android-x86

The resume/suspend issue has been resolved

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:30:00 +0000

The machine resume/suspend in Android-X86 is broken since Froyo release. Fyzzy7k has discovered solution for it. The detail can be found in http://groups.google.com/group/android-x86/browse_thread/thread/7b90d22458547de4?hl=en_US

Yi

Test report for Android-x86 Gingerbread on TX2500

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 03:50:00 +0000

Kyle Evans has posted test result for Gingerbread on TX2500

v2.3 - Gingerbread

Hardware Acceleration

Make & model: ATI - RS780

module: radeon

Yes, mostly, OpenGL ES2 still has bugs.

Touchscreen

Make & model: Wacom - TPC93

module: wacom

Yes, but finger coordinates are not right.

Wifi

Make & model: Broadcom - BCM4312

module: wl

Yes, mostly, Does not connect to WPA2 w/ AES authentication.

Ethernet

Make & model: Realtek - RTL8168

module: r8169

Yes

Bluetooth

Yes

Sound

Yes

Camera

Suspend

Yes, but resume requires holding a button for about 10 seconds.

Other/Notes

Bezel buttons - No

Screen rotation - No

Fingerprint reader - No

Card reader - Yes

Remote - Partially

Brightness adjustment does not work via GUI, but does via fn keys.

Test report for android-x86-4.0-tegav2 on Inspiron Duo

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 03:45:00 +0000

Azriel has posted a test result for android-x86-4.0-tegav2 on Inspiron Duo:

1. WiFi Works Great

2. Touch Works

3. GApps Work

4. Inspiron's Keyboard does not work (accept for escape key and the

arrows which rotate the display)

5. Touchpad Works

6. Multitouch seems to work

7. Wallpaper loads then dissapear

8. Camera Does not work

9. Sound not working

10. Scrollable list of running apps not working

Some new updates

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 03:36:00 +0000

About the build break on the Ubuntu 11.x that was mentioned last time, Scott McKenzie has posted a new patch, you can find it in https://github.com/cgjones/android-build/pull/1/files. I have not tested this patch yet, please let me know if you find it ok.

Another thing worth to mention is that Henri has posted a new ethernet patch for Honycomb branch. Before Chih-wei accept/merge the patch, you should be able to find the patch in http://mansoft.nl/android/ethernet.diff.tar.gz. I will upload it to the download section of android-x86.org as well.

Yi

Solutions for some issues found when compile and run ICS-x86

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:58:00 +0000

On android-x86 discussion group, some people have posted questions about the issues they found when compile and run ICS-x86. The first issue is about a compile error on Ubuntu 11 (asked by Tom tommronda@googlemail.com ). When he compiles ICS-x86 generic target, he was seeing following errors:

host C++: llvm-rs-cc <= frameworks/compile/slang/llvm-rs-cc.cpp :0:0: Fehler: »_FORTIFY_SOURCE« redefiniert [-Werror] :0:0: Anmerkung: dies ist die Stelle der vorherigen Definition cc1plus: Alle Warnungen werden als Fehler behandelt make: *** [out/host/linux-x86/obj/EXECUTABLES/llvm-rs-cc_intermediates/ llvm-rs-cc.o] Fehler 1

Robert Sharp <1130125@gmatc.matc.edu> has posted a solution for this:

Change the following line in frameworks/compile/slang/Android.mk to omit -Werror, i.e.: (Before) local_cflags_for_slang := -Wno-sign-promo -Wall -Wno-unused-parameter - Werror (After) local_cflags_for_slang := -Wno-sign-promo -Wall -Wno-unused-parameter

It seems that this issue only happens on Ubuntu 11.x where a newer GCC is installed. Ubuntu 10.04 seems to be ok.
Detail can be found in:
http://groups.google.com/group/android-x86/browse_thread/thread/47218458cf4efe10

The second issue is about kernel panic:
fuzzy7k has reported a kernel crash with ICS-x86 on his device (Turion X2). Later he tracks the issue down to a wrongly added CPU compiling flag in the file called bionic/libc/Android.mk that was changed by Google and Intel engineers. At the meanwhile Chih-wei is trying to get Intel and Google engineers to correct the flag. The detail can be found in following links:
http://groups.google.com/group/android-x86/browse_thread/thread/27148b6840e06010 http://groups.google.com/group/android-x86/browse_thread/thread/297882b56e2c660f

A Nice Feature for the Touch Only Device

noreply@blogger.com (pofeng) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Buzz from Yi Sun

Android-x86 has a nice feature for the touch only device (no to have a button at all). If you touch the right corner of the status bar, it enables a touch mode that allows you to simulate the home/menus buttons through some touch actions on the status bar (see http://www.android-x86.org/documents/touch-only-device-howto). With the Amazon test drive, when you click the right corner of the status bar, you will see a dialog showing up on the screen that tells you to wait for the function to be turned on. Even though the full feature does not work with the Amazon test drive, but it proves that Amazon is using our software.

Amazon Test Drive Use Android-x86 !!

noreply@blogger.com (pofeng) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 05:42:00 +0000

Today，our main developer Yi Sun confirmed that the Amazon use our android-x86 :p

Yi Sun - I'm 100% sure it is Android-x86. Since these icons
(battery, ethernet) are made by Chih-wei and me :-)

5:51 AM

( Buzz from here)

Several days ago, Amazon's Appstore provide a new service to let users can test the android app online before they buy it. Its name is Amazon Test Drive. ( Engadget: Amazon.com lets you play with an Android virtual machine, try apps before you buy them )

@bluestacksinc found Amazon Test Drive might run the android apps on andorid-x86 in Amazon EC2.

http://twitpic.com/4k2qse

In fact, @bluestacksinc also provide an android VM on x86 platform. ( @techoutfitters BluesStacks Can Run Android on x86-based Windows PCs -- http://bit.ly/hNUNr0 )

Hi, @Amazon, thank you for choosing Android-x86.org !!

Cheers !!

By the way, if you want to know the latest news about android-x86.org, follow @andorid_x86 or 關注 android-x86 微博

Some Statistics about Android-x86.org Project

noreply@blogger.com (pofeng) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 17:39:00 +0000

During 2009-08-26 ~ 2011-04-02,
We got 4,318,203 pageviews (1,830,098 visitis).

1,120,291 absolute unique visitors came to our site.

178,043 visits came from android (9.73%).

242,275 pageviews came from android-x86 installed machines.

Last month,
We got 43,271 visits (16.83%) from android and
65,514 pagesviews came from android-x86 installed machines

Now,
1578 people subscribed android-x86 google group
696 people followed @android_x86

Please join android-x86 community and have fun with us.

Happy hacking !!

How to steal other people's work and credit

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:16:00 +0000

Mr. Min-su, Kim

I have seen the Andriod bug fixing submitted by you in
https://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/bionic.git;a=commitdiff;h=0e5e294e978c028aff273afb0a637c73534c8ac2;hp=dbeb84850fcc446db6bc3536aecbf5266b2a36bd

I have did the same fix for Android-x86 last year right after Eclair released and my friend Chih-wei has submitted this fix to google last year. In the fix, I changed DEBUG to LINKERDEBUG and it is because that the Android-X86 has such a special global flag called DEBUG and it conflicts with the original flag defined inside the linker.c. The thing I'm curious most is that in the fix,What was your reason to change the flag name in your first patch set?

it is just an one line fix. But it took me two dame evenings to debug it. So it will be a real shame if you simply just cut and pasted it from us.

Just for your own good, I have a suggestion, next time, when you steal someone's code, please do change something based on the original code (add a ; or space or more empty lines) so that you can insist that you made the code yourself when the original owner bust you,

Yi

Android-x86 1.6 r2 is ready

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:27:00 +0000

Chiwei has released R2 of Android-x86 1.6

ReleaseNote 1.6-r2
The Android-x86 project is glad to announce the second stable release of 1.6 to the public. The live cd iso and usb image are available at

* http://www.android-x86.org/download
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/android-x86/files/
* http://code.google.com/p/android-x86/downloads/list

Test reports (success or fail) are welcome as always. Please send the reports to the Android-x86 discussion group. If you are working on Android for x86 platform, welcome to join us. See the contact information.

Key features

In addition to the features in previous stable release, 1.6-r2 contains the following new features

* Camcorder works. You can record video and sound
* An experimental support of 3G USB modem
* mksh, a better shell is added to replace android's dumb sh.
* busybox is added to provide useful command line tools.
* Touchscreen calibration (back port from eclair-x86).
* Third party apps are updated.
* A lot of bug fixes.

Released Files

* Live CD iso: android-x86-1.6-r2.iso

sha1sum: 907e69f3e10d1024b1677098b337e87253e87593
* Live USB image: android-x86-1.6-r2_usb.img.gz

sha1sum: b55494f9f4ea2e67062afd921ddee56e64e46b5d

The images have all symbols stripped so they are much smaller compared to previous releases.

Source code

As uaual, the source code is available in the main git server,

$ repo init -u git://git.android-x86.org/platform/manifest.git -b donut-x86
$ repo sync

as well as the SourceForge mirror:

$ repo init -u git://android-x86.git.sf.net/gitroot/android-x86/manifest.git -b donut-x86

Read here for how to compile the source code.

PS.
The Android-x86 project is nothing to do with the clones androidx86.org or androidx86.com.

More to come

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:14:00 +0000

The Android-x86 2.1 merge has been completed, and there are some exciting news about what is going to happen:
1. Chih-wei is working on 1.6 R2 release. This release will include a completed support for Camcorder and 3G modem.

2. Swan is working on the merge libhgl to 2.1, after that, you will have much better graphic performance on EeePCs.

3.Wallace is very busy on fixing the 2.1 application crashes, he has almost completed the work

There are rumours about Google is cooking something to compete with ipad. So..... you may want to wait for sometime before you decide to buy a ipad.
Yi

Moving to Android 2.1

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:40:00 +0000

I have spent a day to merge all 2.1 changes to Android-x86. Now, I can boot up Android-x86 2.1 on both VirtualBox and my EeePC 1000HD. There are new applications, the best one for Android-x86 is the desk clock. I knew some people use the Android-x86 to build some sort of home appliances, this desk clock can be very useful for them.
The bad thing is that many live wallpapers are not working. And even if one works, it is very slow. Now it is very critical to make libhgl to work again.
I'm also seeing that the calendar, gallery3D and Camcorder are crashing, Ya, we will fix them one by one :-). And if you can, please help.
Yi

Android rendering script on Android-X86 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:43:00 +0000

I have spent some times on trying out the rendering script with Android-x86 2.0 on my EeePC 1000HE. It is a nice feature. And it makes the graphic programming in the Android much simpler.
I have tried out all three samples, it seems that only the Film works ok (it is slow since we don't have the libhgl for android-x86 2.0 yet). The graphic effect is very impressive. I will try to enable it as a pre-installed application in our next build so that people can get some ideas.

Yi

Eclair test build 20100115

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:31:00 +0000

Build 20100115
Test build for Android-x86 2.0 on EeePC platforms

The Android-x86 project is glad to announce a new test build
20100115 for public testing. A live CD ISO and USB image are
available from our site:

http://www.android-x86.org/download
http://code.google.com/p/android-x86/downloads/list

Features:
Build 20100115 is Android 2.0 (Eclair) based and it is a release candidate for android-x86 2.0 stable release.
In addition to the features available in 1.6 release, the new build contains

* Auto detection for touch screen calibration.
* Enabled Keyguard window.
* Improved sleep and wakeup handling.
* Eclair NDK for X86 platforms
* Added backlight support for EeePC platforms.
* New framework to support different x86 platforms from different vendors.
* Kernel 2.6.32 support (not included in the prebuilt images)

Released Files:
* Live CD iso: android-x86-eeepc-2.0.iso
SHA1 Checksum: 0de5f73720e4280aa192d4eb43af63656234d430

* Live USB image: android-x86-eeepc-2.0_usb.img.gz
SHA1 Checksum: 50c2288690dc6060f0878c5c479b8ed461081e9a

Source code:
The source code is available in our git server, see http://www.android-x86.org/getsourcecode for the instructions about how to get the source code.

Test reports (success or fail) are welcome.
Please send the reports to the Android-x86 discussion group.
http://groups.google.com/group/android-x86

Known issues:
1. the libghl is not merged yet.
2. the graphic performance is very bad
3. the Camcorder does not work.
4. WIFI does not work for certain devices
5. low sound volume

We are almost there

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:34:00 +0000

We are almost there to release a new test build (well, it could be a stable release). At the moment, only the camcorder still has problem. We have cleaned up the rest items on the todo list. We are planning to make a new release as soon as the camcorder get fixed.

So after this release, what is next? Here is the part of new todo list:
1. performance tuning. I'm seeing the bad graphic performance on the Eclair. It may be caused by the missing libhgl. But it worth to investigate.
2. porting libhgl
3. multi-head support

You can propose new items if you have any.

Yi

Ethernet support for Eclair

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:26:00 +0000

I have created two patches for Ethernet support in Eclair. I don't want to check them in until I finish a complete test. For the early access, you can download it from the download section in android-x86.org

BTW--Chih-wei has also posted a nice video on youtube to demonstrate a really fast fastboot of Android-x86 on EeePC 901. You can find the video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeSg7SKmz7A

Yi

Merge the Ethernet support to Eclair

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:54:00 +0000

I'm in the San Jose Airport now, and about to head to Park city for my vacation.
I was really hoping to make the Ethernet to work before I leave for the vacation ,
I worked until this morning, but unfortunatly, there are still some issues. So, sorry
guys, no Ethernet for Christmas ;-) But I will try to get it to work before the new year for sure.
Yi

shorter Todo list

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:38:00 +0000

Ok, we (Kelly, Swan, Swallace and others) have solved three ToDo items during this week. Next,We will try to address the Ethernet and also hope to fix Camera soon.

1. Merge Etherenet changes
2. Fix the Camera issue
3. Fix the sleep issue happened after switched to phone policy (Expected)
4. Fix the home key issue happened after switched to phone policy (Done)
5. soft keyboard support (Done)
6. port libhgl from 1.6 to Eclair.

Yi

The long Eclair ToDo list

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:02:00 +0000

We are still working on Eclair merge. Most of the features have been merged in already. And I have switched to use phone policy from mid policy. Here is the current ToDo list:
1. Merge Etherenet changes
2. Fix the Camera issue
3. Fix the sleep issue happened after switched to phone policy
4. Fix the home key issue happened after switched to phone policy
5. soft keyboard support
6. port libhgl from 1.6 to Eclair.

I hope we can close first 5 items in two weeks (not include the holiday week).
Yi

The new HowTo page for debugging

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:11:00 +0000

I have wrote a quick note about how to do debugging inside Android-x86 environment. Since we are closing up the feature development on the donut-x86 branch, we believe that more and more people will start to use Android-x86 to write the real applications. So I wrote this simple HowTo to help people on debugging. You can find this HowTo in the documentation section on www.android-x86.org. If you have any question about it, please send e-mail to android-x86 discussion group directly.

Currently, we are doing a final verification on the Camcorder feature. The donut-x86 branch will have a full feature support after we pushed in the Camcorder support.

Yi

Search all Android-x86 web sites

noreply@blogger.com (pofeng) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 12:55:00 +0000

I just turned off the default search engine at www.android-x86.org. But you can use our own Google Custom Search Engine ( www.android-x86.org/search ) to search all related web sites: *.android-x86.org/* , groups.google.com/group/android-x86/* , code.google.com/p/android-x86/* , twitter.com/android_x86/*

Android 2.0 (Eclair) for x86 is built-able

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:11:00 +0000

Copied e-mail from Chih-wei Huang

Hi list,
I'm glad to tell you the good news, though it is still far from complete.
With the Yi's great help and hard working, the Android-x86 master branch (eclair) is now built-able. Get it as usual:

repo init -u git://git.android-x86.org/platform/manifest.git
repo sync

The SourceForge mirror is also available
repo init -u git://android-x86.git.sf.net/gitroot/android-x86/manifest.git
repo sync

(if you already have a donut-x86 tree, you can repo init & sync
in the same tree to save time)

Before making, you need to modify frameworks/base/preloaded-classes
to replace PhoneWindow with MidWindow.

The bad news is I only succeeded to boot it in vbox with uvesafb driver.
(i.e., select the first boot item)
See the screenshots at http://blog.android-x86.org/
But uvesafb on vbox has known issue, the screen blinking.
The normal vesa driver doesn't work.
It shown black screen and hung.
On real Eee PC, all drivers (vesa, uvesa, i915) don't work.

Anyway, if you are a developer and want to help us to debug,
just try it.

Things not merged yet:
frameworks/base:
* ethernet
* some wifi (combined with ethernet)
* preloaded-classes
* 3d acceleration
* large screen support(?)

packages/apps/Settings:
* ethernet configuration

packages/apps/AlarmClock:
* adjustable alarm sound

--
Chih-Wei
Android-x86 project
http://www.android-x86.org

Eclair is up running on VirtualBox

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:37:00 +0000

After the thanksgiving holiday, we had worked on the Eclair merge for 24 hours a day on everyday (well, I'm in US, Chih-wei is in Taiwan, so both of us worked together for 24 hours a day). After fixed audioflinger, camera code, removed opengl, fixed linker and merge conflicts and ...... when I open my e-mail box this morning, I saw Chih-wei's e-mail named "First Screenshots of Eclair on vbox", so I can not just stop myself to write this blog even longer to let people know this news. We will clean up the things and push the changes to master tree. Surely, we have a lot of fixup works need to be done, but, hi, it boots. It is a good start :-)

New git mirror is ready for use

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:49:00 +0000

To solve the git repo accessing problem from North America and EU, Chih-Wei has built a new git mirror server on SourceForge
To use it, you need to do :

repo init -u git://android-x86.git.sf.net/gitroot/android-x86/manifest.git
-b donut-x86
repo sync

Note the SourceForge manifest points all projects
to the SourceForge.net mirror.
(no matter modified by android-x86 or not)

Yi

android-x86 1.6 stable release is ready for download

noreply@blogger.com (Test Drive) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:17:00 +0000

The Android-x86 project is glad to release the new stable version 1.6 to the public. The live cd iso and usb image are available from our site, as usual:

* http://www.android-x86.org/download
* http://code.google.com/p/android-x86/downloads/list

Test reports (success or fail) are welcome as always. Please send the reports to the Android-x86 discussion group. If you are working on Android for x86 platform, welcome to join us. See the below contact information.

Key Features

Android-x86 1.6 is based on the Android 1.6, aka the Donut branch. We fixed and added many x86 specified code to let the system runs smoothly on x86 platforms, especially for netbooks. The key features of this release contain

* Kernel 2.6.29 with KMS enabled. Most netbooks can run Android-x86 in the native resolution.
* Hardware OpenGL support on i915/i945 family chipsets. This feature improves greatly the performance of 3D effect and video playback. It is turned on by default if the i915 driver is available. However, if you have trouble with it, you can disable it by adding HWACCEL=0 to the cmdline. (by olv from 0xlab)
* Wifi and Ethernet support. Both are configured from the GUI.
* A new text based GUI installer which supports ext3/ext2/ntfs/fat32 filesystems.
* Support basic bluetooth for builtin device and external bluetooth dongle.
* Keyboard layout is configurable. Ten layouts are supported in this release. To use this feature, you have to install Android-x86 to harddisk and reboot after changing the setting.
* Fn hotkeys support for Eee PC platforms.
* Add touch features to simulate Home/Menu/Back keys, useful for touchscreen only devices.
* Add software mouse cursor. Mouse wheel is also supported.

In addition to the key features, here is the list of all other improvements

* Better keyboard support, including PageUp, PageDown, and so on. The Ctrl key is usable in the Terminal emulator.
* Touchscreen support for Eee PC T91 and Eee Top.
* External usb drive and sdcard are auto mounted on plugging.
* Add shutdown and reboot dialog. To invoke it, press the power button.
* A hotplug tool to load driver firmwares.
* Audio and Camera support.
* Drivers auto detection.
* Battery status.
* Suspend to RAM and wakeup.
* Adjustable Alarm Clock volume.
* Add proxy setting.
* Be able to su in the Terminal emulator.
* Software keyboard is workable.
* Support larger resolutions.
* Chinese Pinyin IME works correctly.
* Add video player.
* Add more sample applications.
* Add third party applications, include
o OpenIntents File Manager.
o ConnectBot ssh client.
o AndAppStore client 1.5.8.
o LIME IME 1.6.3.
o RockOn 1.4.8 For Android.
* Compressed filesystem (squashfs).
* Debug mode including busybox.
* NDK for x86 platforms is supported.

Released Files

* Live CD iso: android-x86-1.6.iso

sha1sum: 9201e1eae9c4d48bc4436bce163c3eb12052603b
* Live USB image: android-x86-1.6_usb.img.gz

sha1sum: 9070bd35835f0790acfe30adef7dc21ef5a4537f

Source code

As uaual, the source code is available in our git server:

$ repo init -u git://git.android-x86.org/platform/manifest.git -b donut-x86
$ repo sync

Read this article for how to compile the source code.
Contact us

* Google group: Android-x86

http://groups.google.com/group/android-x86?hl=en

* IRC channel at irc.freenode.net #android-x86