Re: The state of Arm64 on Raspberry Pi (and its Documentation

[deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com>]

Pete Batard wrote:

> That's because it uses Device Tree, and the DT based version of the
> Genet driver has been in the kernel for a while, so it should be mostly
> okay.
> 
> But we have to use ACPI in UEFI for various reasons. The Pi 4 has a few
> quirks, especially when it comes to DMA and USB, that paradoxically make
> an ACPI implementation easier to sort out compared to DT. This doesn't
> mean we won't support DT, just that ACPI is more suitable for now. So we
> need ACPI bindings in Genet, whereas the existing Genet driver is
> intended as a DT mode driver.
> 
> As a matter of fact, much of what the proposed patch does is add ACPI
> support to the existing driver.
> 
> Also please bear in mind that the Pi Foundation adds a lot of quirks to
> their 32-bit kernels, some of which have yet to find their way in
> mainline aarch64. Raspbian is a very custom as a kernel.

Very interesting notes. I was planning to try debian kernel or custom kernel
build on debian. What I tried recently is do raspbian network boot
(diskless) and yesterday did debootstrap from within raspbian of a debian
buster armhf. The supplied kernel did not work (of course), so I was going
to look into that, but I am wondering now, after reading this, if I should
take arm64 instead of armhf.

For now I use the raspbian kernel in debian, but as you say it is 32 and I
am not into the details, so thank you for the hints.

Does it mean one should prefer arm64 and take a newer 5.x kernel?

regards