From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 24 14:15:00 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 40A05DA for ; Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:15:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from John.Kitz@xs4all.nl) Received: from smtp-vbr11.xs4all.nl (smtp-vbr11.xs4all.nl [194.109.24.31]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D6C922100 for ; Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:14:59 +0000 (UTC) Received: from picard (costa.xs4all.nl [82.95.89.208]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtp-vbr11.xs4all.nl (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id r9OEEunW083327 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO); Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:14:56 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from John.Kitz@xs4all.nl) From: "John W. Kitz" To: References: <001d01ced02e$aaf29260$00d7b720$@Kitz@xs4all.nl> <44bo2ekdj8.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> In-Reply-To: <44bo2ekdj8.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Subject: RE: FreeBSD distribution for ARM processors. Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:14:57 +0200 Message-ID: <000901ced0c3$6bf791b0$43e6b510$@Kitz@xs4all.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0 Thread-Index: Ac7QvFUSXKImh7YyTpa6jEOfRKGMaQABak/g Content-Language: nl X-Virus-Scanned: by XS4ALL Virus Scanner Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list Reply-To: John.Kitz@xs4all.nl List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:15:00 -0000 Gilbert, Thanks. Do you expect this current position to change in the near future? The reason I'm asking is the fact that I get the impression that there may be developments in the area of hardware development such as the cubietruck (see http://cubieboard.org/2013/09/14/cubietruck-is-put-into-trial-production/) which move ARM based systems closer to general purpose platforms based on architectures such as i386, AMD, SPARC, etc. and which might warrant such a change provided that it is feasible from a perspective of distribution packaging of course. Regards, Jk. -----Original Message----- From: Lowell Gilbert [mailto:freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org] Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 3:24 PM To: John.Kitz@xs4all.nl Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD distribution for ARM processors. "John W. Kitz" 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.