[Bug 1366304] Re: Missing support for ARM architecture (kernels and images)

[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.


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Title:
  Missing support for ARM architecture (kernels and images)

Status in debian-installer package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  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

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