New looker where to start?

Giles Jones giles.jones at zen.co.uk
Fri Aug 3 17:04:57 CEST 2007


Tim Milliken <tim at snipertuning.com> wrote :

> I am looking into joining in on this project. I am a windows
> programmer and know almost nothing about Linux. Where should I start? Can
> anyone give me some starting points on getting started. Like do I have to be
> running Linux as a host development OS? I am really lost but very interested in
> this. I have thought about running Win CE 6.0 sine it is kinda like and opensource,
> MS now includes the all the source for 6.0.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Tim Milliken

Your best bet is to get hold of Ubuntu Linux and install it, either dual boot it with Windows, get rid of Windows so you're stuck in Linux land :) or get some kind of virtual PC application and install Linux with that.

Before you play around with the OpenEmbedded dev environment you might want to get familiar with the bash shell as you'll be spending a lot of time using it. Learn commands such as ls, mv, ps, history etc.. plus get familiar with environment variables and using ! to repeat commands.

You've got a very big hill to climb up, but being a developer you should crack it. The information on the Wiki is a lot more complete now than when I started setting up the dev environment.

Start with MokoMakefile:

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/MokoMakefile

and this crash course:

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Application_Development_Crash_Course

You will probably need to change your kernel configuration at some point, so you may need to get familiar with the kernel architecture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel

and how to build it on Ubuntu:

http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_ubuntu

Good luck :)

---
G O Jones








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