Arm Community
Arm Community
  • Site
  • User
  • Site
  • Search
  • User
Arm Community blogs
Arm Community blogs
Architectures and Processors blog Linux Support for the ARM Architecture
  • Blogs
  • Mentions
  • Sub-Groups
  • Tags
  • Jump...
  • Cancel
More blogs in Arm Community blogs
  • AI blog

  • Announcements

  • Architectures and Processors blog

  • Automotive blog

  • Embedded and Microcontrollers blog

  • Internet of Things (IoT) blog

  • Laptops and Desktops blog

  • Mobile, Graphics, and Gaming blog

  • Operating Systems blog

  • Servers and Cloud Computing blog

  • SoC Design and Simulation blog

  • Tools, Software and IDEs blog

Tell us what you think
Tags
  • Software
  • open_source
  • GNU
  • operating_system
  • Linux
Actions
  • RSS
  • More
  • Cancel
Related blog posts
Related forum threads

Linux Support for the ARM Architecture

Alban Rampon
Alban Rampon
April 19, 2016
1 minute read time.

Key benefits of Linux on ARM

  • Complete scalable operating system providing a reliable multi-tasking environment
  • Based on an open source model (GPL)
  • Leverage a wide range of UNIX and open source applications
  • Early availability on ARM processor-based platforms
  • Used in many ARM technology-based designs including networking and wireless products
  • Broad support through open discussion forums

Linux Operating System Development

ARM contributes support for ARM Versatile Express development platforms and ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) to the main Linux kernel. The other tabs contain Linux kernel images, patches and utilities to run Linux on ARM processors and ARM Versatile platforms. Linux is the version of Linux running on processors with a Memory Management Unit (MMU). Processors without MMU can run a modified version of Linux called uClinux. The uClinux tab provides pre-built uClinux images for specific ARM processors.

Linaro is created as a company to bring together the open source community and the electronics industry to jointly work on key projects, deliver open source tools, reduce fragmentation and provide common foundations for Linux based distributions and stacks to work with. More information is available from the Linaro website.

Additionally, ARM works with the open source community and Linux distributions as well as commercial Linux partners including:

  • Arch Linux
  • Canonical (Ubuntu on ARM)
  • Debian
  • Fedora
  • Linaro
  • OpenSUSE
  • Tizen

Please, note that ARM does not provide generic Linux support.

GNU Tools Overview

ARM contributes to the GNU compiler project to track the evolution of the ARM architecture and CPU roadmap, to ensure availability of a high-quality GNU toolchain for ARM.

This toolchain supports all current ARM architectures and processors with a roadmap to support future processors and architectures.

The toolchain complies with the latest ARM Application Binary Interface, and interworks with ARM DS-5 Tools or any other ABI-compliant toolchain. Users can take advantage of the optimized codesize and performance of a commercial, professional toolchain from ARM together with code built using Open Source tools.

The GNU GCC compiler can be accessed from Linaro at the following location:

  • https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded - Native GNU tools for Embedded ARM Processors (Cortex-R/Cortex-M)

Monthly GCC pre-built binaries are available from https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles.

Anonymous
Architectures and Processors blog
  • Introducing GICv5: Scalable and secure interrupt management for Arm

    Christoffer Dall
    Christoffer Dall
    Introducing Arm GICv5: a scalable, hypervisor-free interrupt controller for modern multi-core systems with improved virtualization and real-time support.
    • April 28, 2025
  • Getting started with AARCHMRS Features.json using Python

    Joh
    Joh
    A high-level introduction to the Arm Architecture Machine Readable Specification (AARCHMRS) Features.json with some examples to interpret and start to work with the available data using Python.
    • April 8, 2025
  • Advancing server manageability on Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystem (CSS) with OpenBMC

    Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud
    Samer El-Haj-Mahmoud
    Arm and 9elements Cyber Security have brought a prototype of OpenBMC to the Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystem (CSS) to advancing server manageability.
    • January 28, 2025