When we started in 2019, we had a close community helping and cheering us on to get EndeavourOS up and running out of the ashes of Antergos. One of those community members was Pudge, who enthusiast…
What is the best option if you wanted to run Linux on ARM?
These days I’m more interested in the ARM world rather than the x86 world because ARM is simpler, power-efficient, scalable from cortex M0 to X4 and everything in between, and I took a class on ARM assembly language. x86, on the other hand, is full of legacy cruft and complicated as a result, and x86 is power hungry. Look at the new Intel 14900K, it draws over 400W!
Fedora works pretty well on ARM, it even became the flagship distro for the Asahi project, which aims to bring full Linux compatibility to Apple Silicon
Debian? They have good ARM support (the raspberry pi OS is based on Debian, uses its repos). Definitely also install flatpak. Most, but not all, flatpaks have arm builds.
Yes, I’m also interested in ARM because it means we can have a very light laptop / tablet running a full desktop OS without the typical limitations of iOS / Android.
Debian is for sure the most stable thing in ARM, mostly because it is the upstream of many ARM-focused distributions like Armbian and there’s also where ARM CPU makers usually test their stuff. There’s a constant stream of patches coming from those manufacturers and downstream distributions because everyone wants to mainline both kernel and userland support for their ARMs.
Unfortunately there isn’t much decent “open” tablet hardware to run Linux on. The interesting things like those ultra-thin Lenovo tablets with amazing screens have locked bootloaders and other bullshit that stops people from loading Linux into then and making drivers / the required adjustments. Then there’s the Pine stuff that (even if you can get it) it’s overpriced, bulky and not a finished hardware product in any way.
What is the best option if you wanted to run Linux on ARM?
Good question.
These days I’m more interested in the ARM world rather than the x86 world because ARM is simpler, power-efficient,
scalable from cortex M0 to X4 and everything in between, and I took a class on ARM assembly language. x86, on the other hand,
is full of legacy cruft and complicated as a result, and x86 is power hungry. Look at the new Intel 14900K, it draws over 400W!
Last year Hetzner introduced arm64-based cloud servers with Ampere processors. Looks promising. I hope more providers will follow.
Don’t know about best, but I’ve been running Arch on Raspberry Pi 4 for a few months now. So far I’m having no issues. Changing from the default kernel to rpi kernel went also smoothly.
depends on the context, arm isn’t as consistent (or at least consistently supported) of a platform to build for as x86. ARM server? single board computer? (which one?) Apple Silicon? other?
Unpopular opinion, but Gentoo is perfect for ARM. Availability of pre built binaries for ARM can sometimes be an issue. Gentoo gives you the option to compile from source, so that if a package is available for x86, it will still most likely work with ARM
What is the best option if you wanted to run Linux on ARM?
These days I’m more interested in the ARM world rather than the x86 world because ARM is simpler, power-efficient, scalable from cortex M0 to X4 and everything in between, and I took a class on ARM assembly language. x86, on the other hand, is full of legacy cruft and complicated as a result, and x86 is power hungry. Look at the new Intel 14900K, it draws over 400W!
Fedora works pretty well on ARM, it even became the flagship distro for the Asahi project, which aims to bring full Linux compatibility to Apple Silicon
Debian? They have good ARM support (the raspberry pi OS is based on Debian, uses its repos). Definitely also install flatpak. Most, but not all, flatpaks have arm builds.
Yes, I’m also interested in ARM because it means we can have a very light laptop / tablet running a full desktop OS without the typical limitations of iOS / Android.
Debian is for sure the most stable thing in ARM, mostly because it is the upstream of many ARM-focused distributions like Armbian and there’s also where ARM CPU makers usually test their stuff. There’s a constant stream of patches coming from those manufacturers and downstream distributions because everyone wants to mainline both kernel and userland support for their ARMs.
Unfortunately there isn’t much decent “open” tablet hardware to run Linux on. The interesting things like those ultra-thin Lenovo tablets with amazing screens have locked bootloaders and other bullshit that stops people from loading Linux into then and making drivers / the required adjustments. Then there’s the Pine stuff that (even if you can get it) it’s overpriced, bulky and not a finished hardware product in any way.
Debian.
Good question.
Last year Hetzner introduced arm64-based cloud servers with Ampere processors. Looks promising. I hope more providers will follow.
Don’t know about best, but I’ve been running Arch on Raspberry Pi 4 for a few months now. So far I’m having no issues. Changing from the default kernel to rpi kernel went also smoothly.
Gentoo. I tried on a Pi 4 works pretty well, though no an easy installation.
depends on the context, arm isn’t as consistent (or at least consistently supported) of a platform to build for as x86. ARM server? single board computer? (which one?) Apple Silicon? other?
Unpopular opinion, but Gentoo is perfect for ARM. Availability of pre built binaries for ARM can sometimes be an issue. Gentoo gives you the option to compile from source, so that if a package is available for x86, it will still most likely work with ARM