Re: Is an ARM computer a good choice? Which one?
On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 08:45:13AM +0100, Lionel Élie Mamane wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 11:17:50AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > On Tue, 2023-03-21 at 00:34 +0100, Lionel Élie Mamane 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.
>
> > It depends on what you mean by freedom-respecting.
>
If you can get a Raspberry Pi 4 - it woill work as a small desktop, more
or less silently. To fit extra disks you'll need an add on case - something
like the Argon which will take NVME. There are bottlenecks. It's still
essentially a phone SOC. It's not *free* because blobs and if you
want peripherals, you more or less are tied to running Raspberry Pi OS.
I'm not sure I'd build Libreoffice on anything ARM unless you can
find an Ampere server or similar.
Debian folks I know run on ex-business Thinkpads or older Apple Macbooks.
If you can swallow using Intel, the Thinkpads are good but not as robust
as they once were - and you really need a T series. One stick of RAM
is almost always soldered (unless you get the P series workstation
replacements).
The suggestion of someone like QuietPC to just build you a box with
as much RAM as you can get is not a bad one. The AMD Threadrippers
work well for grunt work but run hot.
> Mostly, I wanted to understand the main alternatives and their level
> of freedom. In an ideal world, I'd like every bit of software,
> drivers, firmware, etc to be FLOSS. Pragmatically, I won't reject a
> platform that is "less bad" than the amd64 I'd get from the store.
>
>
> Oh, I'll try to find them.
>
These are like unicorns: you might need to talk to Mark Pearson of Lenovo.
A couple of Yoga devices were released a few years ago.
> > Personally I think users of every non-amd64 port should consider
> > doing porting work to keep their ports viable, since your personal
> > package set might not be on the radar of vendors like ARM or other
> > users.
>
I feel as if it's only Debian that keeps non-x86 / arm64 alive.
> "Some work", like submitting patches to fix that-or-that package for
> the architecture, yes, that's part of FLOSS developer / enthusiast
> life, and I'd probably enjoy the work. Even running a buildd, if
> that's what lacking. But I don't want it to be the majority of my
> "free software time" either. And I need a machine that works to do the
> work, obviously.
>
Hope this helps - it's probably off topic for Debian ARM now so I'll
disappear.
Andy Cater
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