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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."
This sounds to me like a RISC-y proposition.
Is the OP serious about Ubuntu's port to ARM causing Intel to worry and Microsoft to follow suit? As much as it is a popular Linux distro, and as much as I personally like Ubuntu and wish this were true, I really don't think Intel is going to lose sleep over Ubuntu on ARM.
Perhaps I'm misreading the tone of the summary. I honestly can't tell if it's is tongue-in-cheek or serious. The absurdity of it makes me think it's poking a little fun, but it reads to me like the guy was serious.
Ubuntu alone is not going to "set the stage for Intel to lose the "software advantage"", or anyone else for that matter, by switching to ARM.
Sure, a few thousand people will be able to switch to an ARM device without blinking, but the rest of the 99.9% of the worlds computer users won't give a flying piece of monkey poo.
I am reading this summary as a complete joke.
We are having problems moving to AMD64, and those processors include a full speed x86 compatibility mode. Until there is an ARM7 core that has a full x86 mode I don't think it is going to go anywhere on eliminating the "software advantage" of x86.
We can't even get such smallish things as flash to be offered in 64-bit mode, so what happens to larger Windows only stuff?
Plus Wine wouldn't work, since it isn't an emulator.
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Now that Ubuntu has finally ported to the ever-popular ARM architecture, maybe 2009 will be the year of Linux on the desktop!
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 ran on Alpha Processors so yes versions of windows have been ported to other architectures. DEC_Alpha
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
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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there are flash plugins for ARM, mind :)
That was 2008, now it's the Year After The Year For Linux, which is incidentally The Year That Microsoft Still Doesn't Care, which is also the year before The Year Microsoft Got Knocked Out Because They Weren't Paying Attention To Open Source. This is all part of the Decade Of Users Realizing Software Can't Always Be Spoon Fed To Them If They Want To Like What They Taste.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
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.
I second these thoughts fully - I _WANT_ to see Ubuntu on ARM as a hobbyist.
Downside: It might make the next batch of Pandora preorders sell out that much faster.
Well by ARMing Ubuntu, they'll be prepared to wage war on other OSs.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Who the heck wants to run Windows?
People who have clients or suppliers that use (the advanced features of) Microsoft Office. People who play indie video games or game mods (because consoles don't have mods). People who live in areas where the only banks use ActiveX for individual accounts (I've heard this is the case in parts of the Republic of Korea).
I see them doing this on the 7th of never.
Correction: Intel didn't sell all of their ARM business, just the product lines relevant to PDAs, netbooks, etc. (And Intel is still doing the manufaturing on behalf of Marvell, so they will make some money.)
NT 4.0 on a 128MB, 533MHz DEC Alpha workstation was actually solid and effortless.
I just hated that NT 4 removed video DMA, it broke a few of my other software programs but that got fixed with the release of 2000, by which time DEC was alreday going down and thus wasn't supported in the new NT iteration.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Nokia's N810, which is an ARM device, comes with Flash 9. Not some stripped down mobile version either, but the full thing.
My Nokia n810 is everything I wanted my Newton 2100 to be several years ago:
- smaller
- color
- built-in board
- integrated wireless lan
However, it lacks much of what made the Newton lovable. Perhaps a full Ubuntu port will let me push the limits. Multi-touch X and an alternative window manager would do a lot.
We can run Android, but it's less than optimized for the n810.
We can also run Einstein (http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2007/07/if_iphone_is_too_closed_try_ne.html) for the full Newton experience.
What we need is the same level of hardware attention being paid to Atom, as in more specialized vendors producing high-performance ARM hardware. Someone please build an ARM device with HIGH Performance video, better clock speeds, more RAM and storage, and more expansion options (USB, Mini-PCI, etc..).
If I have to link it with a pocket-sized projector or external LCD panel, so be it.
You might have problems running x86 software on x86-64 operating systems on x86-64 CPUs. But many issues are specific to certain operating systems. Missing 64-bit browser plug-ins can be solved by running a 32-bit browser and 32-bit plugins. It's also possible to support 64-bit software on a 32-bit kernel (which could have prevented driver availability issues for those who insist on using 64-bit software when they don't need to use more than ~3 GB of RAM), but only OS X Leopard takes this approach.
Some operating systems don't have x86-64 implementations that make this easy. I like the approach used in Solaris and OS X; there are no separate x86-64 and x86 versions of either operating system. Solaris includes the x86 and x86-64 kernels and OS X Leopard uses a 32-bit kernel which can run 64-bit processes. They ship with 32- and 64-bit libraries, but most of the userland executables are 32-bit.
Yet another reason not to use proprietary plugins. If non-x86 netbooks catch on I think we'll see sites like youtube offering alternative streaming methods, like via HTML5's tag. Flash is great for vector animation, but it doesn't offer any advantages when it comes to web video.
I never bought into the hype for all these years that we'd give up desktops and do most of our computing on mobile devices. The screens were too small, they all had unique software, didn't operate with another, and couldn't perform the tasks I need.
However I can take a Nokia i810 tablet, install KDE 4 and have a modern, fully function OS on it that can do anything my desktop can do, and interoperate with my desktop.
Seriously, now we're talking. Give me a slightly better tablet with 1 gig of memory and then I'm not sure I'd look at a laptop again.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Gnuflash will come along. Flash is already available for some non-x86 architectures.
Who cares about windows-only stuff on a mobile internet device or a netbook?
As for the rest of Linux stuff, there are already arm ports of a hell of a lot of thing, debian runs fine on arm.
It would appear to me that Flash is crippling web browsing, as it stands. Its slow, very bloated, and doesn't handle well on older hardware. The lack of Flash ability hardly cripples the web, either - not unless your "web use" is centered around Flash games, email, and IM.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
Though the comments are a bit inflammatory, they are pretty close to the truth.
Debian has been on ARM forever. I've got a NSLU2 from a couple of years ago running Debian with zero issues and fantastic performance. http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/
I fail to see where this improves Canonical's chances of turning a profit. Dell's deal sure doesn't seem to have helped them very much.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
There's no point in doing this. The reason people install Windows on their x86-based netbooks is so they can make use of the existing selection of Windows software titles. In the non-x86 world, there is no such thing, so the advantage goes to Linux.
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ARM kicks ass.
They really have made an excellent platform for making pda's/laptops and desktops, but few have really taken advantage of it so far. Just Set top boxes, and embedded platforms, which is where I have been using them.
I just don't understand why OLPC didn't use ARM...
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Flash is great for vector animation, but it doesn't offer any advantages when it comes to web video.
It has the advantage of a huge install base.
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.
3D acceleration support, various binary-only drivers, flash player.
Also, it might take some time to tune browsers/JS engines on an arch with vastly different cache performance.
Of course all of this could get solved given some time.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
ARM7 != ARMv7.
ARM7 is a family of cores. ARMv7 on the other hand is the latest ARM architecture version. The Cortex A8 and A9 are ARMv7 cores.
For example the Nokia N810 has a core from the ARM11 family, specifically ARM1136J. It is based on the ARMv6 architecture. The next Nokia device has been announced to be based on Texas Instrument's OMAP3 platform, which includes the new Cortex A8 (same as Pandora and Beagleboard).
Does anyone have any idea what reference platform they are using to develop this and if there is a way for me to obtain it relatively cheaply?
My bets are on the beagle board as it is super cheap (and they have a posting on their front page about Canonical porting to arm7).
The beagle board is an awesome bang for the buck. I'm thinking of asking my work to grab one for me with the next digikey shipment (free shipping, woohoo).
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Are you sure about that? Intel have been working on Atom and say it's better than ARM now,
Even back in April, atom had an idle power range of 80-100mW.
Uhhhhhhhh, Gnash has been in the last three Ubuntu distros, and http://mojo.handhelds.org/ has compilations of Gnash, so you can indeed run Flash on ARM.
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3) if you want to stay connected with the net (IM presence, mail moniroring), battery life is 6-7 hours max. Just looking at it eats battery.
One of your apps is badly behaved then. I get days with email and VoIP (SIP) running on the N800. And the N810 is supposed to be better. Do you use the bundled mail and IM clients?