Missing support for ARM architecture (kernels and images)

[Hadmut Danisch]

Hi,

there's currently an evolving and growing landscape of little, low-power, ARM-based computers. There's the Raspberry Pi, which can't run Ubuntu because of it's non-supported CPU revision, but there's other computers able and mostly used to run Ubuntu, namely the odroids, the cubieboard, the banana pi.

Unfortunately, running Ubuntu on them is a mess.

Although Ubuntu provides an almost complete and suitable package repository, there's two major problems:

- lack of kernels
- lack of boot/install images and boot code

It's rather disappointing if you have to wait for someone around the manufacturer updating a kernel every now and then.

I'd therefore propose to offer some support and to make this part of Ubuntu.

Kernels:

- Let those people who create the home-brewn and nobody-knows-how kernels provide a simple description about how to compile the kernel suitable for their platform, and have the kernels built automatically.

- Same with boot images: usually these images are copied with dd onto an sd card and then do autoexpand to the size of the card after first boot. However, these images do slightly differ in boot code and boot details, and, of course, in the kernel used.

It would not be hard to have these images created automatically, since most of it is done by debootstrap and does not really differ from how Ubuntu's boot cd images are made. It's more or less just the details of booting and the choice of kernel, that make a difference.

Would be really nice to offer something like a HowTo for hardware providers on how to create packages fitting into the ubuntu environment, and how to inject these packages into the ubuntu tree (or to offer a ppa for every platform).

Ubuntu is pretty good, but running it on ARM hardware is sort of headache if you want to do it well. It's, btw., a security problem if you have to use kernels and images taken somewhere from the wilderness of the internet and getting kernel updates only occassianonally and not automatically.

I'm pretty sure these little computers will become more and more important in futures, and there's already millions out there.

regards
Hadmut

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1366304/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Caysho (caysho)]

The official debian installer works for the Banana Pi.
Ref https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner

There is a community maintained image for Raspberry Pi, I believe the second hardware revision has official debian support.

It would be nice to have an official ubuntu installer for these increasingly common Single Board Computers, at least match the debian supported ARM hardware.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[dann frazier (dannf)]

Marking Fix-Released - Ubuntu has come along away w/ support for ARM systems since 2014 :)