Wumple.com

2009/01/12

My Samsung TV Runs Linux!

Filed under: — Stormwind @ 6:59 am

It looks like my Samsung HL-T6189S LED DLP TV runs embedded Linux! Cool.

I was looking through the firmware downloaded from Samsung’s web site for the set (to make sure 1019 was the latest firmware for the HL-T6189S) and found the following files inside of the archive:

  • run.sh : a shell script
  • rc.local : a script ran during startup of many versions of Linux and Unix
  • Many .so and .ko files which are shared object files (similar to DLLs) and kernel modules (similar to device drivers)
  • Several .img files that appear to be compressed ROMFS file system images (compressed file system images)

Fascinating! Too bad Samsung has announced they are not developing any new DLP sets. I wonder if their LCD displays also use Linux?

3 responses to “My Samsung TV Runs Linux!”

  1. Yes, some of thier LCDs also run Linux (my LN-T3242H). Your manual should contain the GPL, which is a big hint that doesn’t require you to poke at your firmware. Specifically it lists that some parts of the TV contain code from NetBSD, some parts are GPL code, such as Linux and Freetype, and some parts are LGPL such as LibJPEG, if I remember this correctly. If your manual does not contain the license, please complain to someone, like the fsf. I had about a 6 month wait to actually “get” the source code to my firmware. And when I did get it, it did not, as the license stipulates it should, come with sufficient documentation and tools in regards to building. So I have no idea how to actually build firmware.

    In theory they setup this site: http://www.samsung.com/global/opensource/ but they seem to have abandoned it about 2 weeks after making it. Your TV’s model is not listed, but a very close model number would be HL-T6187S. Of course there’s no hints as to what is or is not different with this model and it’s firmware.

  2. led tvs says:

    Just grabbed the feed… thanks for posting this.

  3. Marcus says:

    The opensource-site is up again.

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