Red Hat Building Linux for ARM [VIDEO]

There was a time when x86 was the only major chip architecture Linux vendor Red Hat cared about. That time has now come to an end as the Linux giant is now taking a serious look at ARM.

“ARM is looking increasingly promising,” Tim Burke, VP of Linux Engineering at Red Hat, told ServerWatch in an interview. “Our focus is ARM in the server marketplace, so we’re really not looking to be a handheld type of play.”

The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Linux project already has a full-fledged ARM effort. Fedora 17 is now available to run on ARM, and there is a sizable team working on its development.

Burke noted that he has developers not just working on the basic port but also working on the universe of packages that will be required, including the OpenJDK Java packages. He added that there are a lot of package cleanups that are required to get applications ready for ARM.

Watch the video interview:

Read the full story at ServerWatch:
Red Hat: Linux on ARM Is No Joke

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.