zlacker

>>ekianj+(OP)
The review shows ARM64 software support is still painful vs x86. For $200 for the 16gb model, this is the price point where you could just get an Intel N150 mini PC in the same form factor. And those usually come with cases. They also tend to pull 5-8w at idle, while this is 15w. Cool if you really want ARM64, but at this end of the performance spectrum, why not stick with the x86 stack where everything just works a lot easier?

>>eleven+O7
From the article: "[...] the Linux support for various parts of the boards, not being upstreamed and mainlined, is very likely to be stuck on an older version. This is usually what causes headaches down the road [...]".

The problem isn't support for the ARM architecture in general, it's the support for this particular board.

Other boards like the Raspberry Pi and many boards based on Rockchip SoCs have most of the necessary support mainlined, so the experience is quite painless. Many are starting to get support for UEFI as well.

>>Youden+td
My uninformed normie view of the ecosystem suggests that it's the support for almost every particular board, and that's exactly the issue. For some reason, ARM devices always have some custom OS or Android and can't run off-the-shelf Linux. Meanwhile you can just buy an x86/amd64 device and assume it will just work. I presume there is some fundamental reason why ARM devices are so bad about this? Like they're just missing standardization and every device requires some custom firmware to be loaded by the OS that's inevitably always packaged in a hacky way?

>>ndrisc+qi
Its the kernel drivers, not firmware. There is no bios or acpi, so the kernel itself has to support a specifc board. In practice it means there is a dtb file that configures it and the actual drivers in the kernel.

Manufacturers hack it together, flash to device and publish the sources, but dont bother with upstreaming and move on.

Same story as android devices not having updates two years after release.

>>Murome+Km
But "no BOIS or ACPI" and requiring the kernel to support each individual board sounds exactly like the problem is the ARM architecture in general. Until that's sorted it makes sense to be wary of ARM.

>>ndrisc+2o
It's not a problem with ARM servers or vendors that care about building well designed ARM workstations.

It's a problem that's inherit to mobile computing and will likely never change unless with regulation or an open standards device line somehow hitting it out of the park and setting new expectations a la PCs.

The problem is zero expectation of ever running anything other than the vendor supplied support package/image and how fast/cheap it is to just wire shit together instead of worrying about standards and interoperability with 3rd party integrators.

>>heavys+Kz1
How so? The Steam Deck is an x86 mobile PC with all the implications of everything (well, all the generic hardware e.g. WiFi, GPU IIRC) work out of the box.

>>MarsIr+IC1
When I say mobile, I mean ARM SoCs in the phone, embedded and IoT lineage, not so much full featured PCs in mobile form factor.