Apparently, Fedora have released a 64Bit distro for Arm, that I thought I'd try on my RazPi 4.

I know fedora, generally don't like it(graphically good, always an early adopter , always beta, and uses rpms), but a 64bit OS beckons. Now, how to install? I have raspbian on one micro sdcard, which I'm anxious not to disturb, and a 16G micro sdcard which I can use. I grabbed the install image and the .img file on my (x86_64)pc. I have usb keys, the Pi has usb sockets but can anyone point me to a working install procedure?

Is it as simple as , putting the iso on a usb key and go? What about the cpu-specific files raspbian has in it's 1st partition?

They used to a reasonable guide when they first releases pi2 and pi3 images. They were a bit late for me, so I never actually installed it, but I recall it looked similar to Arch. Best I could find for you with a quick search was this. Untried by me.

If it comes as a writeable image, I'd say yes.
But isn't "boot.img" rather something like "fedora_32_aarch64.img"?

Surprisingly, it was called 'boot.img'. The download was many directories down.
The iso was called 'install.iso'
It made me think I'd be looking for stuff on the iso, so I'll make a pass at making that available. I'll at least loop mount it and have a look.

Have you looked at this link?

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Archi...M/Raspberry_Pi

No. Fedora 32 was released only today.https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/...with-gnome-336 I read the links, and the links of the links, if you get me. I think it handles RazPi 4. I'll suck it and see, as I have it down on an sdcard now. I just want the iso on a usb, and can transfer action to the RazPi, fortunately without disturbing Raspbian/Debian. If it pukes, I can shrug and put Raspbian back in. Fedora, iirc is in a perpetual state of beta. I'm sure they rushed this out.

Well, I sucked it and saw, and it sucked. The Razpi stayed Dead, just a black screen that never came on.

The img file is a squashfs that has one directory, LiveOS/ which has one file, rootfs.img which is ext4. That has a real flavour of catch-22 about it. No blank sbc would load anything through all that. You'd need a well-provisioned kernel to load it.

The iso is no better with directories thrown about like confetti at a wedding. There's a kernel several directories down one tree,grub down another tree, efi all over the place, and how you're supposed to proceed on a non-efi system like the RazPi 4 or my pc is a mystery. No sign of an OS, or anything like a binary blob and it's iso9660, not fat32.

The Hardware guy is thinking "What does the box want?" Raspbian has a 1st partition that is FAT32. On that is a number of Broadcom files The one in bold is for the RazPi 4 AFAICT. Now the thing in my mind is: ""What's the RazPi going to look for?" Without a BIOS, or simply a primitive one, it's going to want some program to run. File identifies those bcm* files as Device Tree Blobs, probably in Assembler. I'd have to get an Arm Assembler and get them back into assembler mnemonics to be sure, because I'd have a clue then. There's also a recovery.rfs (28M) some FORTH stuff, a nod to risc-OS, and is quite an intelligent and well thought out collection. Fedora looks primitive by comparison.

I'll wait for some real instructions. If/when they come along, I'll try it. There may be an issue here as Broadcom are very unsupportive, except where they have a deal with manufacturers. So Fedora might have issues getting their bios-type binaries.

Have you looked at this link

https://www.raspberrypi.org/document...otflow_2711.md

Looking at the way they're making it simple you'd end up in a home for the bewildered, or come away knowing less than you did before. What I said before still stands. It is FAT32 and is a well thought out piece of kit. I didn't know they had an eeprom in the Pi 4, but unless it's generously sized, I don't see how it can handle EFI and provide for the GPU. EEPROMs are inclined to be small, or expensive. What I'm not reading about is microcode - stuff built into the APU to help it run.

Raspbian's issue seems to be getting 32 & 64 bit systems of all generations running. And they do. In the listing below, defaults/, os/ & overlays/ are all directories, and overlays/ seems to have driver files relating to many chips. These are the difficulties in making a 'one size fits all' distro for Pis. By contrast, the Fedora iso gives me That looks totally primitive with many different filesystems. I presume the FAT32 stuff works, but I really think you have to put this stuff on a Fat32 system in sda1 and go from there. Or else set it up via PXE, which is a pain in the nether regions. Probably the same for the .img file. And I don't want or need EFI.

Sounds complicated.
Sounds like they don't have a ready-made image for the raspi - but you already gave that clue in your first post:
Since ARM devices aren't "one size fits all" like PCs it can't be a ready-made.

Maybe that's what you wanted after all, so just ignore me.

Or maybe you do want a ready-made image and don't like Raspbian for some reason; try Armbian?

Well, Raspbian is as good as Debian gets. It's there, and working. Fedora is 64bit and they say it works. That's the only reason I tried it.

I loop mounted the squashfs .img file, made a 1G FAT32 partition, which gave me a better combo than the iso. I got
LiveOS/rootfs.img, an ext4.

Question: Why in the name of all that's SANE release an image in one format that's a directory, and an image in another format?

LiveOS/rootfs.img itself got loop mounted, and it has a regular enough looking console system of 1.8G. No busybox. There's 11M of kernel, no /boot/grub/, 1.3M of bash so it's a ready to rock as a full system minus the Window manager, which seems to be a separate download.

Actually, I think I can answer my own question. Squashfs --> ext4 may allow installation on low ram sbcs. RazPi 4s come with as little as 1G of ram.

Now a devious thought is uncurling itself in my head. One of the things that came with my Pi was an sdcard-->usb adaptor. I have a 1G formatted 1st partition. I can put that in a Pi, format the second as ext4, & copy the OS accross. I can make adjustments under Raspbian - copy the kernel to partition 1, set up a grub file, and use grub-install from the Debian system (presuming it exists). Then comes a power down, swap Raspbian out and Fedora in, cobble up an /etc/fstab (there is none), and give THAT a shot. Given that boot/ isn't used once you power up, I can even mount my sdcard on Raspbian's /boot to avoid
having to find that elusive option in grub.

Now here's the $64,000 question. Would I be better leaving the whole drive as ext 4, seeing as that's what Fedora did (several directories down). If so do I set it up in the pc with partitions (/dev/mmcblk0p1 & mmcblk0p2) or no partitions (/dev/mmcblk0)?

I've got some little sense into this release.
The iso is the only was to go if you're infected with EFI for which it's intended I think, as has some nods to PXE also. Why anyone would do that to a little sbc amazes me. It also has the img which is a filesystem-within-a-filesystem. The grub.cfg is for pxe, stage 1 & stage 2. The iso having EFI/BOOT as fat32 and the one with linux as ext4 kinda gave me the picture.

I now have the 'filesystem-within-a-filesystem' extracted, & copied onto an ext4 sdcard partition (2). I also have a kernel on the vfat partition(1). I'll cobble up the necessary evil in the way of /etc/fstab, /boot/grub/grub.cfg and give THAT a try. I'll have to leave it until tomorrow but hopefully we'll make sense of it, or get a decent error message..

Despite what is said, Fedora 32 apparently does not support the RazPi 4 in it's present form. The /boot you need 90% of is in post #7. The fedora offering is in post #9

The screen doesn't come on with Fedora. The existing distros that work all have a boot directory 90% similar to noobs. All this contains firmware back to the R-Pi 0, GPU microcode, but Slackware has the only education in it's README.boot
From what I picked up on a quick read,

1. The GPU loads it's microcode, and initializes the cpu. Presumably it also gets it's microcode.
2. They carve up the ram between them.
3. Have a look for config.txt if it's there. It doesn't have to be.
4. Finally, we get to the kernel command line. So grub won't be of much use because the eeprom has a bootloader built in
5. The kernel is called kernel.img, not Fedora32_aarch64.img
6. It also loads System.map, which Fedora32 omits

So instead of editing /boot/grub/grub.cfg, it's /boot/cmdline.txt. And Fedora have excluded themselves from probably the largest brand of aarch64 hardware on the planet