On Ma, 07 mai 19, 14:23:16, Steve McIntyre wrote: > Hey folks, > > I've just registered a session for the usual BoF at DebConf. If you > have any specific topics you'd like to raise, please let me know... As a Debian user I'd like to suggest providing a straightforward way to install Debian on recent arm64 devices, some of which are already powerful enough as a desktop replacement (ROCKPro64, ODROID-N2, etc.). For someone coming from Wintel platforms the current situation is very confusing and users will most likely end up just using some ready-made image downloaded from (hopefully) the device maker's site, with old (BSP) kernels, questionable security and poor update mechanisms (custom scripts). For someone coming from Lintel platforms (assuming zero previous knowledge of u-boot, serial consoles and possibly even EFI) the situation is slightly better: 1. The board supports EFI Debian Installer should work OOTB provided sufficient support in the Linux kernel. It's not very obvious which image to download (though admittedly I didn't look too much into it as I don't own such devices). This probably needs only some documentation improvement. 2. Use a Debian provided image with u-boot and Debian Installer Currently partially available, only for the PINE A64+ (might support other PINE64 devices, but the image name is very specific), and with minimal documentation. This needs more images and better documentation. I could start working on this provided I know how this will look like (more images under u-boot/?). 3. The board has sufficient[1] support in Debian's u-boot / kernel Use some other image to manually debootstrap Debian or create an image with the installer. AFAICT this not documented at all at the moment, users have to assemble the pieces themselves from various documents/wikis/lists/forums. With proper tools and documentation on how to install u-boot for $DEVICE (do other platforms have scripts like u-boot-install-sunxi64?) this becomes a special case of 2. In my humble opinion the goal should be to provide Debian Installer images for all devices with reasonable support in Debian's u-boot and kernel, at least until the one image to rule them all[2] becomes available. [1] In my not so humble opinion sufficient support for desktop-grade devices means it boots to a common output device (e.g. HDMI) and accepts keyboard input. Serial console is for developers, not users and should be optional. [2] https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/one_image_to_rule_them_all/ Kind regards, Andrei -- http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
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