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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.
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 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?"
Well by ARMing Ubuntu, they'll be prepared to wage war on other OSs.
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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.
Really? All it took was a a tiny company in Cupertino, CA, a rogue division in Boca Raton, FL, and a tiny company in Albuquerque, NM, to change IBM's world.
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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.
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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.
> 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.
You are missing the big picture. Go look at lilliputing.com's similar story. This is about netbooks. If Canonical is investing in a full port this tells us somebody bigger than the generic Chinese outfit we already know about is planning to introduce an ARM based netbook, which also is isn't news to we who have been paying attention because ARM themselves said as much weeks ago. We still don't know WHO this mystery major vendor is though.
> 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.
Have you used an EEEPC running their customized Xandros? It 'just works' and in the last month they have added a full repository where you can just click to add from a quickly growing list of additional apps. I haven't seen Ubuntu Netbook Remix yet but I'm confident that if they put their minds to it thay can produce a similarly seamless experience on a preloaded machine. And the end user won't even realize the machine isn't x86 compatible and won't care as long as it 'just works.'
The big change will be these new ARM netbooks won't have an option for XP. Some might get roughed up enough by Redmond to offer a WinCE option but who in their right mind would pick Pocket IE and Office viewers over a full Firefox and full version of OO.o?
Democrat delenda est
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.