ARM as a primary architecture

[elison.niven at gmail.com]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 4:56 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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

Accepted. Thank you for taking the trouble to clarify.

Best Regards,
Elison Niven