In my last blog post I was complaining a lot about wii-linux-ngx and bashing it a little for not working better. After a long night yesterday of compiling the Linux kernel and a lot of failed boots and looking closer at the wii-linux-ngx kernel. I have to give more credits to the creators because they have done a TON of patches to get the Wii hardware supported and show output on the screen and make it work as well as it does. Even though a lot can be done to make it better.....much respect to you guys: Neagix and DeltaResero...for making it even possible to get Linux running in a usable fashion on the old Wii! The repository has not been updated in the last two years and the keys I mentioned only expired like a month ago.
I am not sure if my new Linux 5.7 kernel is actually running and not showing output or if it's really crashing. I do know that the wii-linux-ngx kernel patches contain special drivers for the Wii hardware so I just decided to try and compile that one, so I would be able to tweak that version and get a working starting point. It took me a while to figure out why this older kernel would not compile on my Ubuntu 18.04 with GCC 7 and had to make use of my recent Docker skills to setup an ubuntu 14.04 environment that has an older GCC 4 that compiles without issues. The good news is that I can now compile this patched kernel and actually modify it myself and it even boots!!! It performs slightly better than the precompiled kernel actually and I was able to update the package list and install a few extra applications I wanted.
There are still many issues to figure out like why it does not like to make use of the swap I have provided but I have something to work with. I also want to try to use Adelie Linux instead of debian as it's a lot smaller and still updated for the PPC architecture. For those that do not know Adelie Linux is based on Alpine Linux which is designed for running inside small docker containers.
Another option I am considering to get a filesystem image ready is to run Adelie in a PPC Qemu virtual machine and just setup the system that way. So it will be fully updated and ready for first boot on the Wii or something.....when I have more time to actually work on it. Spend too much on it already. What I will try soon is accessing the gamecube ports with a native Linux app running on the Wii itself! Just reading the buttons and making the gamepad rumble or something.
It's a good thing I have a long Linux history and know my way around a few of the hoops I had to jump through to get it working at all. And I have an intterest in how Linux actually boots so this is a good learning experiment....again....to get close knowledge of how it works. Some stats for those that like to know: My custom 3.14 wii-linux.ngx kernel is 6.2MB uncompressed and only 2.5 with compression! When I continue optimizing the kernel my priority will be stability but I do hope to also make it really small so it uses less memory by default. I could also try building it for IOS instead of MINI to see what that does for stability and memory usage. I did read somewhere performance would be slower with IOS but if it would than at least work I call that a win
I'll stop know
I am not sure if my new Linux 5.7 kernel is actually running and not showing output or if it's really crashing. I do know that the wii-linux-ngx kernel patches contain special drivers for the Wii hardware so I just decided to try and compile that one, so I would be able to tweak that version and get a working starting point. It took me a while to figure out why this older kernel would not compile on my Ubuntu 18.04 with GCC 7 and had to make use of my recent Docker skills to setup an ubuntu 14.04 environment that has an older GCC 4 that compiles without issues. The good news is that I can now compile this patched kernel and actually modify it myself and it even boots!!! It performs slightly better than the precompiled kernel actually and I was able to update the package list and install a few extra applications I wanted.
There are still many issues to figure out like why it does not like to make use of the swap I have provided but I have something to work with. I also want to try to use Adelie Linux instead of debian as it's a lot smaller and still updated for the PPC architecture. For those that do not know Adelie Linux is based on Alpine Linux which is designed for running inside small docker containers.
Another option I am considering to get a filesystem image ready is to run Adelie in a PPC Qemu virtual machine and just setup the system that way. So it will be fully updated and ready for first boot on the Wii or something.....when I have more time to actually work on it. Spend too much on it already.
What I will try soon is accessing the gamecube ports with a native Linux app running on the Wii itself! Just reading the buttons and making the gamepad rumble or something. It's a good thing I have a long Linux history and know my way around a few of the hoops I had to jump through to get it working at all. And I have an intterest in how Linux actually boots so this is a good learning experiment....again....to get close knowledge of how it works. Some stats for those that like to know: My custom 3.14 wii-linux.ngx kernel is 6.2MB uncompressed and only 2.5 with compression! When I continue optimizing the kernel my priority will be stability but I do hope to also make it really small so it uses less memory by default. I could also try building it for IOS instead of MINI to see what that does for stability and memory usage. I did read somewhere performance would be slower with IOS but if it would than at least work I call that a win
I'll stop know
