Originally posted by pracedru
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It's Becoming Possible To Run Linux Distributions On The HP/ASUS/Lenovo ARM Laptops
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Originally posted by misGnomer View PostAmong the recent FOSDEM news was a preview of one ARM SOC vendor's planned big brother to the $99 Pinebook ARM netbook with target being 14' 1080p / 4gb / 64gb plus an NVMe slot.
Although the company was based in China (PRC) with the potential issues involved, they did seem genuinely supportive of open source and if the laptop (using RK3399 IIRC) has practical mainline kernel support it could become relatively popular if they hit the hoped $200 target.
I don't know what distro they might preload or what bootloader/manager it uses, but if it runs Debian then the door is open.
Details of the Pinebook pro is here. Its 199 not 99.
Being pine64 something normally uboot.
Yes the work will allow the allwinner 99 dollar pinebook and the rockchip 199 dollar pinebook pro to have exact the same boot images.
I would suspect something Ubuntu related again as default with selection of other distributions latter as images include something from debian family..
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Among the recent FOSDEM news was a preview of one ARM SOC vendor's planned big brother to the $99 Pinebook ARM netbook with target being 14' 1080p / 4gb / 64gb plus an NVMe slot.
Although the company was based in China (PRC) with the potential issues involved, they did seem genuinely supportive of open source and if the laptop (using RK3399 IIRC) has practical mainline kernel support it could become relatively popular if they hit the hoped $200 target.
I don't know what distro they might preload or what bootloader/manager it uses, but if it runs Debian then the door is open.
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Originally posted by Britoid View PostHopefully that might trickle down to Android and we get single Android images. There's GSI but it requires vendors to put device configuration files in another partition and it's still device-specific kernels.
Originally posted by Britoid View PostBut some OEMs would never give up that control. I think it would be pretty amazing one day to be able to boot a phone off a USB stick, install the OS and have everything working.
https://source.android.com/devices/a...odular-kernels "Future Android versions" and "Upstreaming" sections of this make it very clear what google will be pushing for in Android 10.
Basically OEM never giving up that control is not exactly true. Since the upstreaming announcement from google as something that want to see in future we are seeing way more drivers up-streamed by the SoC vendors. This android caused up-streaming is also why the 3 laptops mentioned on this project have working kernels now.
Google has quite extreme whip if you don't meet our quality control we will not certify you to ship with Google play store. Android device without Google play is not that sell-able. OEM and SOC vendor most critical requirement is that product will be bought by customer.
Education users a lot of the PI and PI clone boards so this market is also applying a lot of force for vendors to open up drivers and other parts. With unified boot discs for these devices there will be more pressure .
Other thing to remember SOC vendors don't reinvent every part of the SOC chip every time they make a new version. So SOC vendor releases drivers for all the current versions of their chips they also release a segment of drivers for all their older chips in some cases this is 100 percent of their product lines are in fact the current set of drivers.
This is why Sonadows idea that we need different for arm embedded and arm desktop/arm server. Really we need the 1 unified image that can pressure vendors that if they don't support it they will lose big money currently this where android heading on phones.
This one image to rule them all is truly a goal. This one image will apply more pressure on SOC and OEMs not to hold onto the control as tightly. Think about day comes that 1 image to boot most PI clone boards you attempt to sell a PI clone board with some OEM or SOC vendor unique driver and the 1 image no longer works your board will not sell.
Part of the reason why x86 has some form of sanity is that Windows was the 1 image SOC/OEM had to support. Microsoft never really used the whip they had on vendors to create uniform generic driver coverage resulting in different windows machines being a total ass to reinstall when not using vendor install media.
Arm platforms just need the same 1 image/images that SOC/OEM has to support to have sales.
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Originally posted by oiaohm View PostThe price of a unified arm media looks at this stage will cost 1 meg area at start of media in boot up stuff I don't think that prices these days is too insane.
But some OEMs would never give up that control. I think it would be pretty amazing one day to be able to boot a phone off a USB stick, install the OS and have everything working.
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Originally posted by chithanh View PostIf people would use the actual origin of device trees, namely Open Firmware (IEEE-1275), then those could come naturally and they would avoid the mess that is ACPI.
There is even an example implementation of Open Firmware on ARM (OLPC XO-1.75). But there seems to be no commercial interest in having that.
Device Tree Blob (dtb)(Flat Device Tree) form of device tree is a pure Linux kernel development that is also used by uboot.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/dtc/dtc.git this is the compiler you need to make dtb files. Large percentage of the device tree master files are part of the Linux kernel source.
This is way different to the ACPI path where you leave it up to the vendor to put the right stuff in firmware of the device. When the vendor customises their windows install to ignore the screwups they made in firmware of course the so called generic windows installer completely bites the big one.
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Originally posted by Sonadow View PostEven those same ARM laptops mentioned in the git repository have issues (read: not able to) installing a clean Windows ARM iso from USB.
Originally posted by Sonadow View PostARM needs to completely rethink their approach to non-embedded computing. Either set up a separate business unit to cater to desktop/laptop and server computing with SBSA, SBBR and UEFI to make a clean break from embedded ARM, or leave the non-embedded space completely.
Originally posted by Sonadow View PostIt's not unheard of for SBSA-compliant ARM servers to not be able to boot and install a generic ARM Linux ISO image.
https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/eve...rule_them_all/
This is the first time a proper generic ARM64 Linux image has attempted to be made. Patches are going up stream into uboot and UEFI standard..
Yes this work means the 3 laptops that have been go booting with a single image uefi could be integrated on a image for booting raspberry pi 3 and related arm64 clones/forks from a single image.
Basically we are about see what a single generic Linux boot image for arm64 can in fact do and what the limitations really are. Yes covering all the boards uboot support as a starting point is insanely impressive.
uboot and uefi covers 90+ percent of everything arm.
Last edited by oiaohm; 12 February 2019, 07:33 AM.
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Originally posted by oiaohm View PostThe answer is no. dtb files contain more information about hardware than UEFI includes ,
Yes EFI on arm in fact to Linux provided dtb or acpi. dtb the device tree can encode information you cannot put in acpi.
There is even an example implementation of Open Firmware on ARM (OLPC XO-1.75). But there seems to be no commercial interest in having that.
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Originally posted by oiaohm View Post
https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/eve...rule_them_all/
This problem might be dealt with in the next 12 months if we are lucky. Part of the problem is no one until this group has really tried.
Even those same ARM laptops mentioned in the git repository have issues (read: not able to) installing a clean Windows ARM iso from USB.
ARM needs to completely rethink their approach to non-embedded computing. Either set up a separate business unit to cater to desktop/laptop and server computing with SBSA, SBBR and UEFI to make a clean break from embedded ARM, or leave the non-embedded space completely.
It's not unheard of for SBSA-compliant ARM servers to not be able to boot and install a generic ARM Linux ISO image.
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Originally posted by Sonadow View PostARM is dead to me and the market as a whole as long as this isn't addressed. No one, not even Windows users, want to deal with device-specific image files.
This problem might be dealt with in the next 12 months if we are lucky. Part of the problem is no one until this group has really tried.
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