Hey! Does anybody have any information about if and when a company might offer ARM64 for general desktop use? I would like to build my own in the same way that I might build a desktop PC out of an Intel or AMD processor.

  • CalcProgrammer1
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    1 year ago

    ARM UEFI exists, it’s just not very common like it is on PCs. Technically, every x86/x86_64 PC has its own custom bootloader that describes the peculiarities of the given hardware/motherboard, it’s just that the standard has been that every x86 machine ever made (barring a few Android Atom tablets) comes with a BIOS/UEFI bootloader built in that standardizes the boot process.

    On ARM, it is possible to UEFI boot (and some ARM bootloaders provide varying degrees of UEFI boot support - Tow Boot on the PinePhones uses UEFI for instance, there is one available for RPi 4 as well). However, since ARM devices are mostly phones and tablets running Android or single board computers (often provided with no software at all) they usually don’t come with a UEFI compatible bootloader. Hopefully this will change, or at very least second-stage UEFI capable bootloaders become more widely available to add UEFI capabilities to devices with Android bootloaders. U-Boot does have some UEFI capabilities and is commonly used for single board computers that don’t have a built in bootloader.