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Comment by ogre_codes | Hacker News Reader

> X86 is the most open architecture right now.

x86 is not "Open" in any fashion. You can't license x86 even for a fee, let alone free.

While ARM isn't open either, it is by comparison far more available to license at reasonable cost.

> ARM, on the other hand, has locked bootloaders

It also has open/ unlocked boot loaders. One of the advantages of licensable technology like this is you can have a lot of different architectures with the same underlying core. With x86, you get whatever the Intel/ AMD duopoly decide to ship you.

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> x86 is not "Open" in any fashion. You can't license x86 even for a fee, let alone free.

OP is not talking about being able to manufacture x86 CPUs kind of open, that's useless for most folks.

They're talking about being able to install any OS, drivers being fairly universal, no device specific out of tree kernel patches for the vast majority of PCs, no device trees etc.

It's a lousy use of the word "Open" in a discipline where Open has a fairly specific meaning.

I mentioned that as well though. Using your goofy definition of Open, x86 is no more "Open" than ARM. Pinebook and Raspberry Pi both use no bullshit ARM setups. With ARM, how accessible the architecture is is 100% dependent on the implementation which vary greatly by manufacturer.

> Using your goofy definition of Open

If I buy any x86 PC, chances are I can install mainline Linux on it. Picking up any particular recent ARM SoC and the chance of doing so is much, much less. The M1 included, after all.

> Pinebook and Raspberry Pi both use no bullshit ARM setups.

Both of these took considerably longer to get mainline support that your average x86 hardware needs.

> Both of these took considerably longer to get mainline support that your average x86 hardware needs.

Not sure what you are thinking here. It's taken 25 years so far and we still have tons of x86 hardware which isn't supported well in Linux. There is a reason Dell ships a specific laptop for developers with Linux pre-installed.

> There is a reason Dell ships a specific laptop for developers with Linux pre-installed.

And yet, even Windows DELL laptops are more likely to run mainline Linux than any average ARM SoC, even including the ones targeted at developers.

I am no fan of x86, but trading what we have now for an M1 is a net loss in terms of our ability to install anything we want as users, no question.

Consider for a moment how many independent developers rely on x86 based Linux systems versus ARM. x86 isn't open, Linux's support for it is a symptom of Intel's monopoly.

> And yet, even Windows DELL laptops are more likely to run mainline Linux than any average ARM SoC, even including the ones targeted at developers.

This is more about inertia and developer resources than openness. The more developers you have on ARM, the faster device and software support will come.

> I am no fan of x86, but trading what we have now for an M1 is a net loss in terms of our ability to install anything we want as users, no question.

You've changed the question here. We were speaking about ARM in general, not the M1.

Well there's two issues there. One is if the bootloader is open, which it is.

The second is if there's linux port for that hardware, which it isn't. There's a project underway, seems likely that the CPU (which is still AARCH64) will work, and likely networking. However to make a usable desktop you'll need a GPU which is much harder.

> x86 is no more "Open" than ARM. Pinebook and Raspberry Pi both use no bullshit ARM setups.

They're ARM SoCs, meaning that you can't just download the Ubuntu ARM ISO[1] and run it on either device like you could with an x86 ISO and an x86 machine.

To run Ubuntu or any Linux distribution, you need to use images that were specially crafted for either SoC.

This is because ARM SoCs use custom bootloaders and don't have hardware on enumerable buses. Each SoC model is essentially a unique hardware configuration that needs an individual Linux port.

ARM servers are more similar to x86 machines in that they use UEFI and have enumerable buses.

As long as machines are shipped that use ARM SoCs, Linux support for all of them will be quite difficult to achieve[2] compared to x86 machines.

[1] https://ubuntu.com/download/server/arm

[2] https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf

While Apple likely has no motivation currently to make a UEFI-based ARM computer, there's nothing that prevent anyone else from doing so. UEFI is not x86-specific.

(I also think it's a bit too early to say definitively that no ARM-based Apple computer will ever be able to boot into Linux. I don't think Apple has any motivation to make that easy, but that may not be the same as making it impossible.)

It's cheaper to just design a ARM SoC with a custom bootloader.

> I also think it's a bit too early to say definitively that no ARM-based Apple computer will ever be able to boot into Linux.

There's a big difference between a SoC running a Linux fork and actually running Linux distributions in the same sense that we can on x86 computers or ARM servers.

There is also nothing pushing OEMs to do this and in the decades we have had ARM SoCs we have not seen this happen.

Windows Mobile/phones actually had UEFI bootloaders with Windows Boot Manager [1]. For some Windows mobile devices, people have managed to unlock the bootloaders and load other EFI applications.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/br...

UEFI can be just as closed as custom non-UEFI bootloaders. Windows Mobile devices were UEFI, but they had Secure Boot enabled making it almost impossible to boot non-OEM signed images. (Un)fortunately, their Golden Key was leaked allowing experimentation with some Windows Mobile devices [1].

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/microsofts-debug-mode-flaw-an...

> Raspberry Pi both use no bullshit ARM setups.

Seriously? You need a blob from Broadcom to even boot the thing, and you call that a no bullshit ARM setup? I am astounded.

Compared to the amount of bullshit we had to to deal with in the 90s and 00s getting Linux running on a laptop, it's a walk in the park. Often it was a choice between mediocre FLOSS drivers or binary blobs from 2-3 private parties... when things even had drivers at all. It's been a while, but how many laptops lack wifi support or require proprietary drivers to work now?

Are the FLOSS drivers for Nvidia's cards great now? How many years have people been hacking on that project to make them work as well as they do?

What people are describing as "Open" is actually an enormous amount of work on the part of developers and the grudging support of hardware vendors after decades of struggle.

> It's been a while, but how many laptops lack wifi support or require proprietary drivers to work now?

Very few actually.

> Are the FLOSS drivers for Nvidia's cards great now?

Don't shift goalposts, we are talking about CPU support, not GPUs... GPU support on ARM is anyway not that great to begin with.

> What people are describing as "Open" is actually an enormous amount of work on the part of developers and the grudging support of hardware vendors after decades of struggle.

Intel has Linux dedicated teams at least, pushing FOSS code every single day. Most ARM licensees could not care one bit about FOSS.

> Don't shift goalposts, we are talking about CPU support

Linux already supports ARM CPUs and has for some time. The challenge is drivers. Getting video/ wifi/ etc running is the part that makes devices actually useful. The Broadcom Blob the poster I replied to was referring to is not for supporting ARM. Very similar to the Nvidia blob many people install (often unknowingly) when they install Linux on a system with Nvidia.

> Intel has Linux dedicated teams at least, pushing FOSS code every single day. Most ARM licensees could not care one bit about FOSS.

Intel didn't give a shit about Linux for how many years? Companies don't care about FOSS until it has potential to affect their bottom line. It was only after Linux servers were running half the Internet, that Intel stepped up and started supporting Linux.

I'm guessing you missed the first couple decades of Linux adoption. Linux on ARM is just a fast motion repeat of the early days of Linux on x86.

The is a free one: https://opencores.org/projects/zet86 (I don't know how complete/production grade is it).

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