
What’s up with ARM - pmjordan
http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/blog-entry/what%E2%80%99s-with-arm
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edderly
Some context:

 _Gaah. Guys, this whole ARM thing is a f-cking pain in the ass_
<https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/3/17/492>

_Let ARM rot in the mainline. I really don't care anymore._
<https://lwn.net/Articles/441384/>

It'll be interesting to see what direction this goes. Considering also the
forks for the Android kernel and the different directions ARM development
wants to go compared to Intel.

~~~
dochtman
Yeah, this isn't really new to anyone who reads the LWN (which is edited by
the author of the OP, BTW). The LWN is really very good, and subscribing is
worth it for those hackers who care about the larger Linux/POSIX ecosystem.

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zdw
This is very welcome.

ARM has tended to be somewhat difficult to port to - vendors have multiple
versions of the instruction set out there depending on device size/power
requirements, with different floating point units (NEON, VFP) etc.

The result is we end up with situations like OpenEmbedded supporting multiple
kernel trees in it's build engine just to take care of the wide range of
hardware it supports.

Hopefully this will make the situation somewhat better.

~~~
rbanffy
Anything that increases functionality/LoC in the kernel is good. In any
complex software project - and the Linux kernel is about as complex as sanity
and present technology will allow - you have to do periodical codebase clean-
ups. This is one case where the pain to maintain is forcing a cleanup.

And, as always, it's discussed openly, so, whoever depends on it doesn't get
surprised by the next release.

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paines
This biggest problem with ARM devices is, that the only devices out there for
usage are embedded ones. Up to now there is only one Notebook out there
(alwaysinnovating) which could be used as a computer on a daily basis. But
IMHO 10'' is too small to do serious stuff. 13'' is minimum. Hope we will see
them soon in the wild.

