MNT Pocket Reform Sculpt 24.10 Preview Image
Within in the last release cycle we worked on adding and extending the support for the i.MX8MP SoC as also found in one of the SoM options for the MNT Pocket Reform and are happy to show-case a first preview version of Sculpt running on this handy computing device.
Installation
The preview image is available at https://depot.genode.org/cnuke/image and must be copied to an SD card (the existing content will be replaced).
❶ First download the compressed sculpt-mnt_pocket-2024-11-25.img.xz image file, the SHA256 hash is e56ae6f1e8c458f87385de83a832be783969c97960f6ec379b746897ae0d06a5 (you can also check it with my public key and GnuPG).
❷ Next extract the image with xz -d sculpt-mnt_pocket-2024-11-25.img.xz and copy it to the SD card with dd if=sculpt-mnt_pocket-2024-11-25.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M conv=fsync (adjust the block-device and use one of the usual tools that grants you the proper access permissions if necessary).
❸ The final step is to put the SD card in your MNT Pocket Reform and to boot the system the usual way.
Usage
It will take a few seconds until you can interact with the OS. As a rough estimate it will take at least until the small OLED display goes blank, the display should show Sculpt's leitzentrale shortly afterwards. If the display still stays dark after you waited a little while longer, please power-cycle the system (every now and then the display-driver may fail to initialize the panel properly).
As first order of business to use Sculpt expand the GENODE partition available on the SD card:
❶ Select mmc from the runtime graph
❷ Select mmc-mmcblk0 (mmc-mmcblk1 is the eMMC storage device and is best left alone)
❸ Select partition 1
❹ Click Expand and confirm the operation. It will take a while, depending on the size of your SD card, to perform the resizing.
❺ Click Use or Default (this leads to automatically Use of the partition when the system has been booted up).
Network access needs to be configured next:
❶ Select Network in top right corner of the display.
❷ Select either Wired or Wifi (both options try to acquire an IPv4 address via DHCP but the later one requires you to join a network first).
After that you are free to try out one of the various presets available:
❶ Select System in the top left corner of the display
❷ Select Presets
❸ Select falkon web browser
❹ Click Load and wait for the installation and deployment of the Falkon web browser and its dependencies. This may take a while and you can follow the progress in the status dialog in the bottom left corner of the display.
To change to the runtime press HYPER + 0 as this equals F10 and will trigger the leitzentrale ↔ runtime switch.
This configuration differs from the other Sculpt versions where F12 is normally used to perform the switch. This alteration accommodates older keyboard firmware versions of the MNT Pocket Reform where F12 may not work properly. It should not be necessary on newer firmware versions.
You may also use the + menu in the runtime graph to install and deploy other packages. Selecting Add allows you to chose different package sources. Note, that the pre-selected source, which is my index, may be empty but clicking on the URL will bring you up one level where you can select a different source.
For more information please consult the Sculpt documentation and happy sculpting!
Future endeavor
For a rounded-off Sculpt experience, functionality wise, audio and to some degree NVMe support are the features that are currently missing. Apart from that there is some polishing left to do but that is going to be a natural process. We hope to address boths topics in the coming months.