Re: Is an ARM computer a good choice? Which one?
This is a non-technical barely qualified opinion but yes. An easy
start is a Raspberry Pi, about a 3B ($35), it's what I'm typing on.
I've got 4 of them. And this one is running Debian, not Raspbian AKA
Raspberry Pi OS. The differences are tiny. Just get a monitor and
keyboard, a couple of SD cards about 32 GB or larger and a Pi. It's
easy to download your first image and get it booted, from there you
can experiment. Install Synaptic the package manager, after that you
search for applications and click on them to install.
There is a Raspberry Pi 4 which is considerably better but relatively
rare due to the infamous chip shortage. I have other ARM machines too
but the Pi 3B is super reliable and straight forward. Try a $10 Zero
for a single core version, but have fun.
On 3/20/23, Lionel Élie Mamane <lionel@mamane.lu> wrote:
> Would an ARM-based machine be a good freedom-respecting computer to
> run Debian on? I read the Raptor/Power guys saying modern ARM has
> freedom problems in a, but I haven't seen them go into specifics. Is
> it at least "not as bad" as amd64, with Intel's Management Engine and
> AMD's equivalent? Or is something like a System76 or Puri.sm
> amd64-based machine better / just as good?
>
> Do you have specific "ready to buy" (even if lead times are months,
> not year+) computers to recommend for that? For a laptop? For a
> "beefy" but quiet desktop that won't shy away from compiling
> e.g. LibreOffice?
>
> Will popular Debian software "generally work" or will I run into
> "many" situations like e.g. Firefox WebRTC doesn't work on Power and
> QT 5 doesn't work on Sparc64 (!!!)?
>
> I don't particularly want to get deep into being a porter, but I want
> a good desktop to run XFCE, emacs, mutt, gdal, Firefox ESR, etc,
> developing my pet software, maybe get back into LibreOffice (a beast
> to compile...) development and/or become active as Debian package
> maintainer again, flashing LineageOS to my Android pocket computers
> (smartphones) until a better alternative becomes usable, ...
>
> Thanks in advance for your advice,
>
> --
> Lionel
>
>
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Education is contagious.
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