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It would be great to have more ARM devices which support linux, but until there is a common ARM boot process that everyone follows and the situation with device

It would be great to have more ARM devices which support linux, but until there is a common ARM boot process that everyone follows and the situation with device trees and propriety driver binaries gets solved, x86 is going to have to be the way to go for most Linux first devices. With x86 you can basically load any distro you want with ease no matter what the CPU.

transpute 2y ago
Perhaps 2024 is The Year (tm) of Arm SystemReady laptops based on Qualcomm.
- p_l 2y ago
  Given how Qualcomm is responsible for ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... ... I won't hold my breath for Qualcomm to be bringer of SystemReady. I might end up too blue.
  - transpute 2y ago
    > ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... 2024 Microsoft Surface?
    - wmf 2y ago
      Yeah, there's some bullshit about device trees vs. ACPI.
      - transpute 2y ago
        Maybe Next Year!
      - p_l 2y ago
        Haven't checked 2024 one, but previous ones were borked by Qualcomm essentially missing bits of ACPI runtime handling, EFI variable storage not actually existing at runtime, and Qualcomm papering over it in Windows with drivers that hijacked the proper interfaces. So Linux-on-ARM-Surface had a lot of magical thinking involving using device tree etc. caused by people hitting the wall with broken UEFI implementation.
  - seltzered_ 2y ago
    Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/1djtfbj/testing_linux_on_the_new_surface_pro_11th_edition/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/1djtfbj/testi...
AshamedCaptain 2y ago
For any if the problems mentioned in the parent's post, ARM would not be any any better. Failure to enter sleep is a software problem, usually not a hardware one. If anything it would be worst; note how most of these posts tend to look at firmware sleep modes with rosy glasses.
teruakohatu 2y ago
I remember excited by the brith of ARM desktop capable systems. Sadly the industry chose not to standardise and I have given up on ARM desktop and even Single Board Computers. SBCs have been replaced by x86 boxes. x86 is a breath of fresh air with mainline kernel support, loads of features, support just about every device imaginable and efficiency is quite good on the lower end CPUs.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
There is a common-ish boot process, it's just not commonly implemented alas, except sort of in servers. > ACPI can be used for Armv8 and Armv9 systems designed to follow the BSA (Arm Base System Architecture) [0] and BBR (Arm Base Boot Requirements) [1] specifications. Both BSA and BBR are publicly accessible documents. Arm Servers, in addition to being BSA compliant, comply with a set of rules defined in SBSA (Server Base System Architecture). https://docs.kernel.org/arch/arm64/arm-acpi.html https://docs.kernel.org/arch/arm64/arm-acpi.html There's people in the ecosystem doing good things, but wow been a decade now of ARM ecosystem forever being ever-so-close to doing the right thing & learning from the ways x86 is such an open interoperable healthy ecosystem (Intel wifi chips aside; even the "PCIe" ones no longer work in any other systems/aren't spec complaint). So here we are a decade later & still ARM is good only in flagship (and 25% of mid-ranged) cell phones running vendor sdks and now some hyperscaler's servers, but literally no one else can use decent modern arm stuff without a bunch of fuss. What's the quote? Chips without drivers are just expensive sand?

transpute 2y ago

Perhaps 2024 is The Year (tm) of Arm SystemReady laptops based on Qualcomm.

p_l 2y ago
Given how Qualcomm is responsible for ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... ... I won't hold my breath for Qualcomm to be bringer of SystemReady. I might end up too blue.
- transpute 2y ago
  > ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated... 2024 Microsoft Surface?
  - wmf 2y ago
    Yeah, there's some bullshit about device trees vs. ACPI.
    - transpute 2y ago
      Maybe Next Year!
    - p_l 2y ago
      Haven't checked 2024 one, but previous ones were borked by Qualcomm essentially missing bits of ACPI runtime handling, EFI variable storage not actually existing at runtime, and Qualcomm papering over it in Windows with drivers that hijacked the proper interfaces. So Linux-on-ARM-Surface had a lot of magical thinking involving using device tree etc. caused by people hitting the wall with broken UEFI implementation.
- seltzered_ 2y ago
  Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/1djtfbj/testing_linux_on_the_new_surface_pro_11th_edition/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/1djtfbj/testi...

AshamedCaptain 2y ago

For any if the problems mentioned in the parent's post, ARM would not be any any better. Failure to enter sleep is a software problem, usually not a hardware one. If anything it would be worst; note how most of these posts tend to look at firmware sleep modes with rosy glasses.

teruakohatu 2y ago

I remember excited by the brith of ARM desktop capable systems. Sadly the industry chose not to standardise and I have given up on ARM desktop and even Single Board Computers. SBCs have been replaced by x86 boxes. x86 is a breath of fresh air with mainline kernel support, loads of features, support just about every device imaginable and efficiency is quite good on the lower end CPUs.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

There is a common-ish boot process, it's just not commonly implemented alas, except sort of in servers. > ACPI can be used for Armv8 and Armv9 systems designed to follow the BSA (Arm Base System Architecture) [0] and BBR (Arm Base Boot Requirements) [1] specifications. Both BSA and BBR are publicly accessible documents. Arm Servers, in addition to being BSA compliant, comply with a set of rules defined in SBSA (Server Base System Architecture). https://docs.kernel.org/arch/arm64/arm-acpi.html https://docs.kernel.org/arch/arm64/arm-acpi.html There's people in the ecosystem doing good things, but wow been a decade now of ARM ecosystem forever being ever-so-close to doing the right thing & learning from the ways x86 is such an open interoperable healthy ecosystem (Intel wifi chips aside; even the "PCIe" ones no longer work in any other systems/aren't spec complaint). So here we are a decade later & still ARM is good only in flagship (and 25% of mid-ranged) cell phones running vendor sdks and now some hyperscaler's servers, but literally no one else can use decent modern arm stuff without a bunch of fuss. What's the quote? Chips without drivers are just expensive sand?