If the SOC makers want their hardware to be popular for longer, they really need to add mainline kernel support.
I looked at them as a tinkering platform. But I don’t want to buy something which is probably abandoned in a few months.
This is why I gave up on a really amazing ARM device that I wanted to use as a router. I ended up having to buy an Intel-based mini PC simply because I didn’t have more time to invest in creating and burning random disk images to SD cards and USB flash drives.
Those SoCs usually have one distro with a patched out of date kernel and overall lacking support of upstream drivers to install an off the shelf distro.
Arm devices are notoriously closed. Apple silicon is an extreme example, where it only works thanks to reverse engineering the HW.
And each of these SoCs requires people, ideally the manufacturer, to actually put in the work to make the hardware work on Linux. So many SBCs with severely outdated kernels …
Never mind the absolute ocean of ARM SoCs, not to mention Apple’s silicon
If the SOC makers want their hardware to be popular for longer, they really need to add mainline kernel support.
I looked at them as a tinkering platform. But I don’t want to buy something which is probably abandoned in a few months.
They don’t give a shit about hobbyists. We don’t give them contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
What we need are more ARM PCs with UEFI and mainline Linux drivers. That way they would run a generic OS image just like an x86 PC.
Most ARM PCs require an image built specifically for that system. That makes them a real pain the ass to work with.
This is why I gave up on a really amazing ARM device that I wanted to use as a router. I ended up having to buy an Intel-based mini PC simply because I didn’t have more time to invest in creating and burning random disk images to SD cards and USB flash drives.
Those SoCs usually have one distro with a patched out of date kernel and overall lacking support of upstream drivers to install an off the shelf distro.
Arm devices are notoriously closed. Apple silicon is an extreme example, where it only works thanks to reverse engineering the HW.
And each of these SoCs requires people, ideally the manufacturer, to actually put in the work to make the hardware work on Linux. So many SBCs with severely outdated kernels …
I suppose ARM really missed the mark by not establishing a universal power framework.