Re: Question

[Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 09:30:15PM -0700, Alexander Bolias wrote:
> I am looking for a Linux kernel that will install to arm based tablet
> pc's.

Just a kernel, or a whole distribution?

> Will Debian run on the ARM processor?

Yes, Debian is available for ARM, in several ABI variants: in particular the
ARM little-endian EABI (armel) and ARM hard-float (armhf).

> All of the install packages seem to be set up for 32bit or 64bit
> systems...

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but ARM is a 32-bit architecture, isn't it? 
But, if what you mean is that you can only see Intel x86 (i386) and x86_64
(amd64) binaries, I'd say you're not looking in the right place.  Some
mirrors have a limited set of architectures, but as you can see at
http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/#stable, CD images are available for a
very wide range of architectures.

However, it's fairly unlikely that the hardware in a random ARM tablet PC
will be supported by the stable release of Debian, since ARM systems seem to
be particularly finicky and variable about drivers and general-purpose
support.

- Matt