ARM is kinda lacking the hardware to motivate developers, I think. Raspberry Pi generally has good support for server stuff, but I don’t think you could really justify desktop use before maybe 2019 (release of rpi 4 with much faster CPU and more RAM), and Android devices are generally really locked down.
Those SoCs usually have one distro with a patched out of date kernel and overall lacking support of upstream drivers to install an off the shelf distro.
Arm devices are notoriously closed. Apple silicon is an extreme example, where it only works thanks to reverse engineering the HW.
This is why I gave up on a really amazing ARM device that I wanted to use as a router. I ended up having to buy a mini PC simply because I didn’t have the time to invest more time in burning random disk images to SD cards and USB flash drives.
And each of these SoCs requires people, ideally the manufacturer, to actually put in the work to make the hardware work on Linux. So many SBCs with severely outdated kernels …
ARM is kinda lacking the hardware to motivate developers, I think. Raspberry Pi generally has good support for server stuff, but I don’t think you could really justify desktop use before maybe 2019 (release of rpi 4 with much faster CPU and more RAM), and Android devices are generally really locked down.
Never mind the absolute ocean of ARM SoCs, not to mention Apple’s silicon
Those SoCs usually have one distro with a patched out of date kernel and overall lacking support of upstream drivers to install an off the shelf distro.
Arm devices are notoriously closed. Apple silicon is an extreme example, where it only works thanks to reverse engineering the HW.
What we need are more ARM PCs with UEFI and mainline Linux drivers. That way they would run a generic OS image just like an x86 PC.
Most ARM PCs require an image built specifically for that system. That makes them a real pain the ass to work with.
This is why I gave up on a really amazing ARM device that I wanted to use as a router. I ended up having to buy a mini PC simply because I didn’t have the time to invest more time in burning random disk images to SD cards and USB flash drives.
And each of these SoCs requires people, ideally the manufacturer, to actually put in the work to make the hardware work on Linux. So many SBCs with severely outdated kernels …
I suppose ARM really missed the mark by not establishing a universal power framework.