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Comment by kwhitefoot | Hacker News Reader

Surely an ESP32 should be able to run Linux. Then you would get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

After all Linux used to run on 486, BSD ran on 386.

> Surely an ESP32 should be able to run Linux. Then you would get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Yes, but it wasn't easy, and only recently achieved. [0][1][2][3] Unfortunately, for both those examples, the WiFi module itself had to be disabled so that Linux had enough memory to function.

Though, of course, they should be able to do something like my favourite tiny Linux board, which wired in extra RAM. The 8bit Atmega [4], that only takes 4 hours to boot Ubuntu.

[0] https://twitter.com/xiaohui10556190/status/14163071689916047...

[1] https://whycan.com/p_66202.html

[2] https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/07/18/linux-5-0-esp32-proc...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/comments/dtlj7n/booting_linux...

[4] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/04/02/191203/gnulinux-ru...

Interesting, so linux was ported to RISC-V architecture, and there's a RISC-V emulator that runs on ESP32. I guess this means all the virtual memory is emulated. I think the more interesting step is if the successors to ESP32 have virtual memory. In the meantime, I found playing with freertos on esp32 lots of fun.

There are also ESP32 variants that are native RISC-V (but not with MMUs)

ESP32 is a microcontroller with tiny amounts of RAM and flash storage (smaller than any 386 machine). It's not going to run anything close to a "real" OS. You'd want to do the opposite: use a machine like OP's for near bare-metal programming, where the only things it's running are a minimal kernel and a custom init binary with your actual, single-purpose app. That way you make the best use of a limited amount of RAM.

You can get similar type of modular RISC-V + Linux systems on AliExpress if you want to do something closer to what OP is doing. Lichee is one of them who seem to have a crazy number of modules (I've not tested any of them - they could well be total junk), including also ARM boards and FPGA boards.

I don't know about Linux, but how about a (really early) BSD? https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/01/27/mini-replica-of-dec-...

Granted, that's going through SimH; it would be interesting to see if retrobsd or litebsd could be ported to run on ESP32 natively.

Kind of: https://hackaday.com/2021/07/21/its-linux-but-on-an-esp32/

Main issue with Linux on an MC is lack of MMU, though YMMV

There have been Linux distributions that ran on machines without MMU. For instance μClinux, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9CClinux

What about this one?

https://www.96boards.org/product/orangepi-i96/

Price isn't much higher than most ESP32 modules, and it can run plain Linux.

ESP32 is a custom CPU architecture... But they recently released an ESP32 varient with a RISC-V core. Still don't think it has an MMU though, which linux requires.

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