Another Linux mips distribution

Zafer Demirsoy

I wonder, is it possible to install onion omega to another linux mips distribution(Debian, Gentoo, etc). Can we switch on to another distro instead of OpenWRT?
And if possible is there any link or progress about that?
Thanks.

Boken Lin

Hi @Zafer-Demirsoy, it is theoretically possible to switch the Omega to another distribution, but our current plan is to focus our effort on developing on top of OpenWRT as it is much more efficient for embedded applications. Just out of curiosity, what's your reason for wanting to run other distribution on the Omega?

Zafer Demirsoy

Just curiosity Lin nothing more, so seems that it is not so close to switch on another distribution. Anyway one more thing, I havent seen some of the expansions (gps etc..) when will be seen those expansions on the store?
Thanks.

Boken Lin

@Zafer-Demirsoy We are still getting them manufactured. They have been pretty popular on our store, and we want to finish the manufacturing before putting them back onto the store again. That way we can get all the orders shipped out in a timely fashion.

Thomas Ayotte

Hi @Boken-Lin, by theoretically possible do you mean that it could be done but with a lot of work or just no one has tried? I have a lot more experience with Debian so my motivation is purely not wanting to learn another distribution of linux. If it is fairly straight forward to switch distributions I would be willing to give it a try. If not, learning new things is usually not a bad thing, just time consuming.

Kit Bishop

I think the thing to bear in mind is the resources of the Omega. It currently uses OpenWrt because this can be run within the (relatively) limited memory space of the Omega.
Don't forget:

Omega RAM space = 64MB - though suitable usage of a swap partition on a USB drive can effectively give you more usable RAM space - I have my Omega set up with a 1GByte swap disk on USB drive.
Though I suspect that extensive use of swap space would significantly slow the system down
Omega Disk space = 16MB - though this can be substantially increased by use of a USB drive - I have my Omega setup with 30GByte disk space using the pivot-overlay method in https://wiki.onion.io/Tutorials/Using-USB-Storage-as-Rootfs

If it was at all possible to run a more full blown version of Linux on the Omega within its lmitations and with reasonable perfromance - I would be interested. What would be ideal is something equivalent to the Raspberry Pi 2 but in a physical form factor similar to the Omega - we can but dream

Boken Lin

Hi @Thomas-Ayotte, I think it's definitely possible to get debian to the Omega, it's just that nobody has done it. Since the Omega has only 16MB of flash storage, you are going to need to strip a lot (probably most) of features of Debian to make it fit. This means stripping many features that make Debian Debian. If you want to retain the "feel" of Debian and still be able to fit it into the Omega, then it becomes a much more difficult problem.

My suggestion would be for you to try out OpenWRT. I've used both distributions in the past, and they are really not that different. You should be able to accomplish most tasks from OpenWRT using similar command syntax than in Debian, so it's just a matter of learning which OpenWRT command maps to which Debian command (i.e. opkg maps to apt-get).

Cheers!