[Liverpool] Linux on ARM

[Sebastian]

On 10/08/2010 11:27 AM, Graeme Dyas wrote:
>  >From what I can remember it's not that simple. You can't just install
> the OS. You need some kind of boot-loader installed or you need a JTAG
> programmer. It would be possible to develop a universal boot loader but
> I don't see this happening any time soon. It would need some kind of
> standard bootloader/bios on all ARM Devices.
>
>
>
> If you are interested in seeing how to install Linux on a ARM processor
> I would check out the http://beagleboard.org/ project.

Thanks Graeme. In a sense that is an answer to my question. I have 
installed Linux on some NSLUs a while ago (which are ARM based). I know 
it can be done in many cases. I was just wondering if there will ever be 
some sort of universal method which will work on all of them. I guess 
you have already answered that - the short answer is no.

Well, one can keep on hoping. I guess until that will be that case, I 
don't see ARM breaking out of the 'device' type market, into the general 
computing market - where x86 is. Not that the 'device' market is not 
lucrative, or large enough, or fairly useful to all of us as it is now :-)

Sebastian

>
>
>
>
> On 7 October 2010 13:39, Sebastian <shop at open-t.co.uk
> <mailto:shop at open-t.co.uk>> wrote:
>
>     Just a bit of an open topic - more for my general knowledge, if not
>     for anything else :-)
>
>     I was thinking about the fact that the market is being taken over by
>     these iPad clones (ish) - and all of the ones I've seen seem to be
>     based on some flavour of ARM processor. I was wondering if this
>     would mean a new impetus for the various ARM Linux distributions out
>     there. I'm aware that there has been continuous effort in this
>     direction over the years - but the most significant ARM devices
>     available for (sort of) mass consumption have been some hackable
>     routers, and the SheevaPlug device. I'm not really aware about other
>     stuff with ARM inside that you could just buy and install Linux on.
>
>     Would people here think that we will see new effort directed towards
>     hacking all these cheap(ish) ARM tablets and installing some proper
>     Linux on them. I don't know much about hardware particularities for
>     these devices - specially things like BIOS (or whatever ARM world
>     tends to call it) - which might make it difficult or impossible to
>     hack around on these. Or if this might mean that a generic ARM
>     distribution couldn't pull it off - as each device might have
>     esoteric ways of beeing rooted/jail-broken - which would fragment
>     too much the development effort.
>
>     In case I wasn't clear enough in my ramble :-) : are we going to see
>     a situation, like in the x86 world, where one can just download an
>     ARM distribution, pick up any ARM tablet, install it and get on with
>     things - kind of some sort of universal compatibility? Again, I
>     don't enough about hardware aspects of the ARM world - so I would
>     like to know if I'm imagining the impossible.
>
>     Any comments welcome,
>
>     Sebastian
>
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