Ubuntu ARM Port

We are excited about working with ARM, ARM’s partners and the wider community on delivering a port of Ubuntu to ARM. Today we announced support for the armel architecture which is now also supported through Launchpad, Canonical’s collaboration tool at https://launchpad.net/

Some points to note:

• Ubuntu will target the new ARM EABI
• For now, builds will expect a minimum of an ARMv5 instruction set
• Ubuntu will target ARM  with VFP (Vector Floating Point).
• We will continue to work with vendors to provide hardware drivers for various ARM-based devices
• Ubuntu will likely have a different set of kernels than Debian (although the specific set is still under discussion)

The deployment of Ubuntu to the ARM architecture is strongly supported by ARM Ltd., and may be expected to have wide hardware support from ARM Partners and the Ubuntu community.  This is a very exciting opportunity to work with a wholly new architecture set for Ubuntu and we hope will also attract a new and different set of developers from the ARM world to the project as well as providing new challenges for the existing ones. It has always been part of Canonical’s strategy to support as wide a set of hardware platforms as possible to bring the Ubuntu project to as many users as we can. Working with ARM is a great opportunity to do just that.

David Mandala – Engineering Manger