Booting Linux on the BeagleBoard xM

In August 2009, I published an article on developerWorks that describes how to boot Angstrom Linux on the BeagleBoard revision C. The article has been very popular, with over 52,000 views.

Today, check developerWorks for a new article titled
Booting Linux on the BeagleBoard xM. This new article describes how to get Angstrom, Ubuntu, and Android running on the xM. I’m thankful for any comments.

Open Source Conferences 2011

I have updated my page on open source conferences to include dates and links to all of the 2011 conferences I could find. Many of them do not have dates announced yet, but I will continue to update the page throughout the year as dates become available.

The list has grown considerably in the two years I have been compiling it. There are now over 80 conferences listed worldwide, from the large international conferences (like OSCON and LinuxCon) to the project- or sector-specific ones (like GUADEC and the Embedded Linux Conferences) all the way to regional conferences (like LinuxFest Northwest and the Ohio LinuxFest).

If your favorite conference isn’t listed, here, please drop me a line in the comments and I’ll be sure to add it immediately.

These conferences are also compiled on a shared Google calendar for your convenience.

See you at the shows!

ARM TechCon Wrap-Up

I was a track chair for ARM TechCon this year. The conference, which took place about two weeks ago at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is an annual gathering for ARM licensees, purveyors, developers, and enthusiasts. It was very well attended this year, and many of the sessions were quite crowded.

As I discussed in a webinar just before the show, I had a huge list of sessions to attend. I used the Schedule Builder to organize the list, and that helped tremendously, but it was still difficult to keep sessions straight. There were many overlapping talks, which I and many other people I talked to found unfortunate – despite the pressure it puts on speakers, it is generally best to keep sessions to the same lengths so that people can transition from one to the other without having to leave in the middle. Despite that, though, it was a heck of a good technical conference.

Obviously there was no way I could attend all of the sessions I planned to, but I did go to a fair number and learned quite a lot. Here are some highlights:

• Wednesday Keynotes: ARM President Tudor Brown, Yahoo’s Ron Jacoby talking about connected TVs, and the very lively and fascinating Sehat Sutardja discussing Marvell’s commitment to ARM
• My colleague and MontaVista co-blogger Nick Pollitt gave a great talk about a source-based approach to embedded Linux development. I recorded audio for this one and hope to get it up soon on our podcast page
• I caught the latter half of my friend Gerald Coley’s presentation on the BeagleBoard xM, which was standing room only
• I listened to David Rusling discuss Linaro, and also found out about its importance in TI’s PandaBoard project
• I caught the tail end of Thursday’s keynote on mobile payments by PayPal’s Eric Duprat, which made me wish I had skipped coffee and arrived earlier
• Ian Rickards discussed the dual-core Cortex-A9, which made me want a PandaBoard even more than I already did

I was very sad to miss Khem Raj’s talk on OpenEmbedded. I do wish I could have cloned myself! Or at least sent an ARM-powered robot to all of the sessions I missed.

Speaking of which, of course I must mention the ARM-powered Lego Rubiks-cube solver – a handmade robot that must be seen to be believed!