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It's wild that decades latter ARM still is so incredibly fantastically far behind x86 in building generic systems one can install a mainline Linux on. 99% of t

It's wild that decades latter ARM still is so incredibly fantastically far behind x86 in building generic systems one can install a mainline Linux on. 99% of their uses are for appliances/phones, so it makes sense that they're still totally immature at being a computer. But weighed against how much time arm has had to try to improve their world, looking at how plodding progress has been, how broadly chaotic & grossly inconsistent the ecosystem is, it's still a stunning testament. Computing in general could have been this bad. It's such a miracle we got the PC. The Gang of Nine just wanted to sell hardware but they launched a major Democratizing phase change, one we still have yet to see reproduced.

MBCook 4y ago
Yeah. MS basically forced PC hardware configuration standardization through popularity. Everyone wanted DOS, then Windows. So if the computer didn’t follow the standard spec for hardware design/discovery no one would buy it. That hasn’t existed in ARM land. Seems to be the wild west in comparison. So every board requires custom bring-up.
- rektide 4y ago
  I'm not sure how willing I am to peg the PC platform to Microsoft. Just looking at the 1980's there were tons of operating systems being created & getting used. That there could be so many OSes was part & parcel to it suddenly being possible to create so much hardware. I see this as a time of diversification & enablement, a great opportunity, that yes, latter Microsoft did emerge top of the heap on. But they were more incidental a player than anything else, in my mind; they rode the wave that was happening. And they contributed very little. DOS with TSR driver stuff wasn't exactly a place for cooperation; it too was wild west.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    They walked into the right place at the right time, and knew how to play that advantage. They didn’t cause it initially, but they sure took advantage of being the thing IBM chose.

MBCook 4y ago

Yeah. MS basically forced PC hardware configuration standardization through popularity. Everyone wanted DOS, then Windows. So if the computer didn’t follow the standard spec for hardware design/discovery no one would buy it. That hasn’t existed in ARM land. Seems to be the wild west in comparison. So every board requires custom bring-up.

rektide 4y ago
I'm not sure how willing I am to peg the PC platform to Microsoft. Just looking at the 1980's there were tons of operating systems being created & getting used. That there could be so many OSes was part & parcel to it suddenly being possible to create so much hardware. I see this as a time of diversification & enablement, a great opportunity, that yes, latter Microsoft did emerge top of the heap on. But they were more incidental a player than anything else, in my mind; they rode the wave that was happening. And they contributed very little. DOS with TSR driver stuff wasn't exactly a place for cooperation; it too was wild west.
- MBCook 4y ago
  They walked into the right place at the right time, and knew how to play that advantage. They didn’t cause it initially, but they sure took advantage of being the thing IBM chose.