ARM as a primary architecture

[Peter Robinson]

> I see that this discussion has gone from ARM as a primary architecture
> for Fedora to a general Tablets vs PC market discussion. IMHO, While
> there is no doubt that the tablet/mobile market is growing rapidly,
> The desktop and laptops are there to stay.
>
> Considering ARM as a primary architecture for Fedora is not a bad
> idea. But Sorry, why is this proposed? Do you intend to run Fedora on
> your smartphones or tablets?

It's got nothing to do with smart phones and tablets. We don't intend
on supporting Fedora on smart phones (not to say a third party group
can't though), we're reviewing tablets and it will certainly be
possible to run it on tablets, the level of support out of the box is
undecided. The thing it does have to do with it ARM
netbooks/laptops/smarttops as well as dev boards and servers. There's
100s of ARM devices out there that aren't tablets or smartphones.

> I think that making ARM as a primary architecture for Fedora is a lot
> of work, I have no idea of the resources available in terms of
> developers, machines (in case of native builds),testers etc.

Don't you think that the ARM SIG that has been working on ARM on
Fedora for close to 2 years might be aware of this?

> And what will Fedora have achieved after putting in so much work? A
> few users (read geeks) who will be willing to install Fedora on their
> android tablets or ipads? Are there any ARM boards out in the market
> that are waiting to get Fedora installed on them?

Yes, there's lots of devices. HP/Calxeda servers [1], Dell has
announced intention to do ARM servers[2], the XO 1.75 [3] and XO-3 [4]
devices, the Spark Tablet [5] and around a dozen different smartbooks,
nettops, development boards to name but a few.

> Where is the hardware? Do you see signs of ARM boards coming in the
> near future (next 1 year or so) on which users can install operating
> systems of their choice? If the answer is yes, I would recommend
> considering ARM as a primary architecture for Fedora.
> If the answer is no, I think it is probably too early to consider ARM
> as a primary architecture for Fedora.

The answer is already yes, and is going to increase substantially in
the coming months/year.

Peter

[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9221370/Calxeda_s_chip_boosts_ARM_s_server_fight_with_Intel
[2] http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/21/dell-wants-in-on-arm-server-field-says-software-still-has-some/
[3] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-1.75
[4] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-3
[5] http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Spark-tablet-announced/?kc=rss