Release differences

[ThaWalrus]

What is the difference between, say, the ARMv7 Raspberry Pi 2 and ARMv7 Multi-platform releases in the download section?

Would it harm to install a different release? For example, I have a Raspberry Pi 3, which has an ARMv8, can I install ARMv8 AArch64 Multi-platform onto it instead of the suggested ARMv7 Raspberry Pi 2? If so, what would be the difference between that and a future specific release for the Raspberry Pi 3?

Thanks,
ThaWalrus

[WarheadsSE]

The kernel sources from the Raspberry Pi Foundation do not yet allow for the use of the SoC as an actual ARMv8.

You can not, at this time, simply change out the userland.

The difference between platform specific and generic are that any necessary, non-mainline, configurations and packages are done. Such as with the Pi, has the following:

• /boot and all cmdline.txt, etc, exists
• linux-raspberrypi is installed instead of linux-armv7
• raspberrypi-firmware is installed
• hostname is set to alarmpi

[ThaWalrus]

Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense.

Is the information you gave publicly available anywhere? How are these releases produced?

[WarheadsSE]

pacstrap