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Ubuntu Ports To ARM
nerdyH writes "Canonical will port Ubuntu Desktop Linux to the ARMv7 architecture. The announcement sets the stage for Intel to lose the traditional 'software advantage' that has enabled x86 to shrug off attacks from other architectures for the last 30 years. How long can it be before Microsoft responds with a Windows 7 port? I mean, x86 just can't do 'idle power' like ARM ... Nokia's N810 tablets can standby for several weeks, just like a cell phone, keeping you 'present' on IM, behind IPv4 NAT the whole time. The first Atom MIDs are standing by for 6-7 hours."
Uhm... so Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian, and Debian has supported ARM for like... forever. Ubuntu just hasn't followed suit until now.
Not to say this isn't significant. Just give Debian some credit.
http://mediagoblin.org/
Windows NT has had versions on "IA-32, AMD64, MIPS R4000, Alpha, PowerPC, and Itanium", but mostly the earlier versions, like 3.1 and 3.51, with XP on Itanium.
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Not anymore. Intel sold the XScale division to Marvell in 2006. Since then, Intel has been without a good low-power processor. None of their x86 designs has come close to what a fully static ARM core can achieve in terms of battery life.
Nokia's N810, which is an ARM device, comes with Flash 9. Not some stripped down mobile version either, but the full thing.
I own an N810 and this is such an exaggeration as to be patently false. Not even Nokia claims you can get that kind of battery life out of these.
An N810 can only go about 48 hours between each charge. And that's if the bluetooth and wifi radios are turned off and all programs are exited. If the battery is new, you might get up to three days.
If you have the wifi radio on and are idling on IM, I'd expect that you could maybe get 12 hours of infrequent use and even that might be pushing it.
When actively using the device (browsing the web, listening to a stream, etc), the CPU kicks in and you'll get between 4 and 6 hours of use depending on what you're doing.
No, what NatSemi had bought was the craptacular MediaGX line from Cyrix, which was subsequently bought by AMD. "Geode" with AMD means the GX1 (Which is the NatSemi version...), the GX2 (now branded "LX"...), and the NX (which is a rebadged Athlon XP+ at extreme low power...).
The NX is AMD's answer to Intel's Pre-Atom embedded stuff (and was a good one...)- but AMD doesn't seem to have an Atom answer...yet.
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Yeah, most current ARM cpus aren't much good for general computers (your run of the mill desktop or laptop). But don't forget that ARM was originally designed for use in Desktops, and derivatives of that design were for sale until a few months ago.
An ARM CPU could be great for a netbook or low power desktop -- the machines that currently use Intel's Atom. Multi-core ARM CPUs running >1GHz are on the way (or maybe they're already here, I haven't been keeping track), and they might easily have enough power (and power efficiency) for that task. Perhaps they'll be better suited than Atom.
The thing stopping non x86 platforms has always been software. FOSS avoids that problem -- if you have the source code then the program is only a compile away. Of course, Linux has long run on ARM CPUs, but open source programs weren't good enough substitues for what people wanted, so it didn't matter. Now, we may finally be approaching the point where people are willing to ditch their Windows, at least for simple tasks like the ones you'd do on netbook. Such an influential Linux distribution supporting ARM CPUs might finially make the platform viable.
Hell, perhaps a company planning an ARM based netbook asked Canonical to do this, and they saw the opportunity. This could be interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iyonix_PC
Lots of people are getting mixed up, and/or saying "big deal Debian already supports it". ARM has a slightly confusing numbering scheme: ARM7, ARM9, ARM11, Cortex-A8 are processor models, whereas ARMv4, ARMv5, ARMv6, ARMv7 are their respective architecture versions.
Pretty much all current ARM devices are ARM9 or ARM11 based (smartphones, Nokia's internet tablets, etc). This means they are too old to run this :)
The Pandora, and other upcoming devices, are based on the Cortex-A8, an ARMv7 architecture processor and the most recent ARM currently generally available: this is what Ubuntu are targeting here.
Debian's ARM port is for any ARMv4t or higher currently, which includes ARM11, ARM9 and even ARM7TDMI. This is rather suboptimal for chips like the Cortex-A8 which have many, many more instructions available, so Ubuntu are indeed doing something different here.
I've been using Debian Sid as my home operating system for years. I'm well aware that they offer source packages; I've used them myself. Naturally, if you want to install a source package you need to compile it on your own computer. However, this is true of any distribution, regardless of its style of package management. The statement I was responding to was "the CPU will never, ever go idle, it will always be compiling!", which applies (with a bit of hyperbole) to source-based distributions like Gentoo, but not to primarily binary ones like Debian, the presence of source packages notwithstanding.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
But the Athlon uses twice the power as an Atom 230 and is far from twice as fast. It is true that an AMD "system" can compete with the current Atom but this is only because of the horrible chipset used with the Atom. Package an Atom in a better "system" (like the Asus EEE Box) and you can drop the max system power usage to 20w.
Comparing the performance of the Athlon to an Atom 330 is a better comparison as both CPUs use 8w. In this situation, the Atom overpowers the Athlon in almost every benchmark.
Currently, the saving grace of the Athlon is that there are plenty of different options available to diy builders. The Atom is only available with a motherboard - and it's soldered on. Want firewire?, more then 2Gigs RAM?, better video?, - you're out of luck. The Atom is an amazing CPU but the Atom offerings are severely limited.