Dave <use### [at] iamdaveATglidefreecom> wrote:

> > The official Debian armhf needs ARMv7. The raspi is ARMv6+vfp2
> > So debian armhf is not compatible with Raspbian armhf.
>
> I've always preferred FreeBSD to Linux so I'm (as of now) unclear about
> what you just said means. I know I've been doing 'apt-get' and it
> downloads & installs stuff that runs on the RPi. When I do a 'dpkg -l',
> a few of the packages mention 'armhf'...  I've now exhausted my
> knowledge here! :-)

Oi, coming from the x86 world, the ARM ecosystem is a complete mess. Any modern
x86 processor you buy now is going to have at least the following: 64-bit
architecture with SSE2, x87, etc.

In the ARM world, everything but the main integer execution core is optional.
Any device you buy with an ARM-based processor may or may not have any of the
following: thumb, vfp (and its variants), neon, etc. The official Debian 7.0
(wheezy armhf) requires at least an ARM processor that uses ARMv7 instruction
set and has a VFPv3-D16 floating point unit. The other option is to use Debian
7.0 armel, which is requires ARMv5 (I think) but not a floating point unit. Very
annoying. A theoretical FreeBSD for ARM distribution would have to tackle the
same problem.


Reminds me of back in the '80s when you could buy an 8088 computer and
plug in a third party floating point coprocessor, with resulting code not
compatible with other third party FP coprocessors.

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