Embedded Handbook
The Gentoo Embedded Handbook is a collection of community maintained documents providing a consolidation of embedded and SoC knowledge for Gentoo. It aims to cover just about all aspects of getting Gentoo to run on a SoC - from theory, to design, to practice.
General topics
Embedded fundamentals you need before playing with hardware. See individual parts below or the all-in-one-page General topics article.
- Introduction
- An introduction into the world of embedded, cross-compilers, and dragons.
- Creating a cross-compiler
- Build a cross-compiler on your machine!
- Cross-compiling with Portage
- Leverage Portage as a cross-compiling package manager.
- Cross-compiling the kernel
- Cross-compile a kernel for your system with flair!
- Compiling with qemu user chroot
- How To compile with QEMU user.
- Frequently asked questions
- FAQs for Gentoo Embedded.
Emulators
Software emulation of systems can often times be as good (if not better) than the real thing.
- Qemu
- A generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer for x86, x86_64, arm, sparc, powerpc, mips, m68k (coldfire), and superh.
- SkyEye
- ARM embedded hardware simulator.
- Armulator
- Emulate armnommu/uClinux (no-mmu Linux) in GDB.
- Softgun
- ARM software emulator.
- Hercules
- Hercules System/370, ESA/390 and zArchitecture Mainframe Emulator.
Bootloaders
From the obscure to the obscene, we'll cover some of the common bootloaders out there and how to get your feet wet with them.
- Das U-Boot
- The Universal Bootloader which supports every embedded architecture out there.
- NeTTrom
- Simple bootloader on NetWinders.
- RedBoot
- Small bootloader based on eCos which supports every embedded architecture out there.
- SH-LILO
- Port of LILO to SuperH which tends to be pretty common on that architecture.
Boards
Some boards are fun while others can be a PITA; we'll cover many of the common gotchas with systems out there.
- Hammer Board and Nail Board
- Little-endian armv4l board.
- LANTank
- Little-endian SuperH based NAS (using internal IDE) from I-O Data.
- NetWinder
- Little-endian ARMv4 based network server from Rebel.
- NSLU2
- Big-endian arm based NAS (using external USB) from Linksys.
- QNAP TurboStation 109/209/409
- Little-endian ARMv5TE NAS from QNAP.
- Marvell Sheevaplug
- Little-endian ARMv5TE from Marvell.
- ACME SYSTEMS Netus G20
- Netus G20 (ARMv5TE) from ACME SYSTEMS
- Genesi Efika MX
- Little-endian ARMv7-A from Genesi USA.
- Pandaboard
- Little-endian ARMv7-A from pandaboard.org.
- TrimSlice
- Little-endian ARMv7-A from Compulab/trimslice.com.
- BeagleBone
- Little-endian ARMv7-A from Beagleboard.org.
- BeagleBone Black
- Little-endian ARMv7-A from Beagleboard.org.
- NVIDIA Jetson TX2
- Little-endian ARMv8-A from NVIDIA.
- Intel Edison
- Big-endian dual Atom and Quark from Intel.com.
- NanoPI Neo 3 + R2S
- Rockchip RK3328 IoT device from NanoPI
- Pine64 RockPro64
- Rockchip RK3399 Single Board Computer from Pine64
- Pine64 QuartzPro64 development board
- Rockchip RK3588 Single Board Computer from Pine64
- Mango Pi MQ-Pro
- An (adorable) Allwinner D1(H)-based RISCVGCV SBC
- StarFive VisionFive 2
- StarFive JH7110 SoC with a quad-core SiFive U74 RISC-V CPU running at 1.5 GHz and an Imagination BXE-4-32 GPU
Beyond
A handbook can only go so far, so here we list resources to go the distance when we can't get you there.
- Communication
- Gentoo Embedded communication channels.
- Contributing
- Gentoo Embedded and you: the answer to the ever prevalent "What can I do?" question.
- Vendors
- Information specific to vendors who wish to help out.
- External resources
- External references to help you expand your embedded Linux knowledge.
This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.
The following people contributed to the original document: Mike Frysinger, Ned Ludd, Robin H. Johnson, Alex Tarkovsky, Alexey Shvetsov, Raúl Porcel, Joshua Saddler on April 28, 2013.
They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.