Xen project Mailing List

First I want to say that I feel like I am spamming the Mirage forum with question and not providing any meaningful advancement to the project (yet). ÂI hope as my knowledge of Mirage grows these noobie emails will become fewer.

With that I bet the best development platform for Mirage would be some Apple system and a Cubietrunk board. ÂBut that layout has a minimum price tag of about $1,300 to $1,500 US dollars. ÂAs a budget beginner I have been looking at other options. ÂSince Xen allows installation of multiple operating systems and I would ideally like to be on an ARM system I have slowly worked my way down to the Samsung Chromebook 2 as the perfect solution at only $300 US dollars. ÂIf only Xen supported it.

I understand the problems with the Chromebook (Samsung has not made it easy to convert this cool 8 core laptop into the ultimate hacktop). ÂBut I was wondering if there is still any development legs left in the Chromebook, is anyone still working on it as a platform for Xen?

I am including my research here incase anyone else wants to look at the:

Samsung Chromebook 2ÂXE503C12-K01US $300 US dollars

* CPU: Samsung Exynos 5 Octa 5420 (8 Core)

* SPEED: 1.9GHz Quad A15 / 1.3GHz Quad A7

* LCD SIZE: 11.6"

* SYSTEM MEMORY: 4GB

* MEMORY: DDR3L (1600MHz)

* INCLUDED STORAGE: 16GB

* STORAGE TECHNOLOGY: eMMC

* LAN: Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n (No built-in NIC, but USB NIC supported)

* BATTERY LIFE: Up to 8.0 hours

* WEIGHT: 2.65 lbs./1.2 kilos

Xen has installation instructions that point out that "there is no serial port, for this reason you need to boot Xen blindly and wait for Linux in dom0 to start the display for seeing valuable information." ÂHowever there is a kindly provided UART hack that requires some diy soldering skills.

And of course there is the problem that the built-in keyboard does not work under Xen (you need to connect a USB keyboard for now) or that you need a USB NIC dongle to get wired internet access (or maybe any internet access).

Apart from those simple (tongue in cheek) problems it seems like the ideal development device to run both Linux and Mirage under Xen.

I guess a guy can dream of having a Mirage development laptop with 8 cores for $300.00 US dollars.

--Stephen

[MirageOS-devel] Mirage budget development platform