Re: Feedback from the community -> ARM
W dniu 11.06.2021 o 09:25, Ralph Aichinger pisze:
I really think Debian should have a better answer to installing on
the Raspberry Pi, as this ist the only board that is widely
available, sold in *huge* numbers (40 million?), can boot aarch64,
has up to 8GB RAM (which makes it quite usable for many tasks), and
most of all a long support times (they guarantee production of the
RPi4 until January 2026, which is probably longer than most Intel
hardware sold today, and probably four times as long as comparable
SBC products.
Ask Raspberry/Pi vendor then. Make them work on getting support for
their product into mainline, make use of available standards during
design of their next products.
Properly designed Arm board should boot generic ISO written into USB
stick (dd if=d-i.iso of=/dev/sda). Several SBC work that way already (or
can have their firmware flashed to be that way).
Distributions should not waste time on getting SBC systems working but
SBC vendors should make them 'just work' with distributions.
You go to store, buy x86-64 laptop/computer and expect it to just work
with Debian. Arm hardware should work same way. Just vendors do not care
because users are so used to 'shit, this arm device needs some special
treatment' way of support.
How much different is the process of booting an RPi 4 with UEFi from
e.g. booting some run of the mill notebook with obscure Realtek
components that need binary blobs too?
'of the mill notebook': connect cables, plug USB stick with generic
installer, boot, install, use. Then use the same USB stick with another
notebook from different vendor.
RPi4: find out how it boots, prepare SD card with RPi4 specific
installer, boot, install, use. And then rewrite SD card for another SBC.
I see a difference.
As somebody who has used Raspbian now for years, quassel-core or
FreedomBox is rather offputting, because I very much prefer true
Debian that matches amd64 except for architecture. If I wanted to
have some distribution that is "Debian based" and not Debian
outright, I'd probably go for Raspberry Pi OS.
Let me be honest: if someone wants to use R/Pi SBC then R/Pi OS is what
they should use. To not waste time of other distribution maintainers.
This way you get 'probably working' kernel with all out-of-tree patches
needed to get board working and functional + set of packages with
out-of-tree patches to get userspace running.
Debian, Fedora and other distros usually do not ship those out-of-tree
patches because they are not even on a way to mainline projects.
The official arm64 install documentation lists as of today as
supported arm64 boards:
Applied Micro (APM) Mustang/X-Gene T ARM Juno Development Platform
Has anybody of you seen these in the wild?
I booted bullseye on Mustang during last week.
Why is the Raspberry Pi 4 with UEFI or the stock boot process not
listed here?
Because no one contributed it?
What can a mere Debian user like me do to improve this documentation
problem?
Check doc, write new one, send to maintainer. Or even to this ML.
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