Re: Debian is supported on many arm platforms

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On 2021-09-23, LinAdmin wrote:
> On 10.09.21 21:40, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
>> On 2021-09-10, LinAdmin wrote:
>>> The unnamed decision makers of Debian some unknown time ago
>>> decided that Pi and *Pine* stuff won't be supported by Debian.

>> This is the second time you've stated this, without really adding
>> meaningful content to the conversation, and people have presented
>> evidence to the contrary... 
...
>> Somewhat of an aside, I feel inclined at this point to bring up the
>> Debian Community Guidelines:
>>
>>   https://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/
>>
>> I find it has some valuable thoughts that help improve my contributions
>> to Debian.
...

> So after my posting of 09-20-21 you kept silence ;)

I didn't see anything I could meaningfully add about that particular bug
report... https://bugs.debian.org/981586


> Still wondering why precisely you brought up Debian
> Community Guidelines?

The near-verbatim repetition of an inaccurate claim seemed worth
mentioning; many people *have* in fact worked on improving support for
the rpi and pine64 and other arm* systems in Debian.

What specifically came to mind was:

  Improving the content
  * Ensure you are adding useful information

  https://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/ch02s02.html


There were also a few other threads in that discussion going on that I
hoped could go a lot better if people would take a little time to review
the Debian Community Guidelines and work it into the discussions on
debian-arm.


> And btw, not only me feels that "Unfortunately, the Linux desktop
>community is very toxic.  Wars between fans of desktop environments
>(DEs), distributions, package managers, package formats, etc., threats,
>personal attacks, etc. are very common in public chat rooms and
>forums."

It is an unfortunate state of affairs, indeed. Let's try to make sure
debian-arm strives for the best signal-to-noise ratios rather than the
worst. :)


live well, 
  vagrant


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Re: Debian is supported on many arm platforms

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 06:24:22PM +0200, LinAdmin wrote:
> On 10.09.21 21:40, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> > On 2021-09-10, LinAdmin wrote:
> >> The unnamed decision makers of Debian some unknown time ago
> >> decided that Pi and *Pine* stuff won't be supported by Debian.
> > This is the second time you've stated this, without really adding
> > meaningful content to the conversation, and people have presented
> > evidence to the contrary... 
> >
> > If you don't want to help, that's fine, but please at least refrain from
> > making repetative, vague statements of questionable accuracy.
> >
> > Somewhat of an aside, I feel inclined at this point to bring up the
> > Debian Community Guidelines:
> >
> >   https://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/
> >
> > I find it has some valuable thoughts that help improve my contributions
> > to Debian.
> >
> >
> > live well,
> >   vagrant
> 
> So after my posting of 09-20-21 you kept silence ;)
> Still wondering why precisely you brought up Debian
> Community Guidelines?
> 

Dear LinAdmin

Vagrant brought up the community guidelines because he felt that you were
actually  outside them, I suspect. Making accusations about Debian's 
attitude to ARM support repeatedly and against the evidence provided 
to the Debian developers who are actually actively engaging in ARM support 
is not the most helpful approach if you want to make your point.

debian-arm is an official Debian mailing list. It's subject to the Debian
mailing list code of conduct and the main Debian code of conduct.

Your postings seem to go against:
* Be respectful
* Assume good faith
* Be collaborative

Making the point once would have been enough if you had engaged 
constructively with the other participants . Repeating it hasn't helped
especially since your statement appears to be untrue.

If you look at the last paragraph of my reply at 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2021/09/msg8.html
you'll see one reason why your replies are also off-topic. This list
deals primarily with Debian: Ubuntu and other distributions are, strictly,
off topic here although those here will often try to provide points of 
comparison or other help on a best endeavours basis.

> And btw, not only me feels that
> "Unfortunately, the Linux desktop community is very toxic.
> Wars between fans of desktop environments (DEs),
> distributions, package managers, package formats, etc.,
> threats, personal attacks, etc. are very common in public
> chat rooms and forums."
> (Exctract from
> https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/04/06/why-the-linux-desktop-has-not-yet-been-adopted-by-the-masses.html
> )

> 
> live better ;)
> LinAdmin
> 
> 

Andrew Cater
[For the Community Team]
> 
> 
> 

Re: Debian is supported on many arm platforms

[LinAdmin]

On 10.09.21 21:40, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2021-09-10, LinAdmin wrote:
>> The unnamed decision makers of Debian some unknown time ago
>> decided that Pi and *Pine* stuff won't be supported by Debian.
> This is the second time you've stated this, without really adding
> meaningful content to the conversation, and people have presented
> evidence to the contrary... 
>
> If you don't want to help, that's fine, but please at least refrain from
> making repetative, vague statements of questionable accuracy.
>
> Debian Developers and many other contributors to Debian are in fact
> supporting these and many other platforms on Debian... They have done so
> by submitting patches, bug reports, fixes, etc. It would be difficult to
> create a comprehensive list of all of them. Check the changelogs for the
> linux kernel, u-boot, debian-installer, raspi-firmware... there are lots
> of people making decisions to support these platforms in those and even
> other packages.
>
> Specifically...
>
> There are at least five pine64.org platforms listed at:
>
>   https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm64/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
>
> I believe the same set of images is supported in the Debian bullseye
> release. At some point they worked (I personally tested each of them
> before adding support), if they don't currently work, please file bug
> reports and ideally patches if you can.
>
>
> While the Raspberry Pi can't fully be supported in Debian "main" due to
> the Debian Social Contract and the lack of compatible licenses:
>
>   https://www.debian.org/social_contract
>
> There is support for the non-free firmware in "non-free" since 2019:
>
>   https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/raspi-firmware
>
> More recently, you can get a UEFI implementation for pi3 and pi4:
>
>   https://github.com/pftf
>
> With a UEFI implementation, you can boot the standard debian-installer
> .iso images for arm64 platforms:
>
>   https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/arm64/iso-cd/
>   or
>   https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/arm64/iso-dvd/
>
> And there are "unofficial" images made to be written directly to boot
> media produced by Debian Developers available at:
>
>   https://raspi.debian.net
>
>
>
> Somewhat of an aside, I feel inclined at this point to bring up the
> Debian Community Guidelines:
>
>   https://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/
>
> I find it has some valuable thoughts that help improve my contributions
> to Debian.
>
>
> live well,
>   vagrant

So after my posting of 09-20-21 you kept silence ;)
Still wondering why precisely you brought up Debian
Community Guidelines?

And btw, not only me feels that
"Unfortunately, the Linux desktop community is very toxic.
Wars between fans of desktop environments (DEs),
distributions, package managers, package formats, etc.,
threats, personal attacks, etc. are very common in public
chat rooms and forums."
(Exctract from
https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2021/04/06/why-the-linux-desktop-has-not-yet-been-adopted-by-the-masses.html
)

live better ;)
LinAdmin

Re: Debian is supported on many arm platforms

[lkcl]

On September 12, 2021 2:47:38 PM UTC, "Andrew M.A. Cater"  
wrote:

nice summary, Andy. a couple of things that i feel are important to add.  first 
(i accidentally trimmed context) is about debian package distribution.

for those people unfamiliar with it, who have been used to other package 
management being distributed via "trusted" website download (node, pypi, 
Mozilla B2G), debian CRITICALLY DOES NOT rely on or trust web sites or SSL 
Certificates in any way, shape or form.

debian's distribution validation is *fundamentally* tied to the web-of-trust 
GPG keyring, which is itself signed and distributed as a debian package.

if you are of the belief that the debian *website* or *domain* are the sole 
exclusive trust authority then you have left yourself open and vulnerable to 
attacks of many different varieties, too numerous to list here.

please, therefore: trust and check the *GPG signatures*.


>4. Other platforms may have more/less support: this is not for want of
>effort
>and a unified approach would be really very helpful. [This might need a
>more standard approach to boot methods/co-operation from manufacturers 
>and is not something to be solved immediately].

second, is about this.  sad to say, any expectations of collaboration from 
manufacturers is expecting far too much.

shockingly, LG's Lawyers for example actually consider it to be a failure *on 
their part* if you even *notice* that LG's TV products have been criminally 
infringing copyright law for decades.

Allwinner Chinese employees are paranoid about IP Theft by Westerners because 
they themselves do it all the time, and therefore expect Westerners to "punish" 
them by stealing or hacking their networks at their offices.

yes, really.

i was invited to visit the Allwinner offices a few years ago and the Chinese 
staff treated me like I was there to commit Industrial Espionage. i felt so 
unsafe as a result, i could not dare consider a return visit.

from a product perspective, products involving ARM SoCs are *NOT* designed for 
user programmability "convenience".  they're not even designed for the *OEM's* 
convenience!

both Mediatek and LG have a policy of designing products *entirely on behalf* 
of OEMs.  they design it, they program it, they deliver it.  LG even *make* the 
damn products: the first time the OEM ever sees it is when it turns up at the 
Customs port!

i am basically painting a picture here of the realities of ARM SoCs, which is 
that the Fabless Semi Companies are ACTIVELY HOSTILE to the entire Free 
Software Community.

we are a THREAT to them.

how DARE we reverse-engineer THEIR products and steal all THEIR secret 
commercial information!

never mind the fact that without Free Software they wouldn't even be able to 
sell one single product: in their minds, one tiny change to one single header 
file is sufficient justification to flagrantly and blatantly ignore the 
fundamental tenets of Copyright Law.

even those Companies that understand Copyright Law *still* do not wish to 
cooperate or collaborate because (a) it costs money to do so (b) it reveals 
commercially confidental information (c) it doesn't help sell product that (d) 
is *specifically designed for non-end-user-programmability in the first place*!

much as i and everyone else is terribly frustrated with how badly the Free 
Software Community is treated by the Fabless Semi companies, expecting *any* 
type of cooperation from them *or from ARM* is unfortunately completely 
unrealistic.

Roger spent considerable time kindly explaining how long it took to get Linaro 
established. Linaro is about the limit of what ARM can do, only working with 
*willing* participatory Fabless Semi companies to create standards.  given the 
sheer massive diversity with literally thousands of ARM licensees, any attempt 
at "restrictive" standardisation is going to result in pushback and resultant 
loss of business for ARM.

it's a shitty sutuation but important to understand the context, so that we do 
not, as a community, spend too much of our time either complaining or fighting 
or unrealistically wishing things were different.

personally i am so absolutely fed up with seeing so much of *our* (collective) 
personal money going into "fixing" the mess that Fabless Semi companies leave 
behind that i concluded that the only way to properly fix it is to *become* a 
Fabless Semiconductor ASIC designer, and create an actual SoC that actually 
properly respects Software Libre to the bedrock (http://libre-soc.org)

unfortunately, due to ARM's licensing model, it can't be an ARM-compatible 
design. we picked Power ISA instead.

l.

Re: Debian is supported on many arm platforms

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 12:40:49PM -0700, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2021-09-10, LinAdmin wrote:
> > The unnamed decision makers of Debian some unknown time ago
> > decided that Pi and *Pine* stuff won't be supported by Debian.
> 
> This is the second time you've stated this, without really adding
> meaningful content to the conversation, and people have presented
> evidence to the contrary... 
> 
> If you don't want to help, that's fine, but please at least refrain from
> making repetative, vague statements of questionable accuracy.
> 
> Debian Developers and many other contributors to Debian are in fact
> supporting these and many other platforms on Debian... They have done so
> by submitting patches, bug reports, fixes, etc. It would be difficult to
> create a comprehensive list of all of them. Check the changelogs for the
> linux kernel, u-boot, debian-installer, raspi-firmware... there are lots
> of people making decisions to support these platforms in those and even
> other packages.
> 
> Specifically...
> 
> There are at least five pine64.org platforms listed at:
> 
>   https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm64/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/
> 
> I believe the same set of images is supported in the Debian bullseye
> release. At some point they worked (I personally tested each of them
> before adding support), if they don't currently work, please file bug
> reports and ideally patches if you can.
> 
> 
> While the Raspberry Pi can't fully be supported in Debian "main" due to
> the Debian Social Contract and the lack of compatible licenses:
> 
>   https://www.debian.org/social_contract
> 
> There is support for the non-free firmware in "non-free" since 2019:
> 
>   https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/raspi-firmware
> 
> More recently, you can get a UEFI implementation for pi3 and pi4:
> 
>   https://github.com/pftf
> 
> With a UEFI implementation, you can boot the standard debian-installer
> .iso images for arm64 platforms:
> 
>   https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/arm64/iso-cd/
>   or
>   https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/arm64/iso-dvd/
> 
> And there are "unofficial" images made to be written directly to boot
> media produced by Debian Developers available at:
> 
>   https://raspi.debian.net
> 
> 
> 
> Somewhat of an aside, I feel inclined at this point to bring up the
> Debian Community Guidelines:
> 
>   https://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/
> 
> I find it has some valuable thoughts that help improve my contributions
> to Debian.
> 
> 
> live well,
>   vagrant

You got in there on the Community Guidelines just before I did :)

This has been a long thread: I think there's something to be brought out
of this - let's see if I can summarise some of the back and forth.

1. There _is_ support for the Raspberry Pi in Debian. There are unofficial
images from raspi.debian.net maintained by Gunnar Wolf. They're unofficial
for the reasons outlined by Paul Wise: containing non-free firmware.

2. These images use u-boot and dtb primarily. There are images for all
currently released Raspberry Pis. The earlier Pis are not compatible with
the later Pi architectures necessarily - Debian does things differently
to Raspbian.

[it's an interesting point that they could be put into cdimage.debian.org
in the same way that unofficial firmware images for amd64 are already there.
Likewise, almost certainly for the next alternative - certainly something to
consider.]

3. An alternative is to use the UEFI approach from Pete Batard for Pi3 and 
Pi4 specifically. This doesn't use dtb by default and uses ACPI. It's a rebuild
of Tianocore.  Provided you have the firmwrare, it does allow a user to use
an unmodified Debian arm64 image to install everything else.

4. Other platforms may have more/less support: this is not for want of effort
and a unified approach would be really very helpful. [This might need a
more standard approach to boot methods/co-operation from manufacturers 
 and is not something to be solved immediately]. Support for Pine / other
Allwinner platforms / other boards may sometimes be difficult for reasons
outside Debian's control.

4. There's scope for all approaches: more help is always appreciated. At 
times, it felt like contributors to this discussion were talking past each
other inadvertently whereas they've mostly been in violent agreement. 

5. There is always scope for better communication and, certainly, better 
understanding
of where we are, how we came to reach this point and for everything to be
better documented.

LinAdmin: The "decision makers" from Derbian aren't unnamed: they're 
primarily the developers and others who've chipped in on this discussion.
Opinions vary, as you've read, but your help would be appreciated. If you're
not in a position to help, please relay the accurate information from 
this list. Your cooperation in this would be greatly appreciated.

With every good wish to all, as ever,

Andy Cater