We all know too well how complicated it is to install a development platform to be able to "compile" (generate executable machine code) something. As developers, we had some bad times in the past helping people to join us on the source code, not to mention the fact that we were all testing on different environments.
Now that we "go linux", as a first step towards other operating systems, we felt it was time to settle and solve this problem once and forever.

We want that anybody, even non-techies people, can compile its own version of LK, and change it if they want to do it. Or at least, they can try on that too!

We want that new developers can jump on the project without the hassle of installing tons of things and packages, and be ready to go in less than 30 minutes, most of them spent on a simple single download of a file.

We wanted a friendly environment, exactly the same for all of us, consolidated and easy to maintain.

The only possible approach to fullfill all of this is to provide to everybody a computer, preinstalled, with nothing else to do but run it and find everything in it ready to be used.

Of course, we cannot ship a real computer. We ship a virtual machine instead. This is "nimbus". It is free of charge of course.

Nimbus is a debian 7 linux machine, preinstalled and preconfigured, running under VmWare player (free of charge).
It is 1.8G file, 7z format, uncompressed is about 8G.
It uncompress in one folder, and you simply open that folder in vmware player. Nimbus is ready to be run.

There is a quick lkmenu to make things easier that automatically appears on startup.
We have notes and instructions inside.

We have DropBox shared filesystem: what you copy in /lk/DropBox appears automatically on other nimbus.
To send a file, or to distribute an NMEA log, it is just as simple as copying it there. (This feature is reserved to active official developers).

We have wine and LK installed, running PC version perfectly. COM1,2,3,4 are available and a gps simulator and NMEA replicator that can feed LK with nmea logs.

It is really an amazing approach to development, also exceptional for new people. Just consider that to compile LK you simply have to:

login
cd /lk/github/LK8000
make TARGET=PNA
mv LK8000-PNA.exe /shared

that's right, after login only 3 commands are needed, to expose a new compiled version inside your windows machine. Your own LK!

There is also an embedded chat system inside, to talk to other developers. And all of this can fit on a USB pen drive with at least 8G of space, if you want to "bring the development system" with you around, and run it on different computers.

It does not need much computing power, and it can be run also inside another linux machine: it is a virtual environment, running in only 256 M (mega) of ram (best with 512M).

Nimbus can compile LK for all platforms under developments: PC, PNA, PPC2002, PPC2003, native LINUX and ARM LINUX - KOBO.

You can download Nimbus as a 7z file from  http://www.tinyurl.com/LK8000-NIMBUS
You need also Vmware Player (www.vmware.com) .

Watchout, the download takes some time since you are going to fetch 1.8 gigabytes at once.

You can join the development community on Skype and on Telegram, get in touch with us for details.

Welcome to Nimbus!