[Arm-netbook] device tree not the answer in the ARM world

[Scott Sullivan]

On 05/06/2013 02:35 PM, Ken Phillis Jr wrote:
> On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 1:19 PM, luke.leighton <luke.leighton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 7:04 PM, Ken Phillis Jr <kphillisjr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> As for already supported platforms on UEFI, I know that the Beagle
>>> Board [2][3] and the Samsung Origen [4] both offer support for UEFI
>>> Directly.
>>
>>   and the iMX6, which supports reading of UEFI partitions.  that just
>> leaves every other SoC out there, of which there are hundreds, which
>> don't support it.  and it's only the boot phase.
>>
>>   l.
>>
>
> There is no requirement that every SOC handle UEFI partitions.  The
> Beagle board uses a TI OMAP3530, and the Origen Board uses a Samsung
> Exynos 4 Quad. To my knowledge UEFI Partition support is not a feature
> found on either SoC.Instead what happens is the EFI/UEFI loader takes
> the place of Daz U-Boot and functions similarly to the DUET package
> that was created for x86/x86_64 based systems in order to allow these
> systems to develop EFI/UEFI enabled operating systems.

Correct, there is no requirement (business or technical), so we're left 
with the mess we have. Sure, us techies can figure out, patch, replace, 
or workaround the defective by design products, but that is not a solution.

Even in this case your citing the 'optional' third party firmware as 
'see it can be done'. That's been known along time now, but until it 
ships in products in mass volume, and is profitable, the burden of 
making this crap bearable will always been on the shoulder of the open 
source community. We will continue to be ever in 'catch up' mode.

It's a burden the distro's are having to take on and we're getting a 
duplication of effort. Just take a look at the supported hardware lists 
for some of the ARM linux distro's [1][2]. This is only a small 
smattering of the available hardware, and it's all hard work. There just 
isn't the man power to go through making 'easy' to use scripts to 
literally high-jack the original boot environments just to use the 
computers as the general purpose devices they are.

[1]: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms
[2]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM

The distro's should not be responsible for this, it should be the OEMs 
just like in the x86 world.


Luke has had the right idea for a while now, you have to change the 
system from the top down and develop products bottom up that provide 
incrementally steps towards our goals. Then reinvesting the profits to 
fund further increments.


Luke,

Question for you. Assuming down the road after the first (or even 
second) EMOA-68 card is being sold, would you dedicate resources to 
tackling a UEFI boot environment for future cards? The iMX6 care sounds 
like a candidate if it already has it as you say.

-- 
Scott Sullivan