Homebrew [Release] Linux for the 3DS

Technicmaster0 · Dec 27, 2018

uyjulian said:
On the o3DS, n3DS, and n3DSXL, the SD card reader is on a separate PCB. Possible eMMC replacement?
As long as programs with more than 128/256MB are not run, the RAM situation should be fine. Did you know that Linux ran on the PS2 which the retail models had just 32MB of RAM?

Did you know that a DS Linux port exists? The retail models have just 4MB of RAM.

uyjulian · Dec 27, 2018

Technicmaster0 said:
Did you know that a DS Linux port exists? The retail models have just 4MB of RAM.

Apparently there was a "3in1" device for the DS that added 16MB of RAM.

ParzivalWolfram · Dec 27, 2018

ghjfdtg said:
I would be careful using the SD card as swap. The Raspberry Pi is a great example of what can happen. It apparently smokes brand new (micro)SD cards within months.

Days, in my case. Hours, actually, is my record.

Technicmaster0 said:
Did you know that a DS Linux port exists? The retail models have just 4MB of RAM.

Yes, but it was severely limited in what could be done and swap wasn't supported. Swap would greatly increase what can be done on the 3DS. Plus, that port only ran in DSi mode or on flashcarts that add RAM, so it was actually running on 16MB, not 4MB.

Technicmaster0 · Dec 27, 2018

ParzivalWolfram said:
Days, in my case. Hours, actually, is my record.

Yes, but it was severely limited in what could be done and swap wasn't supported. Swap would greatly increase what can be done on the 3DS. Plus, that port only ran in DSi mode or on flashcarts that add RAM, so it was actually running on 16MB, not 4MB.

It actually works with just 4MB, but more is suggested.

ParzivalWolfram · Dec 27, 2018

Technicmaster0 said:
It actually works with just 4MB, but more is suggested.

All the devices it has a release for on the old page have RAM expansions (or only work in DSi mode)

Technicmaster0 · Dec 27, 2018

ParzivalWolfram said:
All the devices it has a release for on the old page have RAM expansions (or only work in DSi mode)

"The DS only has 4MB of RAM which severely limits how much you can do with DSLinux. Thanks to the work of Amadeus and many others, the DLDI Build will now detect and enable the GBA RAM automatically on most Slot-2 cards that have built-in RAM. If you do not have a RAM extension you may experience crashes and "out of memory" errors when running most of the applications."
http://www.dslinux.org/wiki/RunningDSLinux.html

ParzivalWolfram · Dec 28, 2018

Technicmaster0 said:
"The DS only has 4MB of RAM which severely limits how much you can do with DSLinux. Thanks to the work of Amadeus and many others, the DLDI Build will now detect and enable the GBA RAM automatically on most Slot-2 cards that have built-in RAM. If you do not have a RAM extension you may experience crashes and "out of memory" errors when running most of the applications."
http://www.dslinux.org/wiki/RunningDSLinux.html

Huh. Alright, I admit defeat, you win. However, Linux, I WILL NEVER LET YOU BEAT ME SO HELP ME LINUS

Pickle_Rick · Dec 30, 2018

If this actually works it would be cool to get a Dingux port. I'm pretty sure most of the devices that run Dingux are less powerful than the 3ds and they also don't have gpu support (they use the framebuffer driver). I think it would work really well. (GBA emulation on dingux would be really cool.)

Nemos59 · Jan 16, 2019

Update? It's been a long time...

ParzivalWolfram · Jan 17, 2019

Nemos59 said:
Update? It's been a long time...

Silent rage, if you must know... trying to figure out how the hell the singular driver should be structured.

Wolfvak · Jan 17, 2019

ParzivalWolfram said:
Silent rage, if you must know... trying to figure out how the hell the singular driver should be structured.

I've been working on it for a while, ported all of xerpi's tree to 4.20 (latest when I started) and got some stuff like SD read/write working, as well as other devices.

If you want you can take a look at my code (be warned, it's very rough and unfinished, but it works and is pretty stable)

https://github.com/Wolfvak/arm9linuxfw

ParzivalWolfram · Jan 17, 2019

Wolfvak said:
I've been working on it for a while, ported all of xerpi's tree to 4.20 (latest when I started) and got some stuff like SD read/write working, as well as other devices.

If you want you can take a look at my code (be warned, it's very rough and unfinished, but it works and is pretty stable)

https://github.com/Wolfvak/arm9linuxfw

This is basically what I was trying to do. THANK FUCK you managed this, I was getting worried I couldn't do it xD

(Drivers are hard...)

Wolfvak · Jan 17, 2019

ParzivalWolfram said:
(Drivers are hard...)

I found the biggest problem to be a lack of up to date sample drivers, the LDD3 is horribly out of date and most examples don't even compile.

Another big problem is choosing the right interface - using the block layer directly isn't as efficient as using the MMC cobtroller layer, but on the other hand passing each register to be written or read to the ARM9 would be unbearably slow.

If anyone wants to help out with the repo, feel free to open a PR

Pickle_Rick · Jan 17, 2019

Wolfvak said:
I've been working on it for a while, ported all of xerpi's tree to 4.20 (latest when I started) and got some stuff like SD read/write working, as well as other devices.

If you want you can take a look at my code (be warned, it's very rough and unfinished, but it works and is pretty stable)

https://github.com/Wolfvak/arm9linuxfw

currently implemented devices
all ARM11 specific devices (SMP, timers, distributed interrupt controller)
dumb framebuffer output
HID input (face buttons + LR)
I2C controller
SPI controller
touchscreen and circle pad
MCU as mfd
notification LED (only red for now)
backlight intensity control (only intensity, no on/off yet)
RTC
battery and AC charger status report
reboot and poweroff
PXI communications with ARM9
MMC controller (SD and NAND access)

Wow, this is very impressive. This is actually useable now! (Plus, it's on Linux 4.20! Blaze it.)

Ryccardo · Jan 18, 2019

uyjulian said:
As long as programs with more than 128/256MB are not run, the RAM situation should be fine. Did you know that Linux ran on the PS2 which the retail models had just 32MB of RAM?

The real problem is that programmers don't know the value of a megabyte - 32 MB for a (non general purpose) system designed in 1999 wasn't top end but definitely usable, while the official PS2 Linux (which depending on who you ask for, was a tax elusion scheme, a PR boosting stunt, or a gimmick) released 3-5 years later would feature software providing acceptable performance by then's standards

Whereas less than a decade ago, the early versions of Gnome 3 made one of the heaviest desktop environments with the least user-accessible customization!!

Luckily most Linux systems ~~are~~ can be modular enough (in theory and practice) to allow choosing more efficient components; but I would be lying if I said that Dillo, Lynx, or even Midori have compatibility comparable to the big name browsers*...

(* comparison cherry picked to rant at modern ~~browsers~~ operating systems explicitly designed for (usually) sandboxed, hard-to-control without extensions, arbitrary code execution from arbitrary sources you didn't choose)

ParzivalWolfram · Jan 18, 2019

Wolfvak said:
I found the biggest problem to be a lack of up to date sample drivers, the LDD3 is horribly out of date and most examples don't even compile.

Another big problem is choosing the right interface - using the block layer directly isn't as efficient as using the MMC cobtroller layer, but on the other hand passing each register to be written or read to the ARM9 would be unbearably slow.

If anyone wants to help out with the repo, feel free to open a PR

So apparently devkitPro drank the coolaid and wants to force me to use pacman to download it. Can you send me a build of your arm9linuxfw?

uyjulian · Jan 18, 2019

ParzivalWolfram said:
So apparently devkitPro drank the coolaid and wants to force me to use pacman to download it. Can you send me a build of your arm9linuxfw?

Just for informational purposes, why do you NOT want to use pacman?

ParzivalWolfram · Jan 18, 2019

uyjulian said:
Just for informational purposes, why do you NOT want to use pacman?

Because I already was forced to install apt on Fedora for a different thing, and forcing this is bullshit.

Wolfvak · Jan 18, 2019

ParzivalWolfram said:
Can you send me a build of your arm9linuxfw?

No, my version of arm9linuxfw is tightly coupled to my kernel tree so you have to compile the full thing in one go.

ParzivalWolfram · Jan 20, 2019

Wolfvak said:
No, my version of arm9linuxfw is tightly coupled to my kernel tree so you have to compile the full thing in one go.

The entire Linux package? Well... shit. I could send you the config files for generation, I guess...

iamperson98 · Jan 22, 2019

can you still play 3ds games with linux installed? I want to make sure before i install.

Homebrew [Release] Linux for the 3DS

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