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Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / Re: Sailfish Ending Kernel 3.x Support / Sauna 4.6.0 Release Last for Gemini PDA

« on: April 23, 2024, 05:43:08 pm »

As per recent announcement the upcoming Sauna 4.6.0 release will be the last update for kernel 3.x based devices.
The list of devices affected includes the Gemini PDA.

This follows the restructuring of Jolla:
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-community-news-30th-november-jolla-reborn/17473.
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/release-notes-struven-ketju-4-5-0-eula-update/18127
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-community-news-22nd-february-2024-4-6-0-update/18022
 

• 4.5.0 EULA update enables us to provide Sauna SW release as over-the-air update for all currently supported devices (Jolla C, Jolla Tablet, Gemini PDA, Xperia X, Xperia XA2, Xperia 10, Xperia 10 II, and Xperia 10 III)
• stopping selling new licenses for older devices on the Jolla Shop 96
• The 4.6.0 Sauna would be the final release for older devices (Jolla C, Jolla Tablet, Gemini PDA, Xperia X)
• SW releases after the 4.6.0 Sauna release will only be available for devices that we support through the Jolla Shop

What if someone brought over the vendor kernel to something newer such as 4.4?  I've been working on bringing the kernel vendor code over to the AOSP 4.4 kernel but I've postponed that venture for now.  4.4 LTS and 3.18 LTS are both similar enough to where I think it's very doable.  I have very limited knowledge and experience with the C programming language and Linux kernel development though, but I'm hoping that my project is one of those cases where knowledge of both subjects aren't needed so extensively (I hope).  I'm quite optimistic as a lot of the code that was vendor-specific was already there with the 4.4 LTS kernel.  There's a good chance that a lot (or at least a decent chunk) of the code left for me to bring forward won't even need to actually be brought forward as it would already be there.

I found this also: https://github.com/NotKit/kernel-4.9-geminipda
It looks like the AOSP 4.9 with vendor patches applied to it.

Do you happen to know where I could get a Sailfish OS image for the Gemini PDA?  They took down the Gemini PDA from their webpage rather unfortunately but I'd like to give Sailfish OS a try on this device.  I don't believe there is a technical reason to why newer Sailfish OS releases wouldn't work on the ancient 3.18 LTS kernel.  I wouldn't be surprised if Sailfish OS doesn't start using any actual Linux 4.x kernel features until sometime later.

2

Gemini PDA - Linux / Modern Debian

« on: April 21, 2024, 09:25:07 pm »

I tried to do a partial upgrade from Debian 9 to Debian 10 so that I could then resolve any kind of package conflicts to do a full upgrade.  The partial upgrade was successful but I got the same problem as others have when they tried to upgrade to Debian 10.  I figured out what had happened.  I remotely control my Gemini PDA via ssh and edited the xorg.conf file.  It looks like something surrounding the 'hwcomposer' driver is failing with Xorg as using 'fbdev' gets me a screen.  I had to also use 'xdm' instead of 'sddm' as 'sddm' failed to load.  I'm going to look into this further, but it looks like the Xorg fork being used to get 'glamor' rendering with the 'hwcomposer' method is failing severely and it seems to be very outdated.  Maybe a Wayland desktop environment that supports 'hwcomposer' might help with this.

I'm unsure if Gemian uses a heavily modified version of Halium or just the Halium initramfs.

As far as the kernel goes, I tried to bring the vendor code over to AOSP 4.4 and it's quite a lot to say the least.  I postponed it for now though.  It may not even work at the end of it all, who knows though!