4 ms·

As neat as this is....I have a few major pain points for ARM that will keep me away from them as a general purpose platform: - Can I even install my own OS, or

by kop316 6y ago

As neat as this is....I have a few major pain points for ARM that will keep me away from them as a general purpose platform: - Can I even install my own OS, or am I locked down? - Can I use mainline linux, or some proprietary vendor kernel that will not be updated at all? - Can I do a manual install, or is the actual install process going to be some maze of partially installing, figuring out where proprietary vendoor boot images go, and hoping that when I press power that it actually turns on? Or do I just have to resort to some .img file and have no control over encryption or how my partitions look?

cvs268 6y ago
This is "just" the CPU. Not the SoC/motherboard. Whoever designs the SoC/motherboard incorporating this CPU shall determine the answers to the above 3 questions... Common reasons for proprietary kernel / vendor blobs are BT/WiFi, GPU, PMU. So, whether the end-users will have access to the source or ability to choose/customise, will depend on whether open or closed variants are chosen for each of these controllers in the final product. BTW, have you checked-out the Pinebook? https://pine64.com/product/14%e2%80%b3-pinebook-pro-linux-laptop-ansi-us-keyboard/?v=0446c16e2e66 https://pine64.com/product/14%e2%80%b3-pinebook-pro-linux-la...
- amelius 6y ago
  > This is "just" the CPU. Not the SoC/motherboard. With Nvidia soon owning ARM, what do you think will happen? Will ARM be a good investment for people looking for a general purpose CPU?
- legulere 6y ago
  The problem is more that ARM is way less standardized about things like the boot process or how to find and initialize every hardware.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kop316 6y ago
  So I am reminded of something that I heard when in a masterclass from Andy Martin (he is a world class trombonist). He said when he is performing, no one cares how much time it took him to prepare a piece, what his mood is that day, how much he played that day, etc. Those are all things that can positively and negatively affect his performance. They only care about the end product, the performance. I relay that story because it is much the same with an ARM chip. I know it is "just" the CPU, and the SoC is what integrates it. I don't really care. The end effect is still all of the problems I listed above, which makes me steer clear of using ARM in a laptop. If ARM really wants to break into this space, these are problems that need to be fixed, and it is in ARMs interest to fix them. I have not tried the Pinebook (though it uses the same RK3399 has the rockpro64, and the annoying install experience I spoke of was about the rockpro64), and frankly, after my experience with the Rockpro64, I am hesitant to really buy more products from them again, which is sad because I have two pinephones and I really believe in what the Pinephone stands for. The RockPro64 had bad memory, and there are a few reports of other people with the same issue. I bought it in early September, it took me three weeks to get an RMA (and that was only after I filed a dispute with Paypal), and it is in week two of me waiting for me to have them ship it back.
- Bancakes 6y ago
  The pinebook pro has a pretty dim, mediocre screen, only 4GB of RAM, and opengl ES.
userbinator 6y ago
ARM itself only makes the cores and licenses IP, and doesn't even sell physical chips, so you can't really ask it directly, but rather the other companies who will produce SoCs with those cores. My bet given the direction things have been heading in the computing industry, and ARM platforms in general, is that the answer to all of those questions will be some variant of "no". Even x86 and the PC is heading in that direction. It is unfortunate.
rektide 6y ago
Very sad that unlocked bootloader's have gone away. Those couple years where it was required to have unlocked bootloaders & alternative Android OS spins were getting popular were so neat. There is a Server Base Boot Requirements specification that should make installing os'es much more normal, requiring acpi support & uefi, the x86 standards. Alas it has the word "server" in the spec. A pity. We can only hope consumer devices end up with similar user-respecting treatment. I'm shocked to find that the maiome kernel situation is getting better. Few devices that, like x86, are general purpose computers that will let us install our own os or kernel, but kernel support has been getting much better.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  ARM is working on a complementary spec called Embedded Base Boot Requirements. While I haven't analyzed it in detail, it sounds like something that might be used in consumer devices. https://github.com/ARM-software/ebbr https://github.com/ARM-software/ebbr
- rhenwood 6y ago
  One correction: Unlocked boot loaders are still present. All the platforms that I have seen that support Windows on Arm have boot loaders that can be unlocked. This is probably the best place to follow machines that have unlocked boot loaders, as currently Linux enablement requires it: https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build
  - rektide 6y ago
    late reply sorry. this article is about laptops, & weirdly, thanks to Microsoft, you are right; many arm laptops are do have secure boot systems that respect the user! I was mainly thinking of every other breed of arm consumer device, like phones & tablets. For a couple years we were getting unlockable devices- I think maybe by law?- but now all these Android & other devices are usually locked down & wont let the user install an os on to the device. which is especially brutal & butter when devices often stop receiving major is updates after a two or three years.
rhenwood 6y ago
The Arm laptop community for these higher-end cores in laptops is currently active here: https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build + You can install your own OS. + Mainline Linux boots, with some caveats. + There is an Ubuntu 18.04 patched installer that works as expected, but support for the platforms isn't in the main distro installers yet.
mastax 6y ago
- Are these going into reasonable price/capability machines or just "premium ultra portables". Look, I know you don't want to create a market perception that ARM = "cheap & slow" but I'm not paying $1500 for something as slow and limited as a Surface Pro X. I'm not even paying $900 for it, though some might.
my123 6y ago
See the recent announcement of Arm SystemReady SR and ES, which is a standard mandating UEFI across the board. Yes, Secure Boot can be disabled on Windows on Arm systems in the same way as Windows on x86_64 systems. For Windows on Arm laptops, you cannot quite use upstream kernels at this point w/ full functionality, see https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build. (being rebased continuously). For other Arm machines, like servers, you can just use regular kernels though. And over custom partitions and other things, it's just UEFI now, the firmware itself is in a secondary SPI flash or an UFS namespace. * you might always need to run a script to extract firmware for the GPU/modem and such, which are OEM-signed on Qualcomm Windows/arm64 devices. That firmware is then put to /lib/firmware/.

by kop316 6y ago

cvs268 6y ago

This is "just" the CPU. Not the SoC/motherboard. Whoever designs the SoC/motherboard incorporating this CPU shall determine the answers to the above 3 questions... Common reasons for proprietary kernel / vendor blobs are BT/WiFi, GPU, PMU. So, whether the end-users will have access to the source or ability to choose/customise, will depend on whether open or closed variants are chosen for each of these controllers in the final product. BTW, have you checked-out the Pinebook? https://pine64.com/product/14%e2%80%b3-pinebook-pro-linux-laptop-ansi-us-keyboard/?v=0446c16e2e66 https://pine64.com/product/14%e2%80%b3-pinebook-pro-linux-la...

amelius 6y ago
> This is "just" the CPU. Not the SoC/motherboard. With Nvidia soon owning ARM, what do you think will happen? Will ARM be a good investment for people looking for a general purpose CPU?
legulere 6y ago
The problem is more that ARM is way less standardized about things like the boot process or how to find and initialize every hardware.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kop316 6y ago
So I am reminded of something that I heard when in a masterclass from Andy Martin (he is a world class trombonist). He said when he is performing, no one cares how much time it took him to prepare a piece, what his mood is that day, how much he played that day, etc. Those are all things that can positively and negatively affect his performance. They only care about the end product, the performance. I relay that story because it is much the same with an ARM chip. I know it is "just" the CPU, and the SoC is what integrates it. I don't really care. The end effect is still all of the problems I listed above, which makes me steer clear of using ARM in a laptop. If ARM really wants to break into this space, these are problems that need to be fixed, and it is in ARMs interest to fix them. I have not tried the Pinebook (though it uses the same RK3399 has the rockpro64, and the annoying install experience I spoke of was about the rockpro64), and frankly, after my experience with the Rockpro64, I am hesitant to really buy more products from them again, which is sad because I have two pinephones and I really believe in what the Pinephone stands for. The RockPro64 had bad memory, and there are a few reports of other people with the same issue. I bought it in early September, it took me three weeks to get an RMA (and that was only after I filed a dispute with Paypal), and it is in week two of me waiting for me to have them ship it back.
Bancakes 6y ago
The pinebook pro has a pretty dim, mediocre screen, only 4GB of RAM, and opengl ES.

userbinator 6y ago

ARM itself only makes the cores and licenses IP, and doesn't even sell physical chips, so you can't really ask it directly, but rather the other companies who will produce SoCs with those cores. My bet given the direction things have been heading in the computing industry, and ARM platforms in general, is that the answer to all of those questions will be some variant of "no". Even x86 and the PC is heading in that direction. It is unfortunate.

rektide 6y ago

Very sad that unlocked bootloader's have gone away. Those couple years where it was required to have unlocked bootloaders & alternative Android OS spins were getting popular were so neat. There is a Server Base Boot Requirements specification that should make installing os'es much more normal, requiring acpi support & uefi, the x86 standards. Alas it has the word "server" in the spec. A pity. We can only hope consumer devices end up with similar user-respecting treatment. I'm shocked to find that the maiome kernel situation is getting better. Few devices that, like x86, are general purpose computers that will let us install our own os or kernel, but kernel support has been getting much better.

rhn_mk1 6y ago
ARM is working on a complementary spec called Embedded Base Boot Requirements. While I haven't analyzed it in detail, it sounds like something that might be used in consumer devices. https://github.com/ARM-software/ebbr https://github.com/ARM-software/ebbr
rhenwood 6y ago
One correction: Unlocked boot loaders are still present. All the platforms that I have seen that support Windows on Arm have boot loaders that can be unlocked. This is probably the best place to follow machines that have unlocked boot loaders, as currently Linux enablement requires it: https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build
- rektide 6y ago
  late reply sorry. this article is about laptops, & weirdly, thanks to Microsoft, you are right; many arm laptops are do have secure boot systems that respect the user! I was mainly thinking of every other breed of arm consumer device, like phones & tablets. For a couple years we were getting unlockable devices- I think maybe by law?- but now all these Android & other devices are usually locked down & wont let the user install an os on to the device. which is especially brutal & butter when devices often stop receiving major is updates after a two or three years.

rhenwood 6y ago

The Arm laptop community for these higher-end cores in laptops is currently active here: https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build + You can install your own OS. + Mainline Linux boots, with some caveats. + There is an Ubuntu 18.04 patched installer that works as expected, but support for the platforms isn't in the main distro installers yet.

mastax 6y ago

- Are these going into reasonable price/capability machines or just "premium ultra portables". Look, I know you don't want to create a market perception that ARM = "cheap & slow" but I'm not paying $1500 for something as slow and limited as a Surface Pro X. I'm not even paying $900 for it, though some might.

my123 6y ago

See the recent announcement of Arm SystemReady SR and ES, which is a standard mandating UEFI across the board. Yes, Secure Boot can be disabled on Windows on Arm systems in the same way as Windows on x86_64 systems. For Windows on Arm laptops, you cannot quite use upstream kernels at this point w/ full functionality, see https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build. (being rebased continuously). For other Arm machines, like servers, you can just use regular kernels though. And over custom partitions and other things, it's just UEFI now, the firmware itself is in a secondary SPI flash or an UFS namespace. * you might always need to run a script to extract firmware for the GPU/modem and such, which are OEM-signed on Qualcomm Windows/arm64 devices. That firmware is then put to /lib/firmware/.