Distributions

Debian

Debian GNU/Linux, http://www.debian.org

• Provides the easiest environment for quickly building prototypes and developing applications. Countless runtime and development packages available.
• But probably too costly to maintain and unnecessarily big for production systems.
• Available on ARM (armel, armhf, arm64), MIPS and PowerPC architectures
• Software is compiled natively by default.

Fedora

• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM
• Supported on various recent ARM boards (such as Beaglebone Black). Pidora supports Raspberry Pi too.
• Supports QEMU emulated ARM boards too (Versatile Express board)
• Shipping the same version as for desktops!

Ubuntu

• Had some releases for ARM mobile multimedia devices, but stopped at version 12.04. Now focusing on ARM servers only.

Embedded distributions

Distributions designed for specific types of devices

• Android: http://www.android.com/

• Google's distribution for phones and tablet PCs. Except the Linux kernel, very different user space than other Linux distributions. Very successful, lots of applications available (many proprietary).

• Ångström:

• http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/
• Produces nightly built images for a nice list of ARM and x86 systems (see http: //dominion.thruhere.net/angstrom/nightlies/

Application frameworks

Not real distributions you can download. Instead, they implement middleware running on top of the Linux kernel and allowing to develop applications.

• Mer: http://merproject.org/
  • Fork from the Meego project.
  • Targeting mobile devices.
  • Supports x86, ARM and MIPS.
  • See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mer_(software_distribution)
• Tizen: https://www.tizen.org/
  • Targeting smartphones, tablets, netbooks, smart TVs and In Vehicle Infotainment devices.
  • Supported by big phone manufacturers and operators HTML5 base application framework.
  • See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen