Portal:15.3/Surveys/ARM Usecases
ARM Use cases
Description
Description:
Hello openSUSE!
ARMv7 architecture is currently being challenged by the new "Jump" development model of openSUSE Leap. This new "Jump" process will use pre-built binaries from the corresponding SUSE Linux Enterprise release. Previously openSUSE Leap was sharing the distribution package sources with SUSE Linux Enterprise, but built them separately. As SLE stopped supporting 32-bit distributions many years ago, we have the option of continuing to rebuild the packages for openSUSE Leap on those architectures from sources, or to stop supporting those. We would like to understand our openSUSE ARM contributors and openSUSE ARM user base before taking any further steps. We really value your time, we don't expect you to spend more than 10 minutes on this survey.The outcome of the survey will be that we either continue supporting openSUSE Leap on ARMv7 in future releases (15.3 and beyond) or that ARMv7 remains an openSUSE Tumbleweed only option.
Thank you
openSUSE release team
Related documents
https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/ReleaseEngineering-20201202-arm https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/survey-armv7-suggestions
Responses
Survey 125963
We've received 427 survey responses in total, 283 were non-empty. The data on the page is based only on these complete (in LimeSurvey slang) responses .
| Answer | Count |
|---|---|
| Number of records in this query: | 283 |
| Total records in survey: | 283 |
| Percentage of total: | 100.00% |
Which ARMv6/ARMv7/ARMv8 (aarch64) hardware are you using? (G01Q01)
(Check all that apply)
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| ARMv6 (Raspberry Pi 1) (SQ01) | 47 | 16.61% |
| ARMv7 based SBC (Raspberry Pi 2, OlinuXino, Arndale, BananaPi, BeagleBoard, BeagleBone, Cubie Board) (SQ02) | 115 | 40.64% |
| ARMv7 based portable device (e.g. Samsung Chromebook, Toshiba AC100, other) (SQ03) | 23 | 8.13% |
| AArch64 based SBC (Raspberry Pi 3/4, PinePhone, Pine64) (SQ04) | 237 | 83.75% |
| AArch64 based general purpose (e.g. Mustang, ThunderX/X2, Any UEFI AArch64 platform, aarch64-laptops, other) (SQ05) | 62 | 21.91% |
What distributions do you use on your ARMv6/v7/aarch64 Hardware? (G01Q02)
(Check all that apply)
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| openSUSE Leap 15.1 (SQ01) | 34 | 12.01% |
| openSUSE Leap 15.2 (SQ02) | 144 | 50.88% |
| openSUSE Tumbleweed (SQ03) | 163 | 57.60% |
| Custom Image (SQ04) | 62 | 21.91% |
How long are you using openSUSE on ARMv6/v7/v8 already? (G01Q03)
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| less than a year (SQ01) | 127 | 44.88% |
| 1-2 years (SQ02) | 64 | 22.61% |
| 2-4 years (SQ03) | 52 | 18.37% |
| 4+ years (SQ04) | 36 | 12.72% |
In case you selected Leap, what is the reason for that? (G01Q04)
(Check all that apply)
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| I want to run the same distribution as on other architectures (e.g. x86_64) (SQ01) | 98 | 34.63% |
| I prefer the stability and fewer updates (SQ02) | 120 | 42.40% |
| I would prefer Tumbleweed but I can't use it due to regressions (SQ03) | 21 | 7.42% |
| I prefer Leap over other non-openSUSE alternatives (Debian, Fedora, ...) (SQ04) | 89 | 31.45% |
| Other | 22 | 7.77% |
Other responses:
| 64bit Support for RaspberryPi 3/4 !!! | |
| Installing updates with partition on SD card takes way too long, so fewer updates are better. | |
| comparison testing for SLES | |
| I try as many variants as I can | |
| server with low bandwidth | |
| Frequency of Tumbleweed updates would wear out limited flash too quickly | |
| bridge network device to excend wifi to guest house | |
| Never took the time to move the Rpi3 to TW yet. | |
| One certainly does not want to be updating his phone every day | |
| Normally I love Tumbleweeds fast Updates, bit since I use my Raspis as home servers, Leap fits my need there better | |
| I would like to use some previous package versions that are no longer available in Tumbleweed. | |
| I'm looking to migrate/upgrade my cctv & nextcloud server to an opensuse distro, but it has to be rock stable for 24/7 operation. | |
| System upgrade through YaST not possible, I like to update my system through YaST. | |
| I use Tumbleweed | |
| I use Leap for production systems where stability is expected. | |
| I always prefer OpenSuse, and always prefer Leap above Tumbleweed. | |
| actualy using manjaro on raspberry 4 but would love to see a useful opensuse | |
| KDE | |
| I don't use Leap | |
| I use some SBCs as servers so stability is required | |
| No leap | |
| Honestly I am trying to learn linux on different platforms and Leap seemed like the most straightforward |
Would you be okay with migrating your existing Leap installation to openSUSE Tumbleweed? (G01Q05)
openSUSE Release team would consider discontinue 32bit ARMv6/v7 support in openSUSE Leap or openSUSE Tumbleweed in the case that survey shows that there are none or only a handful of usecases.
(Check all that apply)
| Answer | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| I am preferring to keep ARMv6 on Tumbleweed (SQ01) | 31 | 10.95% |
| I am preferring to keep ARMv7 on Tumbleweed (SQ02) | 58 | 20.49% |
| I am preferring to keep ARMv7 on Leap (SQ03) | 84 | 29.68% |
| As long as one is available that's good enough for me (SQ04) | 126 | 44.52% |
| 32bit is no longer viable in my opinion. | |
| IMHO openSUSE is one of the first distributions where i could find 64bit images for my Raspi 4! Feeling sad that there is no more marketing around this. If needed, I can contribute one of my RPi4 devices (8GB RAM) to OBS, if that helps to get more build power and ARM7/aarch64 support | |
| Although there are plenty of cheap Aarch64 based SBCs, there are several more specialized SoCs which are only ARMv7: - BeagleBone (PRUSS hardware) - Cylone 5 SoC - Zynq 7000 Newer boards with e.g. ARMv8 are much more expensive, and thus not available to hobbyists. | |
| Mainly using a Raspberry Pi 4 with openSUSE Leap. My Raspberry Pi 2B is running Raspbian atm. | |
| Sound driver for the Raspi 4 did not make it into the upstream kernel so far. I hope it backported in Leap 15.2 or Tumbleweed. I use Raspi 4 as a desktop. It's a little bit annoying that I can't hear audio from it. | |
| I would not miss 32bit ARM, but please keep Leap for 64bit ARM, it's rocks. Thanks for your work :-) | |
| time for 64bit in T/W too. | |
| I have RPi models 1, 3 and 4, but currently none of them is running openSUSE. I usually use on them more fine-tuned distros like raspbian or OSMC. I can help testing stuff on them, because the aren't doing any critical stuff and I can always swap an SD card. I'd also love to try openSUSE on RPi 4. Last time I tried there were some serious issues with lacking drivers (wiki says USB host is still not working). I have the "official" 7 touch screen attached to it, which I would want to try with Plasma desktop. I also had some bad experience with running transactional server on PI, because there is a ton of post-install scripts managing /boot/vc, which were not run. | |
| Tumbleweed just requires too many updates which damages the SD Card on Raspberry over time. | |
| Raspberry Pi 0 and 0W are also Armv6. | |
| I've been playing with Kubic for Kubernetes on a Pi4 for the most part. | |
| I'm frequently using several raspberry Pi's as thin clients, and in general the biggest stopper is I still need to use non-FOSS software that only comes pre-built for armhf (i.e. Citrix workspace, but several others too - still haven't released aarch64 builds). And there's no such thing as "multilib" when it comes to arm, so... I'm stuck for now. | |
| I could drop RPi1 and RPI2 support in case a proper working RPi.GPIO packet is available for RPi3 and/or RPi4. | |
| Phooooooneeeees, old phones are on armv7 | |
| I remember the times when armv7 was dropped from Leap 42.1 while discontinuing "ordinary" openSUSE X.Y distro. Since I already had got two running BeagleBones on openSUSE in 'prod' at that time, this forced me to spend lots of time for wonderful adventures of bootstrapping Leap 42.2 for armv7. And even in that ancient times, every second package, which I have to update/fix/modify, was "come from SLE", that required opening ticket at Bugzilla, SUSE engineer involving, and constantly noisily complaining. So from what I remember, I don't see considerable changes here in the face of coming "great unification". | |
| SuSE on Pi3 and Pi4 runs good, only startup is a little slow due to uboot. I prefer to have Leap on all my linux devices, makes managing them easier. | |
| The major issue I most often encounter is the fact that my ARMv7 devices do not run stable enough over an extended period of time. Sooner or later they hang in an unknown state and need a power cycle. Frequent rebooting can work around the problem - sometimes. Important to note is the fact that they have the very same configuration as my other x86 based systems, which run very stable. | |
| not arm specific reasons against non obs build and signed binaries: - trust issues with suse internal build server - legal issues with commercial vendor instead of community - use of non open source tools that might get hosted externally (jira) | |
| A proper way to manage hardware configurations in device-tree (e.g. /dev/spidevXX config) in a regression free way would allow to use tumbleweed. Also having headless approach to boot the previously running system (after possible broken upgrade), e.g. by pressing a (configurable) button, would enable users to switch to tumbleweed for the 32 bit architectures. | |
| My use case currently involves a degree of experimentation in order to prove out the device usage, destined for single use (eg, smart speaker, unattended kiosk-type application, and environmental sensor purposes). When deployed beyond experimentation I am concerned as to the overhead associated with the rapid release cycles and occasional fixes required when associated with a Tumbleweed maintenance - okay with BTRFS snapshots arguably, but painful on devices with limited resources to devote
to that! || | |
| Using Tumbleweed aarch64 on a RPi3 and a PineBook Pro | |
| I'd like to use openSUSE with WSL2 on the Surface Pro X which is AARCH64 but apparently openSUSE is only shipping intel based images to microsoft store. | |
| I prefer Leap, but I'll do TW if it would be gone. Other then that, Suse is a big and important distro and a lot of people in the Linux community often forget about Suse. Keeping Suse in the picture if possible is necessary. | |
| No problem with the discontinuation of leap on lower-end arm. If you continue on tumbleweed, that should solve many needs. | |
| Keep up the good work! | |
| It would be good to have a roadmap of openSUSE on phones, this might be an interesting market, and the future of Linux if done right (and Pine64 is doing so). | |
| Bootable images of the usual openSUSE installer would be amazing for the different Pine64 devices (PinePhone and Pinebook Pro). This way we could get btrfs and snapper right from the box! | |
| While not necessary, it would be nice if at least Tumbleweed continued to support ARMv6. ARMv7 would be nice to have on openSUSE Leap, although I can use Tumbleweed but it would be very nice to have it as an option on Leap. | |
| Using openSUSE on ARM is something that you would not see every day, and i think that it has a bright future - we just need to do everything right. I hope we will have shared libraries someday so we can build and run any software, no matter where: on x86_64 or ARM - it totally won't matter! | |
| I would prefer to use a version that its focus is stability but also have *full* hardware functionality /capabilities. | |
| Please add support for NanoPi M4V2. It's such a great device, SSD and all and the rk3399 chip is very common these days. | |
| I find Leap a bit too slow for my liking, simply because Tumbleweed seems so much quicker. | |
| I generally run Tumbleweed on aarch64 since it often supports my hardware better than Leap does since it has newer patches and other things and is generally stable "enough." The only use I have for ARMv7 hardware is headless applications. Much of the ARMv7 hardware lacks the power I need to get most of my day to day tasks done. Even for server applications it can be quite slow. I mostly use it for things that are either more embedded or server type applications. Even for most of these things
I have already migrated to aarch64 since the cost difference for the boards is small, and aarch64 has become readily available. || | |
| I have a WD My Cloud NAS node, from where my experience with ARM like CPUs comes. This kind of device uses Debian Linux, but if I were to change it for OpenSuse, I'll not do it over Tumbleweed but Leap. | |
| I am only interested in ARMv7 for legacy purposes, where software doesn't work on ARMv8 yet or needs to be made available for older platforms. | |
| If ARMv7 with Leap were to cease being supported I would move to a different distribution. | |
| current usecase of leap on armv7 is OBS workers for me ... which will eventually be replaced by aarch64. | |
| Opensuse Leap works great on my Raspberry Pi 3 B+. It's stable, fast and safe. Opensuse has everything I need | |
| actualy using manjaro on raspberry 4 but would love to see a useful opensuse | |
| In need of a BerryBoot Leap 15.2 image. Please add a version of the Raspberry Pi 4 image that does NOT have a swap partition. This will allow the image to be converted to BerryBoot on RPi4. Thank you. | |
| Super good to use openSUSE on arm hardware! Thank you | |
| Using the Rpi for development purposes only, not production use. Hence I do not require a stable distribution and use TW only. Most Rpi could easily run aarch64, hence I do not see the armhf-branch as necessary. | |
| NB: many Raspberry Pi kernel drivers and userland are available as 32-bit only. | |
| openSuSE forever :D | |
| They make great little servers, so I have Leap running on several Odroids with aarch64, and I have an on BeagleBone Black that I keep Tumbleweed on. As long as I have something SUSE-ish, I'm happy. | |
| I have not updated my Raspberry Pi in ages. I did struggle with issues passing device tree parameters through U-Boot. This was close to four years ago, so things may have improved since then. | |
| I wanted to use Leap to have a lower need for maintenance than with Tumbleweed. | |
| The Business I work at was thinking of using micro-os with ARMv7. They would prefer leap for stability. Maybe consider embedded immutable instances differently? I can still see a use for armv7 there. | |
| Please get sound working on Raspberry Pi 4. Many thanks! | |
| openSUSE does not support GUI on Banana Pi. My only use for this board is as an automated backup machine for data from my openSUSE home server (the latter runs x86_64). I find Tumbleweed sufficiently stable, in console mode and anticipate minimal issues migrating the Banana Pi to Tumbleweed. | |
| I was planning on putting the tumbleweed based microos in an embedded consumer device, specifically a custom device based off of the allwinner h3 processor, which is armv7. | |
| I really appreciate all of the work that the various openSUSE teams put into their work. Quarantine has been hard but it has been helped with being able to learn a lot using your platform. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. | |
| Please keep ARM 64 across the board. | |
| I additionally use ODROID N2 (aarch64), ODROID C1 (armv7) and wish all ARM images in the future shipped BTRFS root by default. |
In case you want to be contacted, please add your email if you would like us to engage with you further on your openSUSE on ARMv6/ARMv7/Aarch64 usecases. (G01Q07)
| ! Answer | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Answer | 40 | 14.13% |
| No answer | 243 | 85.87% |
| Not displayed | 0 | 0.00% |
openSUSE:Release_team received 40 email addresses, that will not be exposed on wiki page.
Thank you very much! We really appreciate your willingness to help.