Why no arm64 support?

[Michal Suchánek]

Hello,

why is Qubes limited to x86?

There is open issue about porting to ppc64 but ppc64 does not have a Xen
port which is a big barries for any would-be porters.

arm64 on the other hand does have Xen port already.

Recent SoCs like rk3588 or ls1028a come with reasonable amount of memory
(up to 8GB in actual hardware, up to 16GB theoretically supported).

They do come with an IOMMU, too.

So is tehre anything actually blocking running Qubes on non-x86?

Thanks

Michal

[Holger Levsen]

On Wed, Nov 02, 2022 at 10:44:11AM +0100, Michal Suchánek wrote:
> why is Qubes limited to x86?

[...]

> arm64 on the other hand does have Xen port already.

a.) because this is a rather recent thing and

> So is tehre anything actually blocking running Qubes on non-x86?

b.) someone (tm) has to do the work. (adding support, testing it, fixing
issues. also this needs hardware.)


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cheers,
Holger

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[Frédéric Pierret]

Hello,

Le 11/11/22 à 16:21, Holger Levsen a écrit :

> On Wed, Nov 02, 2022 at 10:44:11AM +0100, Michal Suchánek wrote:
>> why is Qubes limited to x86?
> [...]
>> arm64 on the other hand does have Xen port already.
>
> a.) because this is a rather recent thing and
>
>> So is tehre anything actually blocking running Qubes on non-x86?
>
> b.) someone (tm) has to do the work. (adding support, testing it, fixing
> issues. also this needs hardware.)
>
>

Following Holger's answer, Qubes OS team or ITL would be glad to support arm64 but we need several pieces for that:

1) hardware for the actual dev/testing work,
2) hardware for integrating it into our continuous integration pipelines,
3) financial sponsors for the work.

Best regards,
Frédéric