Source: linux Severity: normal The iMX8 SoC is used on various boards, widely available to debian users and well supported by free software, but the platform is not enabled in debian kernels, which is a rather major omission. I don't know why not (I guess no-one filed this bug?).
These are all avilable today and should at least mostly work with mainline: Nitrogen 8M https://boundarydevices.com/product/nitrogen8m/ Solidrun Cubox M https://shop.solid-run.com/product/SRMP8QDWB1D04GE008X00CE/ Hummingboard Pulse https://shop.solid-run.com/product-category/embedded-computers/nxp-family/hummingboard-m/ Purism Librem 5 Phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 Compulab SBC-iMX8X https://www.compulab.com/products/sbcs/sbc-imx8x-nxp-i-mx-8x-single-board-computer/ (supported since 5.4.24) Toradex Apalis iMX8 CoM https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/apalis-arm-family/nxp-imx-8 I believe that all that is needed is adding CONFIG_ARCH_MXC=y in debian/config/arm64/config Which is set by default upstream. (There may be other drivers that should enabled too for some of these platforms?) I just built the kernel with the above config change and it builds fine on arm64, and installs and boots on softiron. I don't have an iMX8 here to test on, but we can find some, I'm sure. It seems like the timing was rather unfortunate here with some of this hardware only becoming widely available in Q4 2020 (shortly before the Bullseye freeze). Is there any chance of one more hardware enablement upload for bullseye, or does this feel like too big a change? If not, getting this into a point release would make debian stable useful on a lot more hardware. What testing would make the kernel team reasonably happy about doing that? -- Wookey
