I have looked up the installation recommendations for installing distributions in this forum. For Fedora the raw images are supported on the Alta out of the box. I tried as well to rule out any other issues. When I tried to install a Fedora spin from an installer image I get errors that no kernel was loaded at all. This results in grub looping over and over.
The board supports UEFI boot and passes the device tree to the kernel as stated in this post. So from my understanding a genuine Fedora installer .iso should also work. Why does the reality look different? Why can’t I run an installer iso from a bootable stick and install the distro onto the inserted SD card, like on x86?
I would be very grateful, if you could help me further my understanding.
It depends on what configs were enabled in the kernel that ships with a specific spin. Spins may not use the normal Fedora kernel or boot mechanism due to how the image is installed or partition layout. The normal sequence is UEFI runs GRUB as an UEFI application. Then GRUB loads the kernel and sets the bootargs. If GRUB or the kernel are not setup correctly in the image, then it won’t work. It’s best to report any issues upstream so they can fix it.