4 ms·

I'm assuming Big Sur on ARM will be virtualizing ARM, not emulating Intel, meaning a VM will need to run an ARM Linux distro. In the short term I expect that t

I'm assuming Big Sur on ARM will be virtualizing ARM, not emulating Intel, meaning a VM will need to run an ARM Linux distro. In the short term I expect that to be problematic. First party packages in the distro's package manager will be fine, but I expect it might be hard to find some third-party software compiled for ARM Linux. And any Docker containers in the Linux VM will need to use multi-arch or ARM Docker images.

LawnGnome 6y ago
I don't think it'll be all that bad: one advantage of Raspberry Pis having been out for several years is that there's already been some demand for ARM and ARM64 builds of software. Closed source, commercial software might be a bit more of a crapshoot, of course, but this should provide a fair bit of impetus.
- marcan_42 6y ago
  Actually, the rPi foundation have been extremely lazy about ARM64 support. The Pi 3 and newer support it (and I run 64bit Arch on mine), but Raspbian does not. I'd wager 95% of Pi users are stuck with 32-bit ARM software, as you have to go out of your way for ARM64 support.
  - brirec 6y ago
    There is a beta build of Raspberry Pi OS (née Raspbian) in ARM64 available. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1668160 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1668160
    - quaa55 6y ago
      This. plus fedora and arch/manjaro and many others have great aarch64 support. pinebook pro user here.
  - danieldk 6y ago
    If I am counting correctly, nixpkgs (NixOS) Hydra currently builds 22369 packages successfully on AArch64. IIRC also 98% of Debian unstable builds on AArch64. So even though the rPi foundation may be slow (I don't know), the larger community has been working hard on making software build on AArch64.
  - sjellis 6y ago
    To be fair, Raspbian is meant to support first-time users. They have explicitly said that they want to produce something that works for the widest range of hardware.

LawnGnome 6y ago

I don't think it'll be all that bad: one advantage of Raspberry Pis having been out for several years is that there's already been some demand for ARM and ARM64 builds of software. Closed source, commercial software might be a bit more of a crapshoot, of course, but this should provide a fair bit of impetus.

marcan_42 6y ago
Actually, the rPi foundation have been extremely lazy about ARM64 support. The Pi 3 and newer support it (and I run 64bit Arch on mine), but Raspbian does not. I'd wager 95% of Pi users are stuck with 32-bit ARM software, as you have to go out of your way for ARM64 support.
- brirec 6y ago
  There is a beta build of Raspberry Pi OS (née Raspbian) in ARM64 available. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1668160 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1668160
  - quaa55 6y ago
    This. plus fedora and arch/manjaro and many others have great aarch64 support. pinebook pro user here.
- danieldk 6y ago
  If I am counting correctly, nixpkgs (NixOS) Hydra currently builds 22369 packages successfully on AArch64. IIRC also 98% of Debian unstable builds on AArch64. So even though the rPi foundation may be slow (I don't know), the larger community has been working hard on making software build on AArch64.
- sjellis 6y ago
  To be fair, Raspbian is meant to support first-time users. They have explicitly said that they want to produce something that works for the widest range of hardware.