HP & ASUS Rollout Their ARM-Powered Laptops

[CTown]

That's what I was thinking, and afraid of. If Windows 10 ARM takes off, and more computer manufacturers take note and start making more ARM-based computers over x86/x64, would that not make it more difficult for an average Linux user to install their favorite distro on one of these? Instead of having a generic installer, you'd need to get (or make) a pre-built image for your specific hardware. That's only a mild annoyance with the SoC boards like the Pi, because they've got a good community and culture behind them (and you can tell which ones are popular and supported). The thought of having specific builds for (mostly) each different ARM computer would be a huge barrier to entry.

Would not the more non-essential hardware would be the hardest things to support more than anything? Microsoft mandates UEFI on their PCs (let's hope these PCs are included). Also, from what Rob Clark has written here, Freedreno is easiest to set up on a mainline kernel. I would think that if we did have images for specific hardware they would (1) be a temporary thing until more the market settles on standards (think like how the IBM PC was BIOS + x86) and (2) only be needed for less important hardware like sensors, GPS, etc.

[ruthan]

Some good generic ARM Linux for dual boot would be nice, but main problem would be apps:
- ARM Linux has quite few apps ported, but as far i know its is far to 100% of apps in x86 builds (did someone some x86 vs ARM distros comparision - in speed (best ARM Soc vs. classic desktop x86 cpu would be nice) and percentage of apps?).. So ARM Linux everytime look a bit cheap, incomplete in comparision with x86
- on Windows side, if im not wrong except few native ARM apps, there would be possiblity to run x86 code, through some translation.. i wonder if speed would be good enough
and if it would be good enough for less demanding Steam games, or Valve will finnally give us Windows or Linux ARM Steam version - because that is main killer of ARM HW - lets do dont pretend is that computers arent about porn and games..

[starshipeleven]

AHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAH

This stuff is going to flop so fucking hard when people realize that these things can't run any app that does not come from Windows store.

I'm not familiar with running Linux on ARM other than loading an image to an SD card for my Raspberry Pi. Do Linux distros need specific builds for each ARM device (or at least each ARM platform)? Or can a generic installer be made for ARM that would work on all ARM devices?

It depends from the device itself. Where having a generic installation matters, (server systems for example) there is a UEFI firmware providing the same stuff it provides on x86 (ACPI tables and UEFI services) to allow you to use a generic build.

[starshipeleven]

u-boot is a pain to deal with. You need to connect it to a serial port, typically through the headphone jack, a uart chip, just to configure the bios to install linux.

that's an issue of the u-boot you had to deal with.
uboot can operate a display (although it will still have a terminal-like interface), and you can ship u-boot pre-configured to try booting from X, then Y and then from Z, or you can have u-boot start up a EFI module (emulating UEFI) and act as if it was an EFI.

[b8e5n]

What is the status of this microsoft-qualcomm partnership to run x86 softwares on arm based windows? I remember they showed it running photoshop and world of tanks. So even difficult, it could work quite well. I guess this is some kind of wine like system. Anyway, these laptops would be interresting if qualcomm would share some code to the mainline kernel.

[scorp]

With the rise of "device tree", there can be one build for each ISA (armv7, armv8). This explains it well : https://youtu.be/NNol7fRGo2E

Fedora does a great job : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Archi...M/Installation . The trick is that Fedora builds a unique "uboot" for each board (and packages them in uboot-images-armv7 & uboot-images-armv8). The best way I've found to find which boards are supported is to install uboot-images-armv7 and then look in /usr/share/arm-image-installer or /usr/share/doc/fedora-arm-installer/SUPPORTED-BOARDS .

FYI, I run Fedora on a "BeagleBone Black" and "Orange Pi One" ($20!).

In my opinion, the big problem with Linux on ARM is the most of the graphics drivers are closed source (or reverse engineered). The exception is the the "VC4" (Open GLES 2.1 ) on the Raspberry Pi 2 / 3. There is also work on the VC5 (OpenGL & Vulkan).

What about Freedreno? Most of Qualcom Snapdragon are comming with Adreno, so this should work, or am I wrong?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Freedreno-A4xx-GL-Exts

[xiando]

OMG it's actually happening!

Intel and AMD are bankrupt and finished

[Modu]

I wouldn't buy. What you get will be a very good hardware (20 hours of battery life) with a half baked mainline kernel support. Maybe it wouldn't even able to last 20 hours due to incomplete power management code

[MartinK]

Some good generic ARM Linux for dual boot would be nice, but main problem would be apps:
- ARM Linux has quite few apps ported

Actually every arch specific (C, C++, etc.) Fedora package build in Fedora happens on armv7, aarch64 and even PPC64LE and even s390x. It's possible to opt out of that (for example in case that your package needs some hand-tuned assembler to work on the given platform) but AFAIK package maintainers seldom have to resrot to that.

But it's certainly a good question how well tested & working are the resulting packages - especially for graphical applications - on non-x86 architectures.

[Speedator]

That's what I was thinking, and afraid of. If Windows 10 ARM takes off, and more computer manufacturers take note and start making more ARM-based computers over x86/x64, would that not make it more difficult for an average Linux user to install their favorite distro on one of these? Instead of having a generic installer, you'd need to get (or make) a pre-built image for your specific hardware. That's only a mild annoyance with the SoC boards like the Pi, because they've got a good community and culture behind them (and you can tell which ones are popular and supported). The thought of having specific builds for (mostly) each different ARM computer would be a huge barrier to entry.

Windows 10 ARM is just for Snapdragon 835. And there is probably the same boot mechanism for all those Notebooks with Snapdragon 835. Microsoft would have the same issues with supporting a huge variety of ARM systems. Both Windows Phone 8 and 10 Mobile were also limited to some Snapdragon SOCs. There may be some other configurations with different SOCs in the future, but that will probably be a very limited variety. And it will be one boot mechanism if possible. Or does this strictly depend on the soc? So a snapdragon technically needs a different boot mechanism than a exynos?

In my opinion, the big problem with Linux on ARM is the most of the graphics drivers are closed source (or reverse engineered). The exception is the the "VC4" (Open GLES 2.1 ) on the Raspberry Pi 2 / 3. There is also work on the VC5 (OpenGL & Vulkan).

You are right. And that is why I really hope for progress also with freedreno and a Mali 4*0 (seems to be very common) driver.

And how good is open source support for hardware video decoders? For"Mali Video" asics I don't know, but there is some work for snapdragon and probably for vc5, too(?).