F20 System Wide Change: ARM as primary Architecture

[Adam Williamson]

On 2013-07-09 10:53, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 10:50 AM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> 
> wrote:
>> llvmpipe has been known to be broken for months, and nobody on the ARM
>> team appears capable of fixing it. As a result, ARM shipped in F19
>> without any out of the box support for running our default desktop.
>> 
>> This doesn't make it seem like the ARM port currently has sufficient
>> developer expertise involved, and I'd really like to hear what the 
>> plans
>> are for (a) fixing the existing problems, and (b) ensuring that we 
>> don't
>> end up in a situation where other architectures are held up because
>> there's nobody who can fix ARM-specific bugs.
> 
> Does the secureboot situation on arm mean that this primary 
> architecture
> will eventually be un-bootable for people running a non-redhat signed 
> kernel?

I think you're mistaking "the secure boot situation on *Microsoft* ARM" 
for "the secure boot situation on ARM".

ARM devices that want to come with an OEM copy of Windows RT 
pre-installed have to do certain things with Secure Boot which 
effectively prevent anyone else from booting on them. Okay. So, we don't 
support such devices.

Microsoft cannot magically apply their OEM licensing requirements to 
Every ARM Device Ever, including all the ones that don't run Windows RT. 
Which is like 97+% of ARM devices, given the Windows RT sales figures so 
far.

Various other popular consumer ARM devices use other techniques - *not* 
UEFI Secure Boot - for locking out alternative OSes, so Fedora isn't 
going to work on those either, unless they're hacked. Too bad. As 
bconoboy says, such things simply fall in the 'unsupported hardware' 
box.

When reading media articles about SB, bear in mind they're usually 
wildly inaccurate. For the straight dope, apply to mjg59, pjones, or if 
neither of them is available, me (but remember I'm just the monkey).
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net