The most important ARMv5 platform is now probably at91, as
Microchip still releases new sam9 chips[1] and is going to
keep supporting it for a while.
Since armel userland should work fine with any armhf or
arm64 kernel, it might still be useful to repackage
one or both of those for the armel archive and use this
to have an installation method for armel on modern
hardware.
[Side note: I would also like to see an arm64
kernel image added to armhf, it's probably more useful
than the armmp-lpae kernel in terms of enabling users.]
At the moment, it is possible to enable support for
arm1176 (as in bcm2835) in a normal armhf kernel and
have that boot on armv6k, armv7 and armv8 hardware.
I actually want to change that in the kernel though:
Now that we dropped SMP support in armv6, as it now
makes more sense to have armv6k grouped with armv5
and instead have a generic kernel for armel that
works on bcm2835, versatilepb, at91, kirkwood and
all the others that one might use.
But why? What is provided by an armel userland that armhf can't?
Quoting Bastian Blank <waldi@debian.org>:
But why? What is provided by an armel userland that armhf can't?
My employer runs Debian on this armv5(?) hardware:
https://www.taskit.de/produkte/embedded-produkte/computer-on-module/132/stamp9g20-512f/128r
Sure, the kernel is not the Debian one, but something around 4.19.
Sysop: | Keyop |
---|---|
Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
Users: | 307 |
Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
Uptime: | 67:13:55 |
Calls: | 6,915 |
Files: | 12,379 |
Messages: | 5,431,811 |