Re: [9front] build iso from arm64

[Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>]

On Sat, May 07, 2022 at 11:14:37AM -0400, Thaddeus Woskowiak wrote:
> Who is going to IBM the Arm platform? Microsoft? Amazon? Google? 
> Facebook?

Google could easily drive the entire ARM SoC market themselves, without
question, just by making requirements in Android. In fact the ARM/Google
relationship would nicely parallel the Intel/Microsoft reign of terror.

> The PC platform is an agreement between manufacturers to use a
> standard boot firmware (bios/uefi), standard hardware interfaces (e.g.
> pci, ata, vesa, etc, ac97/hda), and booting procedures (mbr/gpt).

No, it's not an agreement between manufacturers.  Every one of the
standards you mentioned came from Intel except for ATA.  If you want an
Intel chip in your computer, you play ball.  Fortunately it's easy to
play ball, because once you sign the NDAs Intel will happily do half the
work for you.

> The closest we have had is the Microsoft Windows RT Surface

The closest we've had with a chance at being a competitor is the Google
Chromebook specifications, but it's severely limiting in what hardware
it allows, which leads back to a free-for-all once you step outside the
spec.  Another could-have-been was the OLPC XO-4 ARM machines, which
shipped with a beautiful OpenFirmware build that supported all the
hardware natively, no ACPI required.

> Though, for anything to succeed, it would need the weight of an IBM 
> behind it.

No, I think ARM could step up and offer meaningful reference designs,
and that's about all it would take.  But the world is committed to a
bespoke u-boot and device-tree per SKU, and most of the development
industry have Stockholmed themselves into believing this is for the
best.

khm