Blame sparse updates on Yeeloong repo

The problem with missing an update is that one you miss one, it’s harder to do the next one. Once you miss two … well, it’s time to give up the Web site.

Well, maybe not that extreme, but I’ve certainly been far more productive than the site would suggest.

First off, I owe a huge apology to Jan Ask, who made a very generous WineLocale donation last month. I have been feeling extremely guilty about not having the beta out yet. Jan, I hope you’ll forgive me for that one.

What happened was my laptop. And then the laptop. And then the Linux group. And then the laptop again.

The repository

The answer to what I’ve been doing can be found at http://medan.cinnamonpirate.com/, my new repository and one of the first few independent ones for Loongson packages. I’ve been working hard on resolving compile issues and contacting authors when I fail to, to fill in the blanks in Debian’s offerings.

These packages are all compiled in gcc 4.3 with code profiling, so they are the fastest you can get until gcc 4.4 goes stable. gcc 4.4 will add mtune and march flags for the Loongson 2F CPU, as well as adding support for Loongson’s media opcodes, which are not supported in gcc 4.3.

Patches and fixes

The media opcodes interest me, because I’ve had to fork the second revision of Lemote’s SiliconMotion Xorg driver, since gcc 4.3 can’t deal with the new inline assembler optimizations present in revision 3. The fork fixes a driver problem which has been present since 2003: red and blue are backwards, and the driver fails to report any of the XvImage modes it supports to xvinfo.

I also released a new kernel image based on Lemote’s 2.6.27.1-yeeloong. It adds static support for SquashFS and UnionFS, which are essential for bringing up the system on a Yeeloong 8089A, which has only 2GB of flash disk space–1.8GB after formatting it to carry an ext3 journal. The kernel also steps up the interrupt cycles to 1000Hz, which brings it in line with Lemote’s choice to enable full kernel preemption.

I separately packaged a few necessary extra modules which were built out of tree: these modules create necessary /proc/ devices for APM so battery meters will work, add the r8187 driver from Lemote to replace the broken rtl8187 in-kernel Wifi driver and “oc,” an overclocking modules by which users can increase their FSB speed in userspace.

Emulators

With the help of byuu and the Mednafen author, I have packaged a hacked Dosbox which allows the emulator to use a YUY2 overlay instead of the default UYUV overlay. This allows full-screen scaling of games with no speed loss. There is one fluke, and that is Dosbox writes YUV4:2:2 as two pixels instead of writing the YV on top of the YU as one pixel. This doubles the display width making it impossible to see the far right side of the command prompt when using overlay mode. I mentioned this to the authors, but the glitch sounds intentional.

As for other emulators, I have released packages for Xnp2, a PC-9801 emulator; quasi88, a PC-8801 emulator; bsnes, byuu’s Super Famicom emulator; snes9x-gtk, a Snes9x overlay by Bearoso which gives the emulator a very nice GUI; mednafen, the multi-system emulator; and xmame-x, in which I used code profiling to improve the performance in quite a few game drivers.

Regarding performance, everything runs at full speed except bsnes and the PC-FX emulation in mednafen. I get slight lag in Salamander 2 in xmame, and Daraku Tenshi is too slow to play, however CPS1/2 and Neo-Geo games work fantastic. I compiled gxmame to provide a quality frontend to it.

As for scaling, mednafen, Xnp2 and quasi88 cannot go full screen. Because all current Loongson systems rely on SiliconMotion graphics adapters, and because SiliconMotion cards lack 3D acceleration, the only overlay available is Xv. mednafen is getting an SDL overlay in its work in progress build, so the next release should be able to operate at full screen. Gameboy, Gamboy Color, Gameboy Advance, NeoGeo Pocket, Wonderswan, Famicom, PC-Engine, Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear run full speed when unscaled in x11 surface writing, so there is no reason to suspect these will not run full speed in full screen once the new overlay option is available.

I have not mentioned MSX. The only MSX emulator that is any good on Linux is OpenMSX, which does run at full speed if scaling is off. Unfortunately, the authors do not support an SDL overlay–only OpenGL–so playing full screen is impossible.

Beta desktop

Also of interest is the Xfce 4.6 beta, which I built for Loongson using the source code packages from Corsac, the Xfce package maintainer for Debian. The new Xfce is light and snappy, with a configuration system more similar to Gnome’s. It also brings in its own battery manager so you can remove another Gnome program.

The desktop also underwent many improvements, including a draggable selection box like you would find in Thunar. Still no SVG wallpaper, though it has some other neat features.

Possibly the most dramatic change is to the configuration, which is now handled by a daemon that programs can query. It’s a little similar to how Gnome works with its gconf system, which is itself rather similar to the Windows Registry.

I have packaged the gnome2-globalmenu, since lots of people love it and 600 vertical pixels is a pitiful amount for any LCD. Using a globalmenu saves lots of screen space. To avoid unwanted configurations for opposing window managers, I made two packages: gnome2-globalmenu an xfce4-globalmenu. You can grab whichever fits your system.

The distribution

Earlier in the month, I released a distribution image for the Lemote Yeeloong 8089A. This was the first Linux image to work on the system aside from Lemote’s own. If you want to try it, you can get the torrent from linuxtracker.org.

One of the primary concerns in preparing a disk image for the 8089A is capacity. With only 2GB available, you need some tricks and smart choices. My image provides a full system with development headers, my kernel, all extra modules, Abiword and Gnumeric (to avoid the OpenOffice.org payload) and more while leaving the user about 650MB free–far more than Lemote Loonux did.

The disc image lacks an installation system. At the moment, the best way to install it is to format a 4GB USB stick to ext2, untar the OS to it, then copy the tarball itself to root.

Boot the Yeeloong or Gdmium with your USB stick inserted and get to the pmon prompt. Enter these commands:


load /dev/fs/ext2@usb0/vmlinux-2.6.27.1-medan
g console=tty root=/dev/sda1 no_auto_cmd


When it boots up you will be in Gnome. All passwords are set to “loongson” by default. To install the image, run gparted and delete all your partitions on /dev/hda. Make one new partition, then mount it like `mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1`, then untar the tarball from root to that path.

It is critical you do not untar in another folder and attempt to move the files: the system will not be able to boot.

Assuming you haven’t already mangled pmon’s auto-start features, the new OS will come up immediately in place of Lemote Loonux. The new boot.cfg adds an entry for booting a vmlinux off your USB device.

No, you cannot do this with an SD card: pmon does not support booting from SD cards.

Odds and ends

Other packages of interest include byuu’s bview, for looking at binary graphics; tsukuyomi, for applying and creating UPS patches; and xkas, his assembler for the Super Famicom.

You may also want ucon64, which applies IPS and PPF patches, as well as doing many other things to ROM images.

The epiphany-gecko package supplied includes some patches from ArchLinux which force pop-ups to open in new tabs as they do in Google Chrome. This is nice for a laptop, since you cannot middle click to open in a tab from your Synaptic touchpad.

For art fans, I made some SVG images of the Longmeng and Loongson logos, as well as an Loongson-branded SVG wallpaper for Gnome. All can be found at the bottom of the repository.

Lastly, I packaged ChibiTracker which is a fantastic little ImpulseTracker clone.

Enjoy! And now it’s time for me to work on WineLocale.