I have always found it perplexing. Why is that required?

Is it the lack of drivers in upstream? Is it something to do with how ARM devices seemingly can't install Linux the same way x86 machines can (something something device tree)?

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girvo 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah lack of peripheral drivers upstream for all the little things on the board, plus (AIUI) ARM doesn't have the same self-describing hardware discovery mechanisms that x86 computers have. Basically, standardisation. They're closer to MCUs in that way, is how I found it (though my knowledge is way out of date now, been years since I was doing embedded)

	▲	apatheticonion 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I've just been doing some reading. The driver situation in Linux is a bit dire. On the one hand there is no stable driver ABI because that would restrict the ability for Linux to optimize. On the other hand vendors (like Orange Pi, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc etc) end up maintaining long running and often outdated custom forks of Linux in an effort to hide their driver sources. Seems..... broken