Ubuntu 11.04 is gonna be highly optimized for ARM

[Vitel]

Interesting quotes from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDSProceedings/N/Final


Package Selection and System Defaults

Linaro will create a new ARM-targeted "developer" image. This image will be a strict superset of the currently produced headless image, to reduce maintenance, and will include developer tools and other useful packages generally interesting/useful to ARM developers.

Multimedia

Linaro Multimedia Team investigate options to optimize jpeg decoding transparently on ARM systems that have a NEON unit and hardware support
Linaro Graphics Team will work on optimizing runtime behaviour on ARM for vector graphic libraries like cairo, skia, but also toolkits like qt by automatically selecting the best backend and using NEON units were possible


The Linaro Graphics Team will continue its work on improving availability direct rendering support for graphics on the various ARM SoCs


The Linaro Multimedia Team will work on improving support for ARMs low-power mode when using pulseaudio; this will involve investigating adding smart alsa-sink buffer tuning while still ensuring that real time events will not get delayed


The Ubuntu ARM team will make GLES 2.0 the default GL standard used for applications and tookits in the ubuntu archive that support it


The Linaro Multimedia team will further optimize the ffmpeg AAC and VP8 software codecs for ARM such that it leverages NEON and multi-core support available in modern ARM hardware

Performance

NEON/Vectorizer Direction
Improve boot-time performance on ARM, from power-on to user-space


Improve Memory Footprint for ARM

Hardware Compatibility

The Linaro team will be working on several hardware related tasks including
* ARM Power Management


* ARM BSP Managment


* ARM Root file system on FLASH


* ARM Kernel Standard Architecture


* ARM Kernel Device Tree


Providing a hardfloat-enabled ARM port

Linaro 11.05 release is scheduled for 2011-05-28

 

[XxionxX]

Does this mean that some of the packages will be for ARM as well?


I like Ubuntu it's what got me into Linux. Why do so may people within the Linux community seem to not like it?

 

[Yannick]

well, yes. but...


Linaro 11.05 will only be a developer release


omap3 support is currently dropped

 

[XxionxX]

 

[3jane]

I like Ubuntu it's what got me into Linux. Why do so may people within the Linux community seem to not like it?

off the top of my head:


1) Changes or improvements made by Canonical benefit Ubuntu only - they don't contribute any code to upstream projects. Watch this video for all the gory details. This is a legitimate concern, and many feel it goes against the spirit of open source, if not the letter.


2) Ubuntu tries to hard. They want THIS year to be the "year of the Linux desktop", and compromise what make Linux great in order to steal users from Windows. I don't really think is concern is so legit. If you perceive Ubuntu as "linux dumbed down" then there are plenty of other distros you can use. Although the argument is often extended to say that it damages Linux's reputation outside the Linux community as it raises expectations that Linux is an alternative to Windows, when in most cases it's really not.


3) Ubuntu re-brands everything. Many first time users don't even realise it is Linux (or gnome or whatever). This one is pretty petty - but if you understand how the open source community feels about attributing work to the original author (and the massive flame wars still going on over it really should be called GNU/Linux, or just Linux) then you understand at least what they are getting at here.


Please note: none of the above are my personal opinion - just answering your question. (hmmm, it's also WAY off topic. Sorry 'bout that )

 

[XxionxX]

Thanks for the info! I had no idea.

 

[second exodous]

1) Changes or improvements made by Canonical benefit Ubuntu only - they don't contribute any code to upstream projects. Watch this video for all the gory details. This is a legitimate concern, and many feel it goes against the spirit of open source, if not the letter

If you watch that video you'll notice that those companies/organizations that make remixes of main distros don't contribute as much in code. However, Debian people do contribute to Ubuntu and Gentoo users to Sabayon, those people contribute their code back and it looks like it comes from Debian and Gentoo. Canonical employs Debian devs, those guys probably use their Debian status to send code back. It was a very mean spirited talk I felt, even if no code is contributed back it does have a large user base and it Ubuntu does set the standard of usability in desktop Linux. You could say that about every remix of every main distro, as far as usablity goes the main distros don't go out of their way to make it an enjoyable experience for the average end user, but companies/organizations take that main distro and go the extra mile.


Again, as far as code goes you can't look at numbers from remixes and say 'these guys don't help anyone but themselves', a lot of the code contributed back looks like it comes from the parent distro.