[X2go-Dev] x2go and android tablets - some progress

[brian mullan]

Pardon me for posting this to the x2go-dev list but I think this is
important because of what x2go could do for tablet computers..

I wanted to share this as I think I'm getting close to success.

I recently was persuaded by a variety of reviews to buy the $249 (US $)
Barnes and Noble Nook Color tablet.

short list of features:

   - 7 inch tablet
   - OMAP3 processor defaults to 800Mhz but I've overclocked it to 1Ghz
   (other folks go as high as 1.2Ghz)
   - WIFI, bluetooth and 1 microUSB port


Not to bore you with the details but I rooted the Nook tablet and then
updated it to the latest version of Android 2.3.3 (version name =
Gingerbread)

Then I installed Ubuntu 10.10 successfully on it.   First with the LXDI but
later switched it to Gnome (just because I'm more at home with Gnome)

I added the Ubuntu x2go repository

then
      sudo apt-get update

*Now... the interesting part...*

Because this is an OMAP3 ARM processor any  "sudo apt-get install xxxxxx"
where = xxxxxx package name
Gets automatically redirected (by Launchpad I guess) to Canonical's ARMEL
(ARM repository) to complete the download/install request.

Therefore whatever you are requesting needs to have been built/added to that
ARM repository.

The 'sudo apt-get install x2goclient" did successfully run but so far it
only finds the following in the ARMEL repository for x2go:

*p    python-x2go        - python module for X2go client support*
*p    x2goserver          - x2go server daemon scripts*

I took some pictures with my cell phone of the Nook Color terminal display
above the above & I'll attach them to this but they may be a bit hard to see
in any detail.

So... from my limited technical knowledge I "think" that its only a matter
of time until the rest of the x2go and/or pyhoca-gui  x2go clients are
supported in the Canonical the ARMEL repository.

>From what I understand from the following 2 articles:

 http://www.thevarguy.com/2011/06/16/canonical-ubuntu-server-embracing-arm-architectures/<%20http://www.thevarguy.com/2011/06/16/canonical-ubuntu-server-embracing-arm-architectures/>

A Canonical engineer at Canonical is/has built a custom 42 core ARM Cluster
to in order to do have a a proper build environment and hardware that will
allow contributors to submit and build the 20,000+ packages that make up the
Linux distribution and to expedite Ubuntu development/porting to ARM
architecture(s)... a guess at total build cost was about $4,854.

The engineer ordered a custom rack in which to house 21 ARM PandaBoards. 20
of them would be used for package building, with the 21st used as a master
board for monitoring and controlling access for each user. Each board is
also connected to a 300GB SATAII USB hard drive, giving a total of 6TB of
storage in the server<http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/canonical-builds-a-42-core-arm-cluster-server-box-for-ubuntu-20110613/#>
.

The system works by allocating time on the server when a request is received
from a user.

The master board checks for a free PandaBoard, reboots that free board, and
presents the user with a clean build environment in which to work.

Once a build has been completed the board is flagged as free and the process
is repeated.

This project looks to be ongoing and you can follow its progress over at the
dmtechtalk website <http://dmtechtalk.wordpress.com/> where Mandella is
regularly posting information and images.
The Canonical engineer's got a blog that is posted here with his progress:

http://dmtechtalk.wordpress.com/
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