From the accessibility angle, this release works fine. I was able to boot it on a desktop computer and activated speakup via a hardware synth. I also booted a Macbook Pro and got speech via software synth. Two minor problems. First, it didn't play that tone it used to play when it was done booting. This feature was very nice for blind users because you knew it was time to start speech. I think maybe that tone went away several releases ago but it only just occured to me to miss it. Second, braille did not start automatically. GRML used to activate braille at boot so you could follow the messages as it booted. That was another good way to tell when it had finished booting. As it is, if you are blind, you have no way to tell what is going on until you get speech working. I mean, if you are blind, you have no way to know if it even recognized the GRML boot CD or flash drive, if it hung some point in the boot process, or if it worked and all you have to do is type the commands to start speech. About the only thing to do is to try using one of those iPone apps intended for reading restaurant menus to read you the screen. If brltty is included in the initrd, a blind person at least knows it's booting. This can be so very important given that GRML is a rescue distro. If the company's web server is down, you don't want to depend on your phone giving you a meaningful description of what is on the computer screen.

On 12/20/24 4:49 AM, Michael Prokop wrote:

Hi,

just in time for the end of the year 2024, we made available the new Grml version 2024.12, code-named "Adventgrenze"!

Our highlight for this release is the first time ever support of 64-bit ARM systems (AKA arm64).

More information about this release is available in the release notes here:

https://grml.org/changelogs/README-grml-2024.12/

Grab the latest Grml ISO(s) and spread the word:

https://grml.org/download/

If you should notice any bugs please let us know:

https://grml.org/bugs/

We welcome constructive feedback, suggestions for improvement and your contributions, please just reach out to us:

https://grml.org/contact/

BTW: We celebrate 20(!) Years of Grml Releases. Please join us in celebrating and send us a postcard!

https://blog.grml.org/archives/417-20-years-grml-releases.html

We want to thank netcup for their financial contribution for implementing arm64 support.

Thanks to everyone contributing to Grml and this release! Take care and happy Grml-ing!

-mika- - for the Grml project

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On Friday, 2024-12-20 at 11:49:04 +0100, Michael Prokop wrote:

Our highlight for this release is the first time ever support of 64-bit ARM systems (AKA arm64).

Given that there are so many systems out there that feature an ARM64-compatible CPU, I would like to ask for a new FAQ entry describing the prerequesites for booting the ARM64 ISO.

E.g. can a Raspberry Pi boot that ISO? How? I have a NanoPi R4S which has Cortex A72 and A53 cores. Those cores have the Armv8-A architecture. It boots from a microSD card using uBoot. *But!* it has no video output.

For fun I connected my USB-TTL adapter to see the serial console. When I applied power, I did not even get any output from the built-in firmware. So it didn't even ignore the ISO image ;-)

While this is an obvious example that one can *expect* not to work, I believe there will be boundary cases with hardware that *has* video but still does not boot.

I would appreciate if you collected a list of hardware that has been tried with GRML ARM64. Pretty please?

Thank you for the magnificent work creating and maintaining GRML. It helped me in so many cases since 2006. Almost 20 years!

Lupe Christoph