Fedora's ARM SIG Is Looking At Making An AArch64 Xfce Desktop Spin

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora's ARM SIG Is Looking At Making An AArch64 Xfce Desktop Spin

Another late change proposal being talked about for this autumn's Fedora 31 release is introducing a 64-bit ARM (AArch64) Xfce desktop spin...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-AArch64-Xfce-Desktop-Pro

[elatllat]

rockpro64 and Odroid N2 should be on that the change proposal.

[wizard69]

Interesting but I’m still wishing for a company to Actually implement ARM chips into a viable laptop. It would be nice if the mother ship would send Redhat and the Fedora teams some cash to design a decent laptop board. If they are smart the board would be designed to perform well in the SBC/embedded market too.

So yeah this is a plea plea to see Redhat enter the hardware market. I’m not suggesting anything extravagant as the first board should come in at well under $75 with an up rated model suitable for a laptop a bit more. They should be able to easily make a decent $500 laptop with high quality LCD and keyboard.

[skeevy420]

Interesting but I’m still wishing for a company to Actually implement ARM chips into a viable laptop. It would be nice if the mother ship would send Redhat and the Fedora teams some cash to design a decent laptop board. If they are smart the board would be designed to perform well in the SBC/embedded market too.

Unfortunately, that's what Apple is working on.

Don't get me wrong, it'll likely be a good, quality product and that'll get other manufacturers to follow their lead...but it's unfortunate because it'll be $238 of hardware sold for $1498.

[LoveRPi]

Instead of supporting random boot blobs that are just an unmaintainable mess, just support SBBR u-boot UEFI spec. Release an image and let the vendors do the "firmware" legwork.

Stick to upstream device trees and just shove them in a folder. Don't support "legacy" devices out of the box and add 1 step that users do manually to make it work for these devices.

It's almost 2020 and there's no excuse to make junk non-standardized boards.

[wizard69]

Unfortunately, that's what Apple is working on.

Well yeah that is the rumour. I don't look at it as unfortunate as it could be the kick in the pants that gets the industry going in the right direction.

Don't get me wrong, it'll likely be a good, quality product and that'll get other manufacturers to follow their lead...but it's unfortunate because it'll be $238 of hardware sold for $1498.

There in lies the Apple problem. Back in 2008 I purchased a 15" MBP and though slightly expensive I really though I was getting a high quality product. Back then Mac OS was a better way to UNIX on a laptop then trying to get Linux to run. Purchased a new 13" MBP in 2017 and frankly it was a piece of junk. That got stolen but I was so pissed off with Apple that I just said screw it and purchased an AMD based HP for less than $700. That machine literally runs circles around the MBP, running Linux. I'm not saying that the combo of the AMD processor and Linux is perfect here but I'm running a machine with no keyboard problems, a decent screen, upgradable storage and other goodies that is actually pretty nice.

[wizard69]

Instead of supporting random boot blobs that are just an unmaintainable mess, just support SBBR u-boot UEFI spec. Release an image and let the vendors do the "firmware" legwork.

Stick to upstream device trees and just shove them in a folder. Don't support "legacy" devices out of the box and add 1 step that users do manually to make it work for these devices.

It's almost 2020 and there's no excuse to make junk non-standardized boards.

While I agree with respect to a clean boot up process, I'm a bit reluctant to push too much standardization on an ARM based device. It would be nice to see some innovation as to what the base board should be. Of course you still need a standard and clean boot up process to expose the hardware arrangement.

[coder]

Interesting but I’m still wishing for a company to Actually implement ARM chips into a viable laptop.

There are Qualcomm 8cx- and 7cx- based laptops, already on the way:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-snapdragon-8cx-performance-benchmarks,39443.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-lenovo-project-limitless-5g-pc,39444.html

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-snapdragon-7cx-arm-laptops,39564.html

[skeevy420]

Well yeah that is the rumour. I don't look at it as unfortunate as it could be the kick in the pants that gets the industry going in the right direction.


There in lies the Apple problem. Back in 2008 I purchased a 15" MBP and though slightly expensive I really though I was getting a high quality product. Back then Mac OS was a better way to UNIX on a laptop then trying to get Linux to run. Purchased a new 13" MBP in 2017 and frankly it was a piece of junk. That got stolen but I was so pissed off with Apple that I just said screw it and purchased an AMD based HP for less than $700. That machine literally runs circles around the MBP, running Linux. I'm not saying that the combo of the AMD processor and Linux is perfect here but I'm running a machine with no keyboard problems, a decent screen, upgradable storage and other goodies that is actually pretty nice.

Like I said, the unfortunate part is $238 worth of hardware in a $1498 package and the only good part is the kick in the pants it'll bring to the industry. They (Apple) make good hardware, but damn do we have to pay for it.

I'd like one of the Linux distributions to team up with Odroid so we could buy, for an example, Manjaro Licensed Odroid N2s...basically the N2 bundled with Manjaro. Odroid gets money, Manjaro gets money, we all win. Or if some group like Odroid could make a distribution licensed laptop case for an SBC with a 1080p to 2k screen. Outside of the case it's just the SBC, inside the case it is considered an officially supported Debian or Suse product.

[LoveRPi]

While I agree with respect to a clean boot up process, I'm a bit reluctant to push too much standardization on an ARM based device. It would be nice to see some innovation as to what the base board should be. Of course you still need a standard and clean boot up process to expose the hardware arrangement.

At least it should boot an EFI blob. There's no other maintainable way. Distro vendors should not be involved with basic hardware setup.