When hardware vendors announced Arm based servers they also claim support for operating systems such as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so I assumed software support was more or less where it needed to be with regards to Arm server.
But apparently, it may not have been so, as Red Hat only announced full support for Arm servers in Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ARM a few days ago.
It also started with SBSA (Server Base System Architecture) specifications in 2014, that aimed to provide a single operating platform that works across all 64-bit ARMv8 server SoCs that complies with the said specification. Red Hat then released a developer preview of the OS for silicon and OEM vendors in 2015, and earlier this week, the company released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 for Arm, the first commercial release for this architecture.
RHEL 7.4 for Arm come with Linux 4.11 kernel and support networking drivers from various vendors such as Hisilicon, Qualcomm, etc…. Linux 4.11 kernel is supposed to be EOL, but in this case, Red Hat must be providing the updates. You’ll find more details about the new Arm operating systems in the release notes, where you’ll also find a link to download the OS, provided you are a customer.
Thanks to ykchavan for the tip
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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