Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User) [LWN.net]

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 4:12 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
In reply to: Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User) by Zizzle
Parent article: Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

I really don't think that is a fair assessment of the situation concerning Ubuntu. I can't speak to the private conversations being referred to in the interview, but the lack of Ubuntu support for this particular arch is not really newsworthy or surprising.

Canonical has made a rational business decision on how to expense resources for native build infrastructure to primarily target consumer device OEMs.This particular ARM arch is losing favor in commercial OEM device development.

Canonical has never promised to provide build hosts for all the arches that Debian supports. In fact from day one Canonical said very forthrightly that Ubuntu will be much more focused as to which arches it supports. So it should be expected that Debian will continue to have wider architecture coverage than Ubuntu.

This is not new behavior for Canonical. We have seen Canonical decide to shutter multiple arches in the past based on a lack of commercial interest. They did support sparc, ia64 and hppa for a period of time, and then subsequently dropped those arches.

And the reality is in the long term the multiarch concept being pushed forward inside Debian and Ubuntu now should make the problems with having to expense and maintain dedicated native build infrastructure for each arch moot. Multiarch baked into Debian and thus Ubuntu, will hopeful make it possible for the Ubuntu community to take over the responsibility of maintaining arches that are not of commercial interest to Canonical, without costing Canonical additional expense to provide the native builders. In fact the multiarch related changes to standardize cross-compiling support should help everybody. Right now we are sort of in a doughnut hole in the long term plan to make the ARM ecosystem maintainable until the multiarch cross-compiling changes are fully in place.

-jef

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Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 7:26 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (10 responses)

what a turn of events, you supporting Canonical, me bashing them :-)

I think that Canonical is really missing the boat on this one.

I see this as a 'get them early' opportunity for linux distros.

The Rasperry Pi boardsare a little less powerful than the android phones that they are currently targeting, but the raspberry pi boards are only going to get faster over time (like the phones), and the distro that the kids are comfortable hacking with on their own is the one that they will use on more powerful machines as they grow up and get jobs.

This is exactly how RedHat got to critical mass in the datacenter, and I hate to see any Linux distro abandon it.

At the same time, I can see why if they did not support the chipset in the current releases, that they would want to have the raspberry pi folks stop saying that they were running Ubuntu on them, that would just lead to false expectations and a big backlash at release time.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 7:55 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Don't mistake that as support.

The underlying problem here is that Canonical very deliberately setup the Ubuntu build system so that it was exceedingly difficult for the external Ubuntu community to replicate builders and integrate them into the blessed Ubuntu process which runs through launchpad. It is and always has been part of Canonical business strategy to control the builders as core infrastructure and to use that as leverage with OEMs to pay for engineering services.

External Ubuntu contributors simply do not have the ability to band together and supply the necessary builders for an arch that Canonical does not deem it a good business investment to maintain. This stands is contrast to how the Fedora contributors at Seneca were able to replicating Fedora's koji build system instead of waiting for Red Hat to do the heavy lifting to get the ball rolling before contributing hardware to the cause.

I can't stress this enough, Debian's decentralized build system and associated policies is key to the wide range of arch support Debian currently has. A system that predates Ubuntu. Canonical could have replicated that decentralized approach and chose not. Ubuntu continues to suffer from that very calculated choice to drastically recentralize.

Now, Debian's multiarch concept may provide an opportunity to give the external Ubuntu community a new way to step up and lead where Canonical does not see immediate business opportunity, but if and only if Canonical is willing to cede leadership and control.

-jef

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 8:03 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (4 responses)

All of that may be true, but Canonical is all about Unity and Unity is not going to work with 256mb RAM PERIOD
So porting Ubuntu to RPi is utterly pointless.
The only sane choice is to wait until 512mb models (and maybe multiarch) arrive and then support those.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 10:15 UTC (Tue) by thisisme (guest, #83315) [Link] (3 responses)

All of that may be true, but Canonical is all about Unity and Unity is not going to work with 256mb RAM PERIOD So porting Ubuntu to RPi is utterly pointless.

As far as I know, Ubuntu Server Edition does not include Unity, or any other desktop environment for that matter.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 13:38 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

The main purpose of the RPi is to be a desktop for kids. A lot of geeks might use the 1080p playback.
So the server edition might work but will be fairly useless and anyways the thing has a powerful GPU and fairly weak CPU and a tiny amount of RAM (it actually has less than 256MB). Not the best specs for a server.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 7, 2012 4:05 UTC (Wed) by thisisme (guest, #83315) [Link]

Agreed. I was just responding to the statement "Canonical is all about Unity", but I am guessing perhaps you actually meant "Ubuntu Desktop Edition is all about Unity".

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 14:51 UTC (Tue) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

Lubuntu would run quite well (if it was on ARMv6) since it uses LXDE - although that's not an official Ubuntu variant, it's semi-blessed by the Ubuntu project (part of the main archives).

Linux Mint LXDE would also be a good option, as it's Debian Testing based, but someone would have to do the work of ARMv6 support - http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1930 ... Probably easier to use Debian directly and port a few Linux Mint bits over if needed.

I agree that it's a strategic mistake for Canonical to miss out on such a huge grass roots movement that focuses on Linux hacking for kids.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 11:37 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm not particularly impressed by some of Canonical's decision-making, but you can't really blame them for not wanting to support a sub-architecture that is effectively going away, at least in the space in which they operate.

As for whether there will be faster Raspberry Pi boards, that remains to be seen. There's a surge of cheap solutions based on newer ARM designs coming out of China (it's worth keeping up with this page on this topic), already being put into relatively cheap mass-market products. That phenomenon isn't exactly going away.

For once, I sympathise with Jono Bacon wearing his Canonical hat, though. From what I've read from members of the Raspberry Pi initiative and its more enthusiastic followers, there's a tendency to "trash-talk" other initiatives and organisations - the guy answers his own question about why you have to pay $150 for a "competing" (not complementary) board - and there seems to be a need to be seen as the solution to a problem it isn't clear that the initiative is currently adequately addressing, anyway.

Already, it would appear that people are feeling let down by being sent off to Farnell - I imagine that most people's experience of that company is about being made all too aware that Farnell doesn't want their business - and although many people are probably just interested for the cheap kit, I fear that enough discontent will have been encouraged in the whole exercise, particularly by the culture around the initiative, that it may all come back down to Earth in an unpleasant fashion.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 12:31 UTC (Tue) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link] (2 responses)

People should also start to remember that production take time, especially when done in the open. Of course, when a regular company do a product, it is ready and already shipped worldwide and ready. But that's not how it work when you have a more transparent process.

People complain to distribution that the latest version of their favorite software is not in their os mainly because they know it exists and because they know that complaining could make it appear. If distribution did like Microsoft or Apple and announce it once everything is ready ( ie, skip the transparency bit of free software, and just speak once it is usable by end users of distribution ), users would surely be less demanding.

That's the same for the boards. Since the fundation have been communicating around it, giving more information than what people could expect from any company, they are mad because "OMG, I have to wait or I need to face real life problem". Mad because someone did the efforts to discuss with them, and because in the end, they forgot that production take time, that sometimes, people have to wait.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 13:35 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

People should also start to remember that production take time, especially when done in the open.

Has it really been that open? I haven't been following all the discussions - every blog post is followed by hundreds of responses ranging from "blue sky" brainstorming to "Can you sign me up to the mailing list?" - but I've seen a degree of backtracking and various decisions being reversed, plus people offering advice being told to keep it to themselves (in quite an aggressive fashion in some cases; anyone complaining about the use and abuse of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct for stifling discussion should spend an hour or so on the Raspberry Pi forums, just to "recalibrate").

I follow various open hardware lists where production issues are openly discussed, not just announcements about whether the deadlines will be met. No-one is under any illusions about the readiness or availability of the products on those lists, nor are people mad or impatient at those leading those initiatives. In fact, everyone seems willing to learn from everyone else.

If the disciplines of communications and marketing ever needed a case study to demonstrate their relevance, they might have found one here, however.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 16:55 UTC (Tue) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]

Well, by open, I mean with enough communication, I was likely not clear. There was regular communication about the progress on the blog, from what I had seen, contrary to the traditional process of some company ( my point being the openness create the need, but the need cannot be fulfilled as soon as a product developed without any communication, like Apple stuff )

And I agree that indeed, the same problem that plague Android bug tracker, cyanogen blog and others stuff targeted to some population, plague the blog of the fundation, IE there is too much feedback ( and not that useful :/ ).

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 12:02 UTC (Tue) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (2 responses)

And the reality is in the long term the multiarch concept being pushed forward inside Debian and Ubuntu now should make the problems with having to expense and maintain dedicated native build infrastructure for each arch moot.

You appear to be thinking multiarch does more than it does. Multiarch lets you co-install multiple ABI libraries (and headers). It thus simplifies and regularises classical cross-compiling somewhat. It doesn't solve the problem that you can't run 'armhf/hardfp' binaries (which pass parameters in the VFP registers on a v7 ARM) on an earlier ARM arch device (like the v6 PI various v5 'plugs' and the v4t openmoko and FAS chips) that doesn't _have_ the VFP registers. In practice there are now two common standards for making ARM binaries (out of far too many possible ways). v5(or v4t)/softvp and v7/hardfp. Those two cover all the arm hardware still available/in use in the world. Most distros have a v7 'hardfp' port for the real world (all phones, tablets, and current hardware) and a v4t or v5 'softfp' port for 'old stuff'. Most distros also have an unofficial/less supported v5 port and Debian is sticking with v4t for now as there are still enough openmoko, (and a few other devices) around to make that a sensible cutoff, as we do our best to be 'universal'. Those two build flavours still need hardware to be built on and whilst it isn't hard to build v4t or v5 binaries (i.e not using v6 or v7 instructions) on v7 hardware, that ability is nothing to do with multiarch. Cross-building softfp ('armel') binaries on a hardfp ('armhf') system, would use multiarch, but I'm not aware of anyone trying to do this for distribution builds. It's a great way of adding a load of new build failures you could do without. Multiarch makes it possible to cross-build a distro, but due to the inability to run tests other than via emulation it's always going to be more fragile, so I'm not sure anyone is actually going to use it for this for real distros. Getting some real hardware and building natively is always going to be a better plan IHMO.

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 16:56 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

I'll cycle back and look at the multiarch capabilities and discussion in more detail.

If you are correct, and I am wrong, then it'll be that much more difficult for the external Ubuntu community to spin up support for this specific arch based entirely on sweat equity without buy-in from Canonical to provider the additional infrastructure and tie it into launchpad. That would be very unfortunate. I'd rather wish you were wrong, but I guess I'm holding out too much hope for the new technical capabilities to work around the corporate/community conflict of interest dynamic.

-jef

Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

Posted Mar 6, 2012 18:46 UTC (Tue) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link]

hmm, apologies for the total formatting fail in my previous comment. (Dear Jon - please bring us an 'edit' button so our incompetence, and failure to use 'preview' properly, need not remain for all to see).

wrt to distro support I'd say why not just use Debian on your Pi? No particular reason to use Ubuntu in this case. There is already a Debian image and it will no doubt become a supported platform.