing all the time
• GPU: EGL: Some texture/glReadPixels corruption bugs fixed (glcompbench now runs without corrupted textures, for example, but FSL 3DMMP_x still has garbage)

Multimedia

• MM: multimedia via GStreamer - MPEG4 (Standard, H.264, VC-1), MPEG2 video acceleration.
• MM: mfw_v4lsink to use IPU overlay for best performance
• MM: mfw_xvimagesink for optimized Xv performance with reduced buffer copying.
• MM: no requirement for any binary codec drivers (all opensource, ask if you want it..)
• NOTE: NO audio codecs are included. As we do not license MP3 or AAC formats, your use of these codecs is your own responsibility.. If Totem or another GStreamer capable media player asks you to install new codecs, Genesi is not responsible for the quality of these codecs, and cannot assist users in installation of these codecs.

Known Issues:

• MM: mfw_v4lsink will not work properly with siihdmi.teneighty=1 - this is a bandwidth issue and cannot be fixed. It might work fine doing windowed playback at 720p or less, though, your mileage may vary (wildly). Note that the MX51 is not rated for video playback above WXGA. You will need to run "gstreamer-properties" and set your video sink to "mfw_xvimagesink" to get around this. Note that mfw_v4lsink does not show anything when you click "Test" here.
• MM: mfw_xvimagesink has a green line at the bottom in fullscreen (and perhaps Windowed mode too). Performance is adequate for videos less than 720p, for 720p and above there may be a few frame skips. This is actually a display driver bug combined with a limitation of the GPU (I420 and NV12 video must be converted to YUY2 using the CPU before blitting). Also there may be visible tearing. An updated OpenGL-based video renderer is in the works.
• Note the i.MX51 is not rated to accelerate video above 720p.
• Wireless driver still throws div0's at random intervals.
• Performance in X.org Compositing window managers (Metacity for example) is somewhat sluggish in general (although window dragging is much, much faster). Compositing is disabled by default.
• Firefox 3.6.22 is shipped by default but Mozilla don't have a "First Run" page for it, so the first time Firefox is started there will be a rather pretty "404" page telling you that you could upgrade to Firefox 6 or 7 - unfortunately this is not available at this time (Genesi do not plan to make it available for Maverick).
• GNOME background switching in the Appearance panel seems like it locks the system, but it's just slow. An updated version of "libpixman" is required to solve this. We will make this available as soon as it completes testing (2.23).
• GNU libc memory copies and string handling is not optimized for modern ARM processors. Genesi has a solution and it will be made available as soon as it completes testing (imx-libc-neon)
• The updates.efikamx.info package repository is ridiculously out of date. Will be fixed shortly and March/May/July users can just update at that point without reinstalling..
• Some source code is not available on GitHub - please just mail me and I'll send you a copy while we work this out.

Maverick July, Linux Kernel 2.6.31.14.24

An update is available on PowerDeveloper for reinstallation of systems from scratch.

Kernel Changes (2.6.31.14.24)

• Due to GPU and IPU changes, the system now has the full 512MB of memory available with no reserved blocks for GPU (64MB) or IPU framebuffer (32MB). Total available memory is up from 407MB. Framebuffer dynamically allocates a maximum of 24MB for a 1080p display, or 4MB on Smartbook. GPU resource allocation is completely dynamic with a maximum allocation of around 128MB of system memory.
  
• Headless operation now works again by setting up a less restrictive dummy framebuffer (it is a real VESA/CEA standard 640x480 mode), and not trying to set modes where there was no monitor data available.
• Backlight: no longer blanks when disabling the video overlay
• HDMI: fixed mode selection on many displays. Driver renamed to 'siihdmi' so as not to conflict with Freescale's BSP driver. Lots of performance optimizations. Hotplug support. Revert to default selection of a 720p video mode rather than 1080p to improve out-of-the-box system performance.
• Kernel: wire sys_accept4 for new udev and potentially a little better system performance.
  
• SD: card voltage is driven at a more compatible level hopefully fixing most peoples' MicroSD cards in the battery slot on the Smartbook
• Minor debug output cleanups
• Update to BSP 11.05
  • IPU: Triple buffering, lower power on screen blank, virtual screen size fixed (3x height to accomodate the triple buffer)
    
  • GPU: MMU enabled. New microcode and better resource and power gating.
    
  • S/PDIF, headphone and some GPIO pad control changes for better system operation
  • CPU frequency operation updated
  • SAHARA module now works

Distribution Changes

• Linux kernel 2.6.31.14.24 (as above)
• Overrides and differences to standard Maverick:
  • Override Update Manager prompt to update to Natty (fixes Maverick to Natty transition being totally unsupported and not recommended)
    
  • Upstart script for Efika MX:
    • Loads audio modules dynamically
    • CPU frequency driver is disabled by default on Smarttop for better performance. Smartbook users will have it enabled for better battery life.
    • eCryptfs loaded on demand
    • Creates a 64MB compressed in-memory swap (ramzswap) drive. This increases CPU performance negligibly, but reduces disk access which is more expensive.
      
  • Minor settings differences
  • flash-kernel has been replaced by a stripped down "prep-kernel" script which does the same thing, but better (and only for the Efika MX)
    
• Installer now no longer creates a swap partition. Please use swapfiles!
• Installer now aligns partitions to 4MB for better performance
  
• OEM configuration is now far more reliable (fixed in Ubuntu upstream, finally)
  
• Advanced, new Xorg driver utilizing the C2D API. Supports Triple buffered Xv overlay.
• Compliance fixes and optimizations for OpenGLES and EGL.
• Preparation for multimedia codec and FlashPlayer release

Known Issues

• PulseAudio has some known problems with CPU usage, audio may stutter
• Xorg driver has a rare issue whereby it's context gets reset, reducing overall performance
• Boot partition may eventually fill up after installing many kernel updates. Please "dpkg --purge" older kernels once you have verified the new ones are installed and working.
• SPDIF doesn't seem to be loaded for HDMI Audio-enabled displays, will be fixed in an update to imx-boot-scripts
• Recent updates to imx-lib (libvpu, libipu, and so on and so forth) may not install correctly through Update Manager due to some file conflicts.
  

All updated packages in the installer will be made available on the package repository shortly.

Don't Upgrade To Natty Narwhal (11.04), Please...

Many Efika MX users are going to be looking at a little dialog box right now from Update Manager telling them that a new Ubuntu software release is ready to be installed.

At this time upgrading to Natty Narwhal (11.04) may sound exciting, but it is not supported on any Efika MX products. Upgrading will brick your system.

We will be shipping a clean installation image, one for Maverick which disables the prompt along with an update to the package repository that will do this for installed systems, and one for Natty shortly, but we will not be supporting upgrades from Maverick to Natty from an installed system.

To reiterate, please do not tell Update Manager to "Upgrade to Natty Narwhal (11.04)" on Efika MX.

Maverick Installer (March 2011), Package Repository Signed

A new Maverick image has been created as a convenience for users. Changes from the previous image are relatively minor:

• Includes the 2.6.31.14.20 (2011.03) kernel update which adjusts the DVI monitor support
• Includes the xserver-xorg-video-imx driver update that fixes the minor graphical corruption in GNOME panels
• A package source for http://packages.efikamx.info/ has been added by default, along with the correct key for the signed repository for seamless, non-interative updates
• New version of Firefox (3.6.14) and several security updates released in the last week from Ubuntu upstream

One Annoying Bug

Note, however, there is one regression which has been plaguing us for a very long time. Due to the way the oem-config tool is run from Ubuntu, a race condition can occur that is exacerbated by the accelerated graphics drivers and boot improvements we have made recently. It happens at random, but the net effect is that rather than booting into the oem-configuration system to set up the system with a new user account, define passwords, timezones, keyboard layouts and so on, it will instead start the GDM desktop manager. The system is usable in this state (the username and password are both "oem" by the way) but a fixed user account is both unfriendly and unsecure.

There is only one fix right now: don't log in, but use the power button in the lower right of the GDM screen to Restart the system until oem-configuration runs successfully. The bug has been logged for nearly 6 months, reproduced on other platforms, and duplicated, but finally has a fix. Unfortunately the fix is not for Maverick. We are coordinating with the Ubuntu developers to solve it for Maverick very soon.

Package Repository

The package repository is also now signed. If you have added the repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory or /etc/apt/sources.list file already you can do the following to fetch the key:

wget http://packages.efikamx.info/Repository.key

sudo apt-key add Repository.key

rm Repository.key

Or if you like to use GPG (but don't mind that it gets installed into your GPG keyring)

gpg --recv-key 67841ED0 --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com

gpg -a --export 67841ED0 | sudo apt-key add -

Have fun :D

Package Repository

Users may wish to add this to their APT sources (using the method of your choice):

deb http://packages.efikamx.info/ maverick main universe

We have provided all the pertinent kernel, 2D, 3D and settings files shipped in the image for people who do not want to trash their system. The repository and builds are currently unsigned, but we're working on that. There is no deb-src reference as the source is in our github area and we don't feel like we should be duplicating it in a different way.

A couple of packages are missing (like the debug version of the kernel), but they'll be uploaded once the archive key is in place.

Pertinent updates from the latest Maverick image:

• Small kernel fix for DVI monitors. The kernel will no longer attempt to find 1080p or 720p modes on DVI since it's uncommon to connect via DVI to a monitor capable of 720p, and we feel that getting 1366x768 or native resolution is more useful to users. The HDMI vs. DVI monitor switch is determined by the presence of the HDMI OUI in the EDID CEA Extension block, and double checked against the presence of HDMI "basic audio" support.
• A minor graphics corruption bug in the Xorg driver where tooltips would leave trails on the GNOME panels, or become totally white with compositing enabled.

Maverick Installer, Linux kernel (2.6.31.14.20, February 2011)

The updated Maverick installer and "rescue image" is now online on PowerDeveloper.

Firmware Update

The firmware update has been moved to a seperate card for ease of use and to work around VFAT bugs in U-Boot. See the previous blog post for details on the changes.

Kernel Update (2.6.31.14.20 - master branch)

• Operates on ALL Efika MX models (TO2, TO3, Smartbook)
• See previous blog posts for details..

Maverick System Update

• Operates on ALL Efika MX models (TO2, TO3, Smartbook)
• Installer:
  • Asks before installing and can drop back to a terminal for "rescue card" operation
  • Creates a dedicated swap partition instead of a swap file. It's configured to be 576MB at the end of the SSD.
• OEM Configuration:
• Encrypted home directories (and encrypted swap) now work
• No longer requires a password for the "oem" user keyring connecting to wireless
• Generally better performance due to kernel updates
• Accelerated 2D and 3D drivers installed
• Rollback to Ubuntu mainline versions of some packages

All updates released by Ubuntu until today have been applied so there should be very little in terms of packages that are out of date. All systems (Smarttop TO2, TO3 and Smartbook) will boot into the installer, copy in the image to the PATA disk, reboot and ask for Language, Timezone, Keyboard settings, Username, Password, Machine Name and suchlike. This will replace the old "oem" user with one of your choice.

You may need to add yourself to the "Audio" and "Video" groups to enable sound and webcam access. You can do this as you log in to the system for the first time through the Users and Groups control panel item.


Okay, I got the maverick-installer.img.xz file, how do I install it to my system?

Simply extract the archive (WinZip, 7-Zip, or command line at your option) and use your favorite utility here to copy it to a 2GB SD card. The utilities recommended are "dd" (or dcfldd), "flashnul" on Windows, or on an existing Ubuntu installation the Ubuntu USB Image Writer (you can find a list of imaging utilities here).

As an example with "dd", you can do the following:

xz -dc maverick-installer.img.xz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0

Once you have this image on an SD card simply power off your system and insert the SD card. Power it back on and the system will install automatically and when complete, shut down automatically. You may then remove the SD card and boot into the installed system. It really is that simple.


I don't want to trash my system, can I just get the packages?

Yes, there is a package repository going up right now, wait for a blog post later today.

Efika MX Kernel Roadmap

As an aside, the kernel mentioned in the last post will probably be our last release on the .31 series. The Linux kernel maintainers no longer really care about it, and even Freescale have moved on. We considered it important, however, to actually fix bugs where they stand rather than dragging users through new kernels unecessarily.

Here is our current kernel roadmap after the release of 2.6.31.14.20 (current schedule: Friday 25th February 2011).

2.6.35.11 (longterm support)

We need to support the 2.6.35 series while Freescale uses it as the basis for their BSP releases. This is mainly because while a lot of support for the platform is going into mainline as I type this, it is not comprehensive enough to adequately support customers or the multimedia features we require (case in point, the Flash player).

Since 2.6.35.11 and forwards will be long term supported by the Linux Foundation and maintained by distributions, and because it is the basis of the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) distribution in particular, it makes sense to move all our improvements and drivers to 2.6.35.11 and forward, so we can maintain support for the BSP components required.

2.6.35.x will be maintained for customers and internal testing, and for the MX51 platform, but we will probably only make very minimal number of releases before it is "dropped" for mainline. This will mostly depend on where Freescale go with their kernel support (a potential 2.6.38/2.6.39 BSP pending at some unknown date). Whether we engage in this kernel version for MX53 is still a decision to be made. We will, however, keep supporting TO2 boards.

Development on 2.6.35 will start next weekend (Saturday 26th February 2011), or sooner :)

Mainline (2.6.38 or 2.6.39)

Using the sterling work of Sascha Hauer and other developers (hi Arnaud, Amit!) there is now support for the vast majority of the Efika MX platform requirements - Smarttop and Smartbook can be built using Sascha's imx development tree and some patches from Arnaud Patard. However it does not support some important features mentioned above, which makes shipping it a difficult decision. We do want to support this kernel, and we do want to support Linaro in getting our platform into the standard Linaro tree, since Ubuntu and other distributions will soon start using it as a basis for ARM platform support.

We will work with mainline (Sascha etc.) and real mainline (Linus, GregKH etc.) to bring in the improvements we need to get the best platform support for ARM Smartbooks and other devices as we possibly can. This will happen immediately after we release our first .35 kernel, and how well this work goes will determine how quickly we drop support for .35.

We are already picking around these trees and have booting kernels on Gentoo (good work, Steve). Any releases we make will be for DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING PURPOSES ONLY. We will not ship it on any installer or product by default, but just so we can keep everyone inline with the development track as we move forward.

Major feature additions required for shipping (not conclusive):

• i.MX51/53 VPU support in kernel (and userspace libva support for the decoder/encoders). This will also include getting JPEG decoding done in the VPU, since this is actually possible up to a certain size limitation.
  
• i.MX51/53 IPU support under DRM (GEM allocator, Connector/Encoder/CRTC)
• Vastly improved EDID support and parsing in the mainline kernel (even under DRM, the parsing is terrible, if they are to move all this into the kernel for KMS and take control away from Xorg, they have to do a better job. Saleem Abdulrasool is spearheading this for us, though, and he's done an excellent job so far..)
  
• i.MX51/53 GPU support - possibly a non-mainlined patch to add GSL with a DRM wrapper. Lots of licensing issues to deal with here.
• i.MX51/53 Security Engine support. This needs to be a kernel crypto/hashing driver and it needs to be able to be accessed via /dev/crypto so that OpenSSL and so on can adequately use it.
  

A lot of this will also require on userspace support for several very important features for the above (video decoding especially, PulseAudio and libc optimization for NEON, that kind of thing).

Future

There's always room for improvement.. we have some proposals for research projects that developers may be interested in looking into, that nobody seems to have picked up yet:

• Can we adequately use NEON in the kernel* to
  • speed up memory copies from userspace?
  • speed up TCP/IP checksumming?
  • speed up hashing?
  • speed up RAID (XOR)?
  • (requirements: ARM doesn't seem to have the use-FPU-in-kernel functions that PPC and x86 have to arbitrate access to this)
    
• Are there points in the kernel where ARMv7 architecture additions are not being used, or an algorithm or function is implemented as a core library function of the kernel (in lib/ or kernel/ in the root of the tree) where other platforms implement optimized versions?
  • Silly things to look at might be things like popcnt.
  • Do these functions get used enough that they would produce a noticable speed improvement to make the work worthwhile?

* footnote: Freescale did write patches for 2.4.x kernels back in the day, for AltiVec support at least a couple of these things (see libmotovec). Other developers pushed AltiVec and SSE support in the kernel for RAID management, so kernel support of these units does happen on some platforms. NEON is helped in this matter by having the same exception-less design as AltiVec and SSE (and AVX) which means you won't be causing kernel panics for "unhandled FPU exceptions" (as would be the case with a traditional FPU. As a side note, VFPv3 can run exception-less too, so that is also an opportunity..)

State of the Kernel (git, master branch)

Just a blog to basically summarize the work that has been done since the last PowerDeveloper release of the kernel and the "January" Maverick image which ships on current systems. We are prepping an update to be released next week with a real package repository and 3D drivers for all. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here's the kernel work log.

(to be 2.6.31.14.20 - master branch)

Core

• Operates on ALL Efika MX models (TO2, TO3, Smartbook) with a single kernel
  

• The holy grail: merging of the two platforms is complete! One kernel will boot both systems. Much less is done on initialization for both platforms and boot is faster. Several redundant portions of code have been removed.
• Serial driver updates (console polling and KGDB support)
• A brand new battery driver
  
  • All properties are exported - GNOME battery display now works as expected
  • Notification of loss of conditioning and battery initialization data (batteries that report this need to be gently nudged to re-learn charge rates etc. for reliable operation)
• Input subsystem rewritten to use real input handlers and events rather than gpio-keys which turns out not to be ideal. This improves:
  • Power key on Efika and Smartbook now provokes GNOME into asking if you want to shut down
  • Suspend and Resume are more reliable
  • Power, Wireless Switch and Lid events are watchable using "input-events" tool, as are battery insertion, low alarm and AC adapter detection (battery driver is hooked into this support)
  • Caps lock light on Smartbook is now a configurable LED trigger (if you don't care about caps lock, try using it for "mmc0" or "mmc1" status)
  
  

Display

• A new and greatly improved HDMI driver on Smarttop.
  • More CEA modes supported
  • Reinstated culling of incompatible modes
  • For better compatibility with TVs and real HDMI monitors, the resolution selection is as follows:
    • Look for a mode matching a low field rate 1080p mode (24Hz or 30Hz progressive)
    • If not found, look for a mode matching 720p (any field rate)
    • If not found, selects resolution close to the 1st detailed timing in the EDID (native panel resolution), but this mode may have been culled because it is out of range
      
    • If there is no suitable mode, force 1280x720@60
    • Override "teneighty" and "seventwenty" modes with those switches to the siihdmi driver.
      
  • HDMI vs. DVI detection is more reliable
  • Export of EDID property in sysfs (/sys/class/graphics/fbN/edid)
    
  • Hotplug support and D3 power down
  • Configures SPDIF audio on Smarttop. You may need to reconfigure PulseAudio to get audio out on your TV or AV receiver.
    
• Display code has been cleaned up, Smarttop platform code no longer interacts with the framebuffer clocking or display mode selection. IPU is no longer set up before a real screen mode is available.
• 32-bit framebuffer on Smarttop (override with bpp=)
  
• Backlight support on Smartbook has been improved to use fewer steps for the backlight brightness and when the backlight is at 0%, the backlight is powered down to support PixelQi screens better and save a little battery life on screen blanking.
  
• Backlight keys on Smartbook now work

Updates from Mainline/Other kernel trees

• ecryptfs and unionfs and securityfs and security key retention (for encrypted home dirs)
• VPU and IPU updates from Freescale BSP 11.01.00 (stability)
  
• Re-enabling DVFS and DVFS-PER power management
• Audio driver now turns clocks off when it's not playing audio and has dual FIFOs for input and output. Kernel scheduling has been updated to enable rtkit to properly configure realtime process support for pulseaudio solving most audio playback issues
  
• Redundant platform-specific code removed from core Linux parts (input, etc.)
• Smarttop ethernet should now be a bit more reliable with VLAN tagging and no longer perform unaligned accesses
• Scheduler updates to stop PulseAudio from complaining about SCHED_RESET_ON_FORK
  
• Wireless driver updates
• ARM core updates

Many many thanks go to Steve Klimaszewski and Saleem Adbulrasool for their hard work on kernel components (especially HDMI and Battery). Anyone willing may compile the kernel from the master branch on the proviso that they may not get a working system, we will be precompiling an optimized and fully packaged kernel very soon, along with all the userspace driver updates required for best performance.

Thanks for your patience!

One Kernel to Rule Them All

This is a broadcast message to ALL Efika MX Smarttop and Smartbook developers and users who like to tinker with the kernel.

We finally completed our work on merging the two platforms together. It is now possible to build ONE kernel which supports both systems - one prefix (-efikamx) and no fiddling building two kernels slowly and natively to get your work done.

All developers are encouraged to switch to the "master" branch of the repository and reset their config to match the mx51_efikamx_defconfig (you can do this quite quickly and easily by backing up your current configuration and then using "make mx51_efikamx_defconfig" in the root of your kernel tree).