Pidora 18 (Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix) Released!

Andrew,

   Thanks for showing up in this forum to make the announcement!

   Can you tell us if this release fixes the firmware problem that

prevented the previous F18 release from working with Hynix memory?

http://trac.proximity.on.ca/projects/rpfr/ticket/161

https://fedorahosted.org/arm/ticket/65

  Will there be release notes showing what problem reports have been closed?

   Can you tell us if there are any plans to maintain this release,

unlike the F14, F17, and F18 releases?

   Can you tell us if there are any plans to consolidate your two

bug tracking systems into a single system (and remove the spam)?

Coder27,

The current firmware we are using is Version 20130415git1c339b1, this is the firmware that was last committed on May 14th.

More information will be posted on pidora.ca or the pidora wiki when available. We will be maintaining this release.

Bug tracking should be done with, as stated by the pidora wiki: http://trac.proximity.on.ca/projects/rpfr/

The current process for tracking bugs will be updated in the wiki: http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_18_Bug_Tracking

Andrew,

   Thanks for the reply!

   I'm curious what's your role with the Pidora project?

I don't see you mentioned at:

  http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/268-The-OSTEP-Team.html

but I see you now at:

  http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/User:Oatley

> We will be maintaining this release.

That's really good to hear.

I hope you close the problem reports that the release fixes.

Will you also be maintaining the soft-float F-18 release, such as

updating its firmware to work with Hynix memory, or is it dead now?

Will there be a link from your pidora web page to your meeting minutes?

Will you be cleaning out the spam from your bug tracking site?

I see 6 open problem reports at:

   http://trac.proximity.on.ca/projects/rpfr/report/1

5 of which contain spam, and the remaining one (#161) shouldn't

be on the Open list.

Coder27,

I'm responsible for the infrastructure for the OSTEP team(not just pidora), though I am quite new, started in January. My responsibilities include making sure the network, servers, builders, and build system are running. Non-pidora related I work with unstable development boards and making sure services for the OSTEP team are working. I added myself to the list: http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/User:Oatley.

Can't say on current plans for soft-float F-18.

We are working on a solution for the spam(it may already be fixed), still need to clean out the existing spam. Not sure if our meetings will ever end up on the pidora page.

Andrew,

>  Not sure if our meetings will ever end up on the pidora page.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.  Where do you intend your minutes

to be linked from?   I hope you're not wanting to keep them secret.

Some OSTEP minutes are already published at:

   http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Category:OSTEP_Meeting

although these are very hard to find, and are somewhat in shambles.

For example, the minutes labeled:

   OSTEP Meeting 2012-04-11 (note 2012)

and

   OSTEP Meeting 2013-03-11 (note -03-)

both appear to actually be minutes of 2013-04-11,

and many meeting dates show no minutes at all.

As far as I know, there's no OSTEP blog or public mailing list,

so the minutes are all we have to go on besides the wiki which

has been very poorly maintained.

What are your plans for transfering your open problem reports from

your bug tracker at https://fedorahosted.org/arm to your other tracker

at http://trac.proximity.on.ca/projects/rpfr ?

Coder27,

I'm definitely not the person to answer all these questions, but I'll give it my best.

We will not be keeping anything a secret. I don't think the OSTEP meetings will be placed on pidora.ca, since not everything is pidora related, though there may be some better ways to publish pidora information. That is mostly likely going to be decided by another member of the OSTEP team, I can't give information on that.

We are currently looking over the two different tracking systems, and all the open tickets. Hopefully more information and progress on all of these things will be out soon.

Thanks for your comments, it is good to know what people may be worried about.

Andrew,
  Sorry to bombard you with a bunch of questions that you aren't

the right person to answer, but you're the only person from Seneca who

has dared to show his face in this forum since the first RPi release.

We have been completely puzzled why F14 was released and then

withdrawn with no replacement until F17, and then why F18 was

released with no maintenance, and why your bug trackers are

in shambles and why your meeting minutes are in shambles,

and why your wiki is in shambles. 

If this is a serious project, we would like to see a single bug tracker

without spam, release notes with releases, plans for F19, plans for

soft-float F18 maintenance, a maintained wiki, minutes of meetings, etc.

Coder27,

Noted. Thanks again for the input, we'll do our best. If you're interested look over the release material and give Pidora 18 a try.

Andrew,

   I looked over the release material, and was distressed not to find any release notes

saying which problem reports were fixed.  If there have been improvements in speed,

I don't see any benchmarks to demonstrate that, either in comparison to the prior

soft-float F18 or to the competing Raspian hard-float.

  I can't even find Pidora mentioned with the other releases at:

http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/raspberrypi/raspberrypi-fedora-remix/

The F18 soft-float did have release notes, at:

http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/raspberrypi/raspberrypi-fedora-remix/18/images/RaspberryPi-Fedora-Remix-18-Release-Notes.txt

but with sloppy mistakes:

  "Model A has been redesigned to have 512Mb RAM"

but this should say 256, not 512, and MB, not Mb.

   "The Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix 17 will be the second version of the Remix released."

but this should say 18, not 17, and third version, not second.

    "firmware version: raspberrypi-firmware-20120727git0d88fba-1"

I don't really think it's quite that old.  I think it's dated Nov 23, 2012,

rather than Jul 27, 2012.

   3 fixed problems are listed, but without problem tracking numbers.

Andrew,

   Are you maintaining two separate wiki's now?

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora

There is a lot of obsolete information in the first wiki, and even some

in the second, such as:

"The Remix was produced at the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology, which hosts the Fedora ARM build system."

I believe the Fedora ARM build system is hosted now in Phoenix, AZ, not Seneca.

"For suggestions on packages to meet particular needs and which run well on the Raspberry Pi, see Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix 14 - Suggested Packages."

I believe this Remix 14 link is no longer specifically applicable, since C is

included now with Pidora.

The FAQ at

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix_FAQ#Why_is_the_Remix_slow.3F

currently says:

"The GUI in particular is slow, because the 2D graphics (the X Window System) are not yet connected to the 3D graphics processing unit on the SOC."

Similarly, the Educational Pilot currently says:

"At this time, regular 2D graphics do not use the 3D accelerator built into the Pi. Therefore, the regular graphical user interface is somewhat slow. The 2D graphics will be hooked up to the 3D accelerator at some point in the future."

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Educational_Pilot

Are you still trying to accelerate X Windows using the 3D GPU? 

Or have you given up on that?

Andrew,

   Are you maintaining two separate wiki's now?

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora

There is a lot of obsolete information in the first wiki, and even some

in the second, such as:

"The Remix was produced at the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology, which hosts the Fedora ARM build system."

I believe the Fedora ARM build system is hosted now in Phoenix, AZ, not Seneca.

"For suggestions on packages to meet particular needs and which run well on the Raspberry Pi, see Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix 14 - Suggested Packages."

I believe this Remix 14 link is no longer specifically applicable, since C is

included now with Pidora.

The FAQ at

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix_FAQ#Why_is_the_Remix_slow.3F

currently says:

"The GUI in particular is slow, because the 2D graphics (the X Window System) are not yet connected to the 3D graphics processing unit on the SOC."

Similarly, the Educational Pilot currently says:

"At this time, regular 2D graphics do not use the 3D accelerator built into the Pi. Therefore, the regular graphical user interface is somewhat slow. The 2D graphics will be hooked up to the 3D accelerator at some point in the future."

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Educational_Pilot

Are you still trying to accelerate X Windows using the 3D GPU? 

Or have you given up on that?

Coder27,

>Are you maintaining two separate wiki's now?

The Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix wiki is related to the soft-float version, while the pidora wiki is related to our new release.

Checking out some of the errors you pointed out.

Related to making windows faster using the GPU, you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol). I believe they have released support for the raspberry pi as well.

Just to note, some stuff will be fixed and cleaned up regarding the wiki and other materials.

Thanks again.

Andrew,

   What are your plans with regard to the kernel?

The kernel version is said to be 3.6.11.

Do you have plans for 3.8.x?

Do you know what is the date of the latest patch to 3.6.11

that is included? 

Does it include the recent USB fixes for keyboards

missing and repeating keys?

The wiki at

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix_FAQ#What_are_the_Future_Plans_for_the_Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix.3F

currently says:

"The number of packages in the Raspberry Pi-specific repositories is expected to diminish over time -- by the time that Fedora 19 is released (May 2012), the Raspberry Pi repositories should hopefully contain mot much more than the VideoCore libraries and headers. (If these were ever to become licensed these under an OSI-approved license then the need for a Remix will be eliminated, and the Raspberry Pi could be directly supported as a Fedora target)."

Aside from the mistake in the date, May 2012 should be May 2013 (or later),

has the number of Pi-specific packages diminished over time as expected?

Do you still expect F19 to contain "mot [sic] much more than VideoCore libraries

and headers"?

With the opensourcing of the all the ARM-based libraries and headers,

is there still a need for a Remix?

The same wiki section also says:

"The future of the Remix is closely tied to the plans of the Fedora ARM project. By the release of Fedora 20 in November 2013, the ARM architecture will hopefully be promoted to Primary Architecture status, meaning that the ARM release will be done in lock-step with the x86 PC release."

How have the plans for the F19 RPi Remix been affected by Fedora ARM dropping

support for pre-v7 versions of ARM?

Are you still expecting Fedora 20 to include RPi as a primary architecture?

Andrew,

You wrote:

>Related to making windows faster using the GPU, you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol). I believe they have released support for the raspberry pi as well.

This doesn't address my question.  I was specifically asking about X11 acceleration using the GPU,

which I don't think Wayland does.  Wayland isn't a direct replacement for X11, so an X11 application

would be running on top of X11 which would be running on top of Wayland, which would be no faster

than before at drawing the contents of windows, although moving windows around on the display

would presumably be faster.

Can you give us a clear statement about whether work or planned work on X11 acceleration using the

GPU as described in the wiki has been abandoned?

Edited to add:

Today we saw examples of unclear statements on X11 GPU acceleration plans from RPF moderator Davespice,

who wrote:

"(ottd is a bit slow though since it runs under the X desktop for which there are no GPU drivers for the Pi yet)"

and

"Not all software on the Pi makes use of the GPU though, for example the X desktop. This is all being drawn by the main ARM CPU which is why web browsing is so slow. It is hoped that X GPU drivers for the Pi will be released at some point whereupon the X desktop responsiveness will be as good as one would expect."

on this thread:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=44663

On October 24, 2012 we were told by Alex Bradbury:

"There’s still the problem of optimising client-side rendering of each window. Simon Hall has done some interesting work on XOrg that we’re working with him to package up."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221#comment-34969

But on May 24, 2013 Eben told us:

"We’ve made the decision to bypass X completely."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4053

Coder27,

>This isn't a big deal, but I don't see why Pidora should have less

>visibility than the other Fedora RPi Remixes.

The idea is that by using pidora.ca, it will get more visibility

>The new Pidora release notes at:

> http://pidora.ca/pidora/releases/18/release-notes.txt

>still fail to say what problem reports have been fixed.

>The problem most anxiously awaited is the Hynix RAM

>problem:

We will be looking into what is left to get working.

More information and corrections are still to come. A lot of your questions might also be better directed in IRC freenode #seneca, some of the arm ones in #fedora-arm. Don't mean to turn you away, but unfortunately I cannot give answers to most of them.

Andrew,

  I prefer to use this forum to ask RPi related questions, where the answers are

visible to others here.  We have been carefully tracking Fedora's progress here

and puzzling about its silence for an entire year:

http://www.element14.com/community/thread/18095?tstart=0

It's wonderful that someone finally has come to respond, even to a limited extent.

This forum is wide open for Seneca to publicize what it's doing.

Andrew,

   The Pidora installation instructions say:

"Do not use a MicroSD card with an adapter -- it will not be recognized by the Raspberry Pi."

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_Installation

I think this bug has been fixed for a while now.

The Pidora administration instructions at:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora#System_Administration:_Managing_the_Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix

mistakenly refer to:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix_Administration

rather than

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_Administration

The Pidora FAQ says:

"It includes some software which cannot be included in Fedora because it is not licensed under any of the licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative."

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_FAQ#What_is_Pidora.3F

I don't think this is true.  The ARM-based code has been opensourced, and

I believe Fedora policy allows the RPi's firmware to be proprietary.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Binary_Firmware

The Pidora "getting help" instructions neglect to mention the active

RPi community at element14, and also neglect to mention any OSTEP

resources (blogs, mailing lists, meeting minutes).

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora#Getting_Help

The main purpose of Pidora is to enable hard-float, in order to make floating point

operations faster, but the word "float" or "floating point" does not appear

anywhere in the Pidora Announcement nor Pidora Release Notes.

The Pidora Release Notes should make clear that the firmware is actually

dated May 15, even though is named "0415", which would be April 15.

Andrew,

  Are there plans to publicize OSTEP?

I notice that it is not included by name in the "projects" panel on the

left side of the CDOT main page at:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

The OSTEP page at:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Category:OSTEP

neglects to include a link to the OSTEP meeting minutes at:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Category:OSTEP_Meeting

And Chris Tyler's OSTEP blog post at

http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/268-The-OSTEP-Team.html

doesn't link to the OSTEP page (or vice versa).

Coder27,

>The Pidora installation instructions say:

>"Do not use a MicroSD card with an adapter -- it will not be recognized by the Raspberry Pi."

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_Installation

>

>I think this bug has been fixed for a while now.

You are correct, this bug is fixed. Changes made.

>The Pidora administration instructions at:

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora#System_Administration:_Managing_the_Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix

>mistakenly refer to:

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Raspberry_Pi_Fedora_Remix_Administration

>rather than

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_Administration

Fixed.

>The Pidora FAQ says:

>"It includes some software which cannot be included in Fedora because it is not licensed under any of the licenses >approved by the Open Source Initiative."

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_FAQ#What_is_Pidora.3F

>I don't think this is true.  The ARM-based code has been opensourced, and

>I believe Fedora policy allows the RPi's firmware to be proprietary.

>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Binary_Firmware

Yes, Fedora does allow the firmware. Changes made.

>The Pidora "getting help" instructions neglect to mention the active

>RPi community at element14, and also neglect to mention any OSTEP

>resources (blogs, mailing lists, meeting minutes).

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora#Getting_Help

Looking into this. Will get some of this done soon.

>The Pidora Release Notes should make clear that the firmware is actually

>dated May 15, even though is named "0415", which would be April 15.

Fixed in release notes.

>Are there plans to publicize OSTEP?

>I notice that it is not included by name in the "projects" panel on the

>left side of the CDOT main page at:

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Pidora was added to projects, will have to look into plans for OSTEP. Changes are taking place.

>The OSTEP page at:

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Category:OSTEP

>neglects to include a link to the OSTEP meeting minutes at:

>http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Category:OSTEP_Meeting

Good point. Changed.

>And Chris Tyler's OSTEP blog post at

>http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/268-The-OSTEP-Team.html

>doesn't link to the OSTEP page (or vice versa).

I'll look into this.

Thanks again for the help.

Andrew,

  Good job!  Thanks.

Andrew,

    The Pidora FAQ still has an obsolete reference (that I didn't originally point out) to

"proprietary" software that can't be included in Fedora:

"In the case of the Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix, the proprietary software provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the SOC vendor Broadcom cannot be included directly in Fedora."

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_FAQ#What_does_the_term_.22Fedora_Remix.22_mean.3F

I think the sticking point now is that the RPi software although no longer proprietary,

is not suitable for inclusion in Fedora due to for example the nonstandard use of FIQ

in the USB driver.

Edited to add:

The Pidora wiki at:

   http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora#Helping_with_the_Remix

says: To learn why this is a Remix and not a direct Fedora release, please see the FAQ.

but should say "see the Pidora FAQ" at:

   http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Pidora_FAQ