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From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org>
To: John.Kitz@xs4all.nl
Subject: Re: FreeBSD distribution for ARM processors.
References: <001d01ced02e$aaf29260$00d7b720$@Kitz@xs4all.nl>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 09:24:11 -0400
In-Reply-To: <001d01ced02e$aaf29260$00d7b720$@Kitz@xs4all.nl> (John W. Kitz's
 message of "Wed, 23 Oct 2013 22:30:08 +0200")
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"John W. Kitz" <John.Kitz@xs4all.nl> writes:

> Can someone please explain the rationale behind not providing a distribution
> for arm based systems, as it seems somewhat illogical to me that
> distributions are available for ia64, powerpc, sparc64 (see
> http://www.freebsd.org/where.html) which are considered Tier 2 architectures
> while the official reason for arm being a Tier 2 architecture is the fact
> that no distribution is provided for it (see
> http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/arm.html).

The ARM port is mostly used for embedded work, for which a formal
distribution would not be helpful. There really aren't many standards
for peripherals beyond i2c, so it wouldn't be possible to support
different ARM-based devices with a single distribution.

Be well.