Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dispose13432 3464 days ago
ARM's SoC lack of standards.

In reality, we were really spoiled with IBM's massive mistake in standardizing the PC (the BIOS), so while Linux may not pick up your monitor, your monitor is made to work to a basic standard (VGA), so you can at least boot up, read the hard-drive, and have basic "keyboard" IO.

This was really important before Win95 made the PC practically MS owned, as you could (and were expected to) install whatever OS you wanted, so they had to have a standard Boot Sector, etc.

ARM SoC are meant to be built by a manufacturer to their specs (their CPU doesn't have to be compatible with anything because nothing is user-serviceable anyways). In other words, PCs were meant to be an Open Standard, while SoC are like old consoles/"dumb" phones.

Unfortunately, due to MS dominance in the PC world, and the collapse of independent computer manufacturers (I remember the days when buying a cheap computer meant not going to Dell but going to the mom-and-pop shop down the block, but you had to know how to fix things if anything went bust), the PC is moving slowly but surely to the appliance world.