Is it time to bring Arch Linux ARM into the fold of Arch Linux? The GNU toolchain of ALARM is now very behind, and the developers are dead silent about why. There little to no response on pull requests on the github page, and while it seems like there is activity on their PKGBUILDs repo, it almost seems to me that it is some kind of automatic jobs being run. Their forum is broken and has been broken for quite some time as well. -- chs
I would love to see this happen since there's a rise of aarch64 laptops. On Friday, December 8, 2023 10:24:42 AM UTC Christer Solskogen wrote:
Is it time to bring Arch Linux ARM into the fold of Arch Linux? The GNU toolchain of ALARM is now very behind, and the developers are dead silent about why. There little to no response on pull requests on the github page, and while it seems like there is activity on their PKGBUILDs repo, it almost seems to me that it is some kind of automatic jobs being run. Their forum is broken and has been broken for quite some time as well.
Hi,
I would love to see this happen since there's a rise of aarch64 laptops.
Another data point... The Pi 4 was used by the Raspberry Pi Foundation as their desktop machine and the Pi 5 is significantly more powerful still. An official NVMe extension board will join the others already available. The Foundation have made public noises about the Pi 5 becoming a useful server. -- Cheers, Ralph.
I would love to see this happen. I'm a user of both archlinux and archlinux arm, I have a few packages on AUR and I sometimes post issues on archlinux gitlab and got quick replies. I am quite disheartened seeing the state of archlinux arm. Their forum registration has been broken for months, attempts have been made to fix the forum with no reply. I am shocked to see that `extras/chromium` is broken for years in arch linux arm! There are many many PRs (and consolidated PR) to fix this issue, one of the maintainer sees the PR and tagged the other maintainers to no avail. I was eventually led to other user's maintained build, presumably out of frustration. I'd love to help, I'd post in their forum had it not been broken. I think there's a lot of archlinux arm users who would love for the project to be merged under arch linux, especially with arm servers and desktops becoming more relevant. We would like to hear more from arch linux leaderships. Evans some links: [forum reg down](https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17386) [chromium PR](https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/pull/2183)
On 4/14/26 10:19 AM, evansjahja13@gmail.com wrote:
I would love to see this happen.
I'm a user of both archlinux and archlinux arm, I have a few packages on AUR and I sometimes post issues on archlinux gitlab and got quick replies.
I am quite disheartened seeing the state of archlinux arm. Their forum registration has been broken for months, attempts have been made to fix the forum with no reply.
I am shocked to see that `extras/chromium` is broken for years in arch linux arm! There are many many PRs (and consolidated PR) to fix this issue, one of the maintainer sees the PR and tagged the other maintainers to no avail. I was eventually led to other user's maintained build, presumably out of frustration.
I'd love to help, I'd post in their forum had it not been broken. I think there's a lot of archlinux arm users who would love for the project to be merged under arch linux, especially with arm servers and desktops becoming more relevant.
We would like to hear more from arch linux leaderships.
Evans
some links:
[forum reg down](https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17386)
[chromium PR](https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/pull/2183)
I feel your pain. I got tired of the issues you describe as well. I am working on my own packages and I have everything working on Raspberrypi 4 and 5. CLI and lxqt desktop working, I am type this on a desktop system from my efforts. I wrote some scripts that process the "base" package and the build them. I may my PKGBUILD's available on codeberg but I am not at that point yet. I have a few packages about 40 out of 2000 that are not building and I am currently working on those. I too would welcome archlinux to modify their package to build on aarch64. There isn't many changes required. -- Hindi madali ang maging ako
On Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 at 10:09 AM, Pocket <pocket@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
On 4/14/26 10:19 AM, evansjahja13@gmail.com wrote:
I would love to see this happen.
I'm a user of both archlinux and archlinux arm, I have a few packages on AUR and I sometimes post issues on archlinux gitlab and got quick replies.
I am quite disheartened seeing the state of archlinux arm. Their forum registration has been broken for months, attempts have been made to fix the forum with no reply.
I am shocked to see that `extras/chromium` is broken for years in arch linux arm! There are many many PRs (and consolidated PR) to fix this issue, one of the maintainer sees the PR and tagged the other maintainers to no avail. I was eventually led to other user's maintained build, presumably out of frustration.
I'd love to help, I'd post in their forum had it not been broken. I think there's a lot of archlinux arm users who would love for the project to be merged under arch linux, especially with arm servers and desktops becoming more relevant.
We would like to hear more from arch linux leaderships.
Evans
some links:
[forum reg down](https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17386)
[chromium PR](https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/pull/2183)
I feel your pain. I got tired of the issues you describe as well.
I am working on my own packages and I have everything working on Raspberrypi 4 and 5. CLI and lxqt desktop working, I am type this on a desktop system from my efforts.
I wrote some scripts that process the "base" package and the build them.
I may my PKGBUILD's available on codeberg but I am not at that point yet.
I have a few packages about 40 out of 2000 that are not building and I am currently working on those.
I too would welcome archlinux to modify their package to build on aarch64. There isn't many changes required.
-- Hindi madali ang maging ako
Yeah, unfortunately, I think you're going to get a recommendation to continue to seek help from Archlinux ARM. There are several places in the main Arch Linux documentation where they pretty clearly state that mainline Arch can't be and isn't responsible for the various forks for other architectures. Also, I would interpret this not as a lack of sympathy for your plight, but rather simply that support for other architectures like ARM isn't part of the mainline Arch project and Arch simply doesn't have the personnel or expertise to help you. [Wiki on supported archs] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#What_architectur... [terms of service] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Code_of_conduct#arch-linux-distribution-sup... Mike
On 4/14/26 11:28 AM, Michael Swanson wrote:
On Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 at 10:09 AM, Pocket <pocket@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
On 4/14/26 10:19 AM, evansjahja13@gmail.com wrote:
I would love to see this happen.
I'm a user of both archlinux and archlinux arm, I have a few packages on AUR and I sometimes post issues on archlinux gitlab and got quick replies.
I am quite disheartened seeing the state of archlinux arm. Their forum registration has been broken for months, attempts have been made to fix the forum with no reply.
I am shocked to see that `extras/chromium` is broken for years in arch linux arm! There are many many PRs (and consolidated PR) to fix this issue, one of the maintainer sees the PR and tagged the other maintainers to no avail. I was eventually led to other user's maintained build, presumably out of frustration.
I'd love to help, I'd post in their forum had it not been broken. I think there's a lot of archlinux arm users who would love for the project to be merged under arch linux, especially with arm servers and desktops becoming more relevant.
We would like to hear more from arch linux leaderships.
Evans
some links:
[forum reg down](https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17386)
[chromium PR](https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/pull/2183)
I feel your pain. I got tired of the issues you describe as well.
I am working on my own packages and I have everything working on Raspberrypi 4 and 5. CLI and lxqt desktop working, I am type this on a desktop system from my efforts.
I wrote some scripts that process the "base" package and the build them.
I may my PKGBUILD's available on codeberg but I am not at that point yet.
I have a few packages about 40 out of 2000 that are not building and I am currently working on those.
I too would welcome archlinux to modify their package to build on aarch64. There isn't many changes required.
-- Hindi madali ang maging ako
Yeah, unfortunately, I think you're going to get a recommendation to continue to seek help from Archlinux ARM. There are several places in the main Arch Linux documentation where they pretty clearly state that mainline Arch can't be and isn't responsible for the various forks for other architectures. Also, I would interpret this not as a lack of sympathy for your plight, but rather simply that support for other architectures like ARM isn't part of the mainline Arch project and Arch simply doesn't have the personnel or expertise to help you.
[Wiki on supported archs] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#What_architectur...
[terms of service] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Code_of_conduct#arch-linux-distribution-sup...
Mike
There are several places in the main Arch Linux documentation where they pretty clearly state that mainline Arch I have seen that. ARM is becoming an architecture of the future. Look at all the ARM SBC's on the market. I look at x86_64 as a dying architecture as ipads/phones are taking over. I use a Raspberry pi as my daily desktop and I haven't had the need to turn on my Miniforum x86_64 system. -- Hindi madali ang maging ako
This is actually one of my main complaints about Arch: the refusal—so far—to support non-x86 architectures. I care more about RISC-V than ARM, but the latter is nonetheless very important and already has a significant installation base. Besides the support in the main package repos (which is far beyond 98% even on RISC-V), tooling like fex, Wine ARM etc. make compatibility with non-ARM software better than ever before. All to say that I am strongly in favor of ALARM going upstream. The main obstacle I see is with CI, as well as tooling for AUR packagers to test their packages on non-native platforms. (It’s possible with a combination of arch-chroot and qemu userspace emulation, as per wiki documentation, but I haven’t yet found a good cross compilation setup beyond Rust.) Regards, kleines Filmröllchen PS: Not written by an LLM, I just use em dashes :)
As previously mentioned, there is the ports RFC [1]. I'd argue that the only thing missing to get the ball really rolling is a bit of organization (and maybe breaking things down so users of all experience levels can help). I often find myself (like many others) going back to the ALARM repos mainly because they sort-of work; but contributing to those has been a pain and more often than not things break and everyone's on its own (mainly because there's no "central place" where to share things). I know there's been lots of efforts around this [2] but even then it feels like we are all waiting on the infra/tooling to magically appear and work for ports and the reality is that "talk is cheap, send patches". Some "talk" will be necessary as there's a lot of things that should be integrated into arch's tooling, but there's the need to get some momentum going. I think that the rest will come by itself; we're at a point where even building everything on an emulated VM would be kind-of feasible because there is the computing power. I'm going on a tangent here, of course there are better solutions, but what I'm trying to say is: what we need is involvement, interest, and people willing to organize and put in the work to move the project forward :) I'll open an issue there [2] mentioning this thread to see what the people actually working on the project think, and to ask how we can help! Fermín Olaiz. --- [1] https://rfc.archlinux.page/0032-arch-linux-ports/ [2] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ports/aarch64/project-management/
On 4/14/26 1:09 PM, Fermín Olaiz wrote:
As previously mentioned, there is the ports RFC [1]. I'd argue that the only thing missing to get the ball really rolling is a bit of organization (and maybe breaking things down so users of all experience levels can help).
I often find myself (like many others) going back to the ALARM repos mainly because they sort-of work; but contributing to those has been a pain and more often than not things break and everyone's on its own (mainly because there's no "central place" where to share things).
Which is why I bit the bullet and I am making my own "distro"
I know there's been lots of efforts around this [2] but even then it feels like we are all waiting on the infra/tooling to magically appear and work for ports and the reality is that "talk is cheap, send patches".
Where does one send patches?
Some "talk" will be necessary as there's a lot of things that should be integrated into arch's tooling, but there's the need to get some momentum going.
I concur
I think that the rest will come by itself; we're at a point where even building everything on an emulated VM would be kind-of feasible because there is the computing power. I'm going on a tangent here, of course there are better solutions, but what I'm trying to say is: what we need is involvement, interest, and people willing to organize and put in the work to move the project forward :)
I'll open an issue there [2] mentioning this thread to see what the people actually working on the project think, and to ask how we can help!
Fermín Olaiz.
---
[1] https://rfc.archlinux.page/0032-arch-linux-ports/
[2] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ports/aarch64/project-management/
-- Hindi madali ang maging ako
On 26/04/14 01:15PM, Pocket wrote:
On 4/14/26 1:09 PM, Fermín Olaiz wrote:
I know there's been lots of efforts around this [2] but even then it feels like we are all waiting on the infra/tooling to magically appear and work for ports and the reality is that "talk is cheap, send patches".
Where does one send patches?
Some "talk" will be necessary as there's a lot of things that should be integrated into arch's tooling, but there's the need to get some momentum going.
I concur
Most of the coordination around these efforts is happening on IRC/Matrix, so if you're interested please join #archlinux-ports.
On 4/14/26 1:38 PM, Christian Heusel wrote:
On 26/04/14 01:15PM, Pocket wrote:
On 4/14/26 1:09 PM, Fermín Olaiz wrote:
I know there's been lots of efforts around this [2] but even then it feels like we are all waiting on the infra/tooling to magically appear and work for ports and the reality is that "talk is cheap, send patches".
Where does one send patches?
Some "talk" will be necessary as there's a lot of things that should be integrated into arch's tooling, but there's the need to get some momentum going.
I concur Most of the coordination around these efforts is happening on IRC/Matrix, so if you're interested please join #archlinux-ports.
I will need to learn how to do that -- Hindi madali ang maging ako
On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 7:39 PM Christian Heusel <christian@heusel.eu> wrote:
Most of the coordination around these efforts is happening on IRC/Matrix, so if you're interested please join #archlinux-ports.
Not only that, but we have a working PROTOTYPE. And by that I mean it is not official WHAT-SO-EVER. Tarballs are here: https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/tarballs/os/aarch64/ Package repos are: https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/core/os/aarch64/, https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/extra/os/aarch64/ and https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/forge/os/aarch64/. The forge repo is for aarch64 specific packages . We're pretty much up to date with upstream x86_64. We haven't packaged everything (yet), but we are already far beyond ALARM. And yes, our chromium packages is not broken. That said, we need all the help we can get. Testing is the biggest thing. That and MRs for kernel config (we only support ARMv8.2-A and higher) for SBCs.
On 4/14/26 2:25 PM, Christer Solskogen wrote:
On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 7:39 PM Christian Heusel <christian@heusel.eu> wrote:
Most of the coordination around these efforts is happening on IRC/Matrix, so if you're interested please join #archlinux-ports. Not only that, but we have a working PROTOTYPE. And by that I mean it is not official WHAT-SO-EVER.
Tarballs are here: https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/tarballs/os/aarch64/ Package repos are: https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/core/os/aarch64/, https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/extra/os/aarch64/ and https://arch-linux-repo.drzee.net/arch/forge/os/aarch64/.
The forge repo is for aarch64 specific packages .
We're pretty much up to date with upstream x86_64. We haven't packaged everything (yet), but we are already far beyond ALARM. And yes, our chromium packages is not broken.
That said, we need all the help we can get. Testing is the biggest thing. That and MRs for kernel config (we only support ARMv8.2-A and higher) for SBCs.
Do you have the PKGBUILD's available? I would like to have a look at the ones that you got to build but have failed to build for me. I have 19 so far that have failed to build and I haven't got to figuring them out. They are mostly older ones that fail with the newer gcc, binutils and glibc I have 1764 and counting that have built for me. -- Hindi madali ang maging ako
On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 8:56 PM Pocket <pocket@oldfart.online> wrote:
Do you have the PKGBUILD's available?
We're using upstream. In the case where something doesn't build, we try to create MRs for them. Unless some really hacky tricks are needed and I'm too scared to publish the hacks. We've got 8506 packages built for aarch64/ARMv8.2-a.
Hi Christer,
...we have a working PROTOTYPE. And by that I mean it is not official WHAT-SO-EVER.
AFAICS this effort, which is wonderful, is not reachable through the starting-off point https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Getting_involved#Help_porting_Arch_Linux_to... which is somewhere I might end up. Can this be improved?
That said, we need all the help we can get. Testing is the biggest thing. That and MRs for kernel config (we only support ARMv8.2-A and higher) for SBCs.
Where is a web page or similar which gives the status, and how to help? IRC is transient. The https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-ports@lists.archlinux.org/ mailing list seems idle. It seems you have to be both in the know, and actively taking part to keep up with status, and offer any help like testing. I know of others interested in Arch Linux on the Pi 5, but have nothing to really point them too. -- Cheers, Ralph.
AFAICS this effort, which is wonderful, is not reachable through the starting-off point https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Getting_involved#Help_porting_Arch_Linux_to... which is somewhere I might end up. Can this be improved?
Where is a web page or similar which gives the status, and how to help?
Thank you for reminding. Added link to https://ports.archlinux.page/
IRC is transient.
I'm trying to post more info on ports.archlinux.page, which is currently being reviewed, stay tuned. Charon77
On Mon, Apr 20, 2026 at 6:33 PM Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
Where is a web page or similar which gives the status, and how to help? IRC is transient. The https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-ports@lists.archlinux.org/ mailing list seems idle.
I'm a member there, so mail also works.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 9:43 PM Pocket <pocket@oldfart.online> wrote:
Which is why I bit the bullet and I am making my own "distro"
Same here. So please join matrix so we can work together :-)
Where does one send patches?
On 4/14/26 6:03 PM, Christer Solskogen wrote:
On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 9:43 PM Pocket <pocket@oldfart.online> wrote:
Which is why I bit the bullet and I am making my own "distro"
Same here. So please join matrix so we can work together :-)
I don't understand what matrix is. How does one join?
Where does one send patches?
-- Hindi madali ang maging ako
How does one join?
IRC: https://libera.chat/, follow the instructions, then join #archlinux and #archlinux-ports Matrix: pick a client (https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/). Cinny is a good web option. Connect to the matrix.org homeserver and join the Archlinux room. Sam
On Tue, 2026-04-14 at 19:20 -0400, Pocket wrote:
I don't understand what matrix is.
How does one join?
You will meet a man named Morpheus, who will offer you two pills, one of which you are supposed to take. Red Pill: Represents truth, knowledge, and freedom, but with a difficult, painful reality. Blue Pill: Represents blissful ignorance, security, and staying inside the matrix. Now I'm a little confused myself, because if the goal is to stay in the Matrix, why take a pill at all? "Matrix is an ambitious new ecosystem for open federated instant messaging and VoIP. It consists of servers, clients and bridge software to connect to existing messaging solutions like IRC." - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Matrix So the first step is to install a client.
So the first step is to install a client.
I am confused as well. I have a Matrix account on matrix.org and a client. I'm not sure where the room is. I found https://github.com/archlinux/infrastructure/blob/master/docs/matrix.md which leads to logging in using arch account which I have, but I can't login to matrix using it (assumption: package maintainer only?) I also saw #public-space:archlinux.org and #archlinux:archlinux.org, again I couldn't join, saying it needs invite. What am I missing?
On 15/04/2026 02:22, evansjahja13@gmail.com wrote:
So the first step is to install a client.
I am confused as well. I have a Matrix account on matrix.org and a client. I'm not sure where the room is. I found https://github.com/archlinux/infrastructure/blob/master/docs/matrix.md which leads to logging in using arch account which I have, but I can't login to matrix using it (assumption: package maintainer only?)
I also saw #public-space:archlinux.org and #archlinux:archlinux.org, again I couldn't join, saying it needs invite.
What am I missing?
The room is not bridged to Matrix, please use IRC.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2026 at 7:43 PM Jelle van der Waa <jelle@vdwaa.nl> wrote:
The room is not bridged to Matrix, please use IRC.
How sure are you about that? :) -- chs
Hi,
We would like to hear more from arch linux leaderships. ... I too would welcome archlinux to modify their package to build on aarch64. There isn't many changes required.
A reminder in case some on the list are not aware... Arch Linux has accepted the possibility of supporting ports other than x86_64. Here's a jumping-off point: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Getting_involved#Help_porting_Arch_Linux_to... -- Cheers, Ralph.
I'd love to help, I'd post in their forum had it not been broken. I> think there's a lot of archlinux arm users who would love for the project to be merged under arch linux, especially with arm servers and desktops becoming more relevant. We would like to hear more from arch linux leaderships.
I tried to get some hints for using archlinux on the raspberry thingy 5, no chance and I was banned for 20 years, But nobody can ban me. The bootmenue of rasberry5 won the race in combination with DEBIAN for ARM and it works perfect. I still support people in archlinux, but not those who ban and cry: Nobody should try archlinux but those who support X86. As there are those who don't want X any longer. If there are specialists who bring something very much better than X, I see only ARM much better than X86. And those from DEBIAN are not very fast but honestly solid and do help.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2026 at 12:43 PM <yxcv@vienna.at> wrote:
I'd love to help, I'd post in their forum had it not been broken. I> think there's a lot of archlinux arm users who would love for the project to be merged under arch linux, especially with arm servers and desktops becoming more relevant. We would like to hear more from arch linux leaderships.
I tried to get some hints for using archlinux on the raspberry thingy 5, no chance and I was banned for 20 years, But nobody can ban me. The bootmenue of rasberry5 won the race in combination with DEBIAN for ARM and it works perfect. I still support people in archlinux, but not those who ban and cry: Nobody should try archlinux but those who support X86. As there are those who don't want X any longer. If there are specialists who bring something very much better than X, I see only ARM much better than X86. And those from DEBIAN are not very fast but honestly solid and do help.
I don't quite understand your mail, but the prototype we've got works perfectly on a Pi5.
participants (14)
-
Christer Solskogen
-
Christian Heusel
-
Danct12
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evansjahja13＠gmail.com
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Fermín Olaiz
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Jelle van der Waa
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kleines Filmröllchen
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Michael Swanson
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Pocket
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Pocket
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Ralf Mardorf
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Ralph Corderoy
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SK
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yxcv＠vienna.at