Latest Trends in Information Technology Fedora Linux Kernels Running on ARM Processors PETER KOTVAN, PETER FODREK Institute of Control and Industrial Informatics Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Slovak University of Technology Ilkovicovaˇ 3, 812 19 Bratislava SLOVAK REPUBLIC
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[email protected] Abstract: This paper will report our experience with installing and using the Fedora Linux distribution on a dedi- cated ARM processor based device. At first we will deal with ARM processors and its specifics. In the next section ARM based devices Dreamplug will be described. We will describe installation of Fedora Linux distribution on Dreamplug and compilation of the Linux kernel. The original Fedora kernel package was altered to support ARM based devices which incorporates different approaches especially to bootstrapping. Key–Words: Fedora, Linux Kernel, ARM processors 1 Introduction 2 ARM architecture and devices There are two main processor architectures used over the course of last years. Usually, a personal computer ARM is a reduced instruction set computer processor contains one of x86 or x86-64, however the most pop- architecture. It is the most widely used 32-bit instruc- ular 32-bit architecture is ARM (Advanced RISC Ma- tion set architecture. The combination of high perfor- chine). As the name says ARM is reduced instruction mance, low power consumption and low heat emis- set computer (RISC). Currently ARM processors are sion resulted in application of this architecture in mo- used primarily in smart phones, tablets and embedded bile phones, PDAs, tablets and cameras. With imple- devices. In the future, it is likely that the computers mentation of multi-cored ARM processors, it is possi- will be, too, powered by these processors.