The ARM64 code for Linux 7.4 is stripping away its support for big-endian kernel builds for 64-bit ARM.

The ARM64 (AArch64) architecture updates were already sent out for the now-open Linux 7.4 merge window. One of the most notable changes this cycle is not what's new but what is being removed... Big endian support for ARM64 is being removed because its extremely rare and the code is unsupported and previously marked as broken.

Since September 2025 the ARM64 Linux code had marked the CPU_BIG_ENDIAN Kconfig option as "BROKEN" due to such configurations being "vanishingly rare" but lacking developer interest and testing. One of the few known users of ARM64 BE was Huawei years ago in telecom hardware. But even there was no support by Huawei in helping to provide ongoing maintenance of the code.

Now for Linux 7.4, the ARM64 big-endian code is being retired to simplify ARM64 Linux kernel development moving forward. Removing the last of the ARM64 big-endian code is less than five hundred lines of kernel code being cleared out but will simplify development of future ARM64 architectural Linux patches with one less code path and testing combination to worry about.

The removal in Linux 7.4 is part of the ARM64 updates. Also notable there is beginning to add NVIDIA Rigel CPU support with the CPU type added and enabling BBML2 no-abort (BBML3) capabilities for that successor to NVIDIA Vera.