U-Boot and linux have the Flattened Device Tree[1] (FDT) which allows the kernel to load and configure the appropriate drivers. Your statement is true, however

U-Boot and linux have the Flattened Device Tree[1] (FDT) which allows the kernel to load and configure the appropriate drivers. Your statement is true, however, that someone knowledgeable of the actual hardware has to create the correct FDT. This is slowly getting better and easier. The more intractable problem, as others observed, is that ARM hardware vendors tend to throw together a custom kernel for a given ARM processor and board and then abandon it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_tree