Odd timing since there is a renewed push for Arm laptop chips coming around from Qualcomm.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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What is the best option if you wanted to run Linux on ARM?
These days I'm more interested in the ARM world rather than the x86 world because ARM is simpler, power-efficient, scalable from cortex M0 to X4 and everything in between, and I took a class on ARM assembly language. x86, on the other hand, is full of legacy cruft and complicated as a result, and x86 is power hungry. Look at the new Intel 14900K, it draws over 400W!
Fedora works pretty well on ARM, it even became the flagship distro for the Asahi project, which aims to bring full Linux compatibility to Apple Silicon
If only they would make an ARM version of their atomic distros...
They have ARM versions of Silverblue and Kinoite, but they don't provide patches or the installer for Apple Silicon Macs
The problem with Rpi is the file provided by Fedora is an ISO, and Rpi doesn't have a way to boot from a live USB; it needs a complete tar.gz to flash onto the SD card.
ETA: there's actually a way to make Rpi boot from a USB drive, but that's typically used to boot the entire system, not a temporary live USB. Maybe it would work, but I've never tried it.
Right, I didn't think about the RPi. Perhaps you could check if there's an open feature request for this, and if not, create one.
Good idea! I didn't even think about that
It's been a few years since my last manual install of Fedora (I've just been upgrading it), but I got Fedora Server to install just fine. I did it one of two ways (again, I can't remember which): I either used the USB boot option to install to an SSD I attach via USB, or I booted the liveUSB on my laptop and installed to the USB SSD. In any case, Fedora has worked flawlessly for me for a few years on Pi now, so I would strongly recommend it.
Just as an aside, I highly recommend against using a microSD card if you have a Pi model that can boot from USB storage. They are far less stable than an SSD, and are not designed to withstand running an operating system from. They are also dramatically slower, and much more painful to work with. Getting a cheap USB enclosure for an SSD is a far better solution, just try to pick up an SSD with a DRAM cache. It will increase throughput and increase the lifetime of the SSD, and I would not recommend running an OS from an SSD without a DRAM cache.
EDIT: I believe this to be the easiest way to install Fedora for a Pi device. You will use a desktop/laptop Linux device, and the arm-image-installer will take an ARM ISO and install it to your storage media (SD card, microSD card, SSD, etc.). It was also the first thing I found when I looked up how to install Fedora on a Pi.
Debian? They have good ARM support (the raspberry pi OS is based on Debian, uses its repos). Definitely also install flatpak. Most, but not all, flatpaks have arm builds.
Yes, I'm also interested in ARM because it means we can have a very light laptop / tablet running a full desktop OS without the typical limitations of iOS / Android.
Debian is for sure the most stable thing in ARM, mostly because it is the upstream of many ARM-focused distributions like Armbian and there's also where ARM CPU makers usually test their stuff. There's a constant stream of patches coming from those manufacturers and downstream distributions because everyone wants to mainline both kernel and userland support for their ARMs.
Unfortunately there isn't much decent "open" tablet hardware to run Linux on. The interesting things like those ultra-thin Lenovo tablets with amazing screens have locked bootloaders and other bullshit that stops people from loading Linux into then and making drivers / the required adjustments. Then there's the Pine stuff that (even if you can get it) it's overpriced, bulky and not a finished hardware product in any way.
Debian.
What is the best option if you wanted to run Linux on ARM?
Good question.
These days I’m more interested in the ARM world rather than the x86 world because ARM is simpler, power-efficient, scalable from cortex M0 to X4 and everything in between, and I took a class on ARM assembly language. x86, on the other hand, is full of legacy cruft and complicated as a result, and x86 is power hungry. Look at the new Intel 14900K, it draws over 400W!
Last year Hetzner introduced arm64-based cloud servers with Ampere processors. Looks promising. I hope more providers will follow.
Don't know about best, but I've been running Arch on Raspberry Pi 4 for a few months now. So far I'm having no issues. Changing from the default kernel to rpi kernel went also smoothly.
Unpopular opinion, but Gentoo is perfect for ARM. Availability of pre built binaries for ARM can sometimes be an issue. Gentoo gives you the option to compile from source, so that if a package is available for x86, it will still most likely work with ARM
Way to put it all on Pudge.
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