Gentoo on Nintendo DS?

TheChuckster · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 91

Personally, I think that the Nintendo DS portable gaming system is extremely viable as a Linux PDA. It's $150 price tag is an unbelievable deal for a PDA in general considering its dual backlit LCD screens, its touch screen on the bottom (keyboard anyone?), its 802.11 wireless, its microphone/stereo speakers, its real-time clock, its IO ports, its ARM 5 and 7 CPUs (SMP kernel -- Linux runs on ARM processors), and its long battery life.

I would like to see developers to take interest in porting Familiar, a handheld Linux distro, or a handheld Gentoo Linux to the Nintendo DS. Once how to run arbitrary executable code on the DS is figured out (flash cartridge?), writing a boot loader and drivers for the hardware components is all it will take. I commend any hackers up to the challenge.

TheChuckster · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 91

It's a shame that it only has 4 MB of RAM and ~70 MhZ processors. Looks like it may not be possible after all.

GenTimJS · Guru Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 406 Location: NH, USA

possible: likely so ...
desirable: unlikely so ...

lol, same story as linux on motorola 68k (oldworld macs and stuff)
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TheChuckster · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 91

Are you kidding me? Who wouldn't love to be able to browse the web, play MP3s, watch movies, run emulators on the best handheld gaming system out there? I can't see how you can compare this to running Linux on an antiquated desktop.

mugget · Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 11:29 pm Post subject:

Redhatter · Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2004 3:30 am Post subject:

Might be worth a try... 70MHz might seem slow, but then again, it may be all you really need.

However, the 4MB RAM is going to be a significant problem. I'd suggest sticking CFLAGS=-Os in your make.conf, and linking against uClibc to keep the size of the binaries down, as every byte of RAM is going to be precious.
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Kumba · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:44 pm Post subject:

Gentoo on the DS is a fairy tale right now. In order for that fairy tale to come true, one has to port Linux to the DS by wishing upon a star. Right now, there are several people working diligently upon this "Wishing Upon a Star" bit by building their own spaceships by which to travel to a star to wish upon.

Translated, that means two people specifically, ChaosKnight at dslinux.org and DarkFader are working on an interface between the PC and the DS Cartridges in the hopes of dumping the contents of the games for analysis and understanding the DS boot process.

After this step is completed, there remain many, many, more before Linux will boot on one of these puppies.

--Kumba
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chris... · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:18 am Post subject:

and now 3 years later
linux does run on the ds console
does gentoo work on it?

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

it's uclinux not linux...that means that the cpu doesn't have a mmu...so no swap is possible

TheChuckster · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Posts: 91

Requisition · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 29 Apr 2006 Posts: 117

Maybe something that uses the R4?
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