Re: [PATCH 02/13] ARM: remove footbridge

[Ralph Siemsen <ralphs@netwinder.org>]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2026 at 07:27:48PM +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:
>On Tue, Sep 8, 2026 at 5:28 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org> wrote:
>
>> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
>>
>> Footbridge was deprecated in 7.3 to be removed along with the other
>> StrongARM platforms and most remaining board files.
>>
>> The main machine here is the NetWinder, which was a popular Arm based
>> desktop PC in the late 1990s and contributed to Arm's later success as
>> an embedded Linux platform, but was discontinued over 25 years ago and
>> is no longer all that useful.
>>
>> I previously tried to convert this to devicetree in a sensible way but
>> gave up due to the platform being too different from modern SoC based
>> targets.
>>
>> Cc: Russell King <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
>> Cc: Ralph Siemsen <ralphs@netwinder.org>
>> Cc: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>
>> Cc: dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org
>> Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
>
>Acked-by: Linus Walleij <linusw@kernel.org>
>
>I have one of those machines and it boot mainline but I
>certainly consider it a paperweight at this point, I can't use
>it for anything useful.

Likewise, I have a NetWinder machine which has occasionally booted a
mainline kernel, along with fairly current buildroot initramfs. It has 
been surprisingly smooth sailing, even the bx/bl compiler troubles seem 
to have been sorted out these days.

It's a bit sad to see it go, in particular since it all works. But the 
reality is that nobody seems to be running this hardware anymore, and 
there is no community of active users anymore.

Acked-by: Ralph Siemsen <ralphs@netwinder.org>

Regards,
-Ralph