I'm planning on buying a single board computer that I would like to install Ubuntu server on. The problem is that I don't know which file I should download. I've taken a look at this page: www.ubuntu.com/download/server/arm. Does that mean that I can only use Ubuntu server for ARM with those types of cpu's?
Ubuntu – Which Ubuntu for ARM cpu do I need
armdistro-recommendationfilesserver
Best Answer
Unfortunately unlike the x86 world the arm world doesn't have a common "platform".
PCs all boot in the same way, they have crucial system hardware like timers in the same place. They all have the registers used to enumerate the PCI bus(es) in the same place. They have a BIOS that passes further details of the hardware to the OS.
Arm boards don't, each SoC is very different and the boards they are installed on are often different too. At a minimum you tend to need a board-specific bootloader and "dtb". Sometimes you also need a board-specific kernel, especially if you want full functionality.
What tends to end up happening is that only a small selection of hardware is officially supported by the distro, then the community arround each given board puts together unofficial images for thier boards.