3 ms·

While the CHIP comes out looking good, it's important to note the horrendous AllWinner software stack. Last time I checked, Linux support meant using an out-of-

While the CHIP comes out looking good, it's important to note the horrendous AllWinner software stack. Last time I checked, Linux support meant using an out-of-tree sourcedump that was tied to a specific version of Linux (I think 3.0.x?). The sunxi project[1] was trying to mainline a bunch of stuff, but not sure how far that is now. In general, working with the AllWinner chip is much more of a pain if you want to do non-trivial things. Perhaps the CHIP will help improve that situation. [1]: https://github.com/linux-sunxi https://github.com/linux-sunxi

geerlingguy 11y ago
I've run into this with all the AllWinner-derived boards. The software stack requires more work to set up, has more small bugs that are harder to fix (mostly because there aren't a thousand blog posts and forum topics on the exact fix, like there are with anything Pi/Broadcom-related), and has often incomprehensible documentation that's buried in forums or outdated and slow-to-load sites.
carussell 11y ago
FWIW, if anyone missed it, the author of the article here does say that the CHIP will soon be using mainline Linux, but he (unfortunately) doesn't go into detail and doesn't link to a source.
makomk 11y ago
If you're just using it as a headless server, you can run standard Debian on this generation of Allwinner hardware. You download a Debian Jessie installer image from the Debian website, load it on an SD card, hook up a serial console and go through the install process as usual with the standard Debian-packaged kernel. Debian doesn't have the device tree specifying how hardware is hooked up on the C.H.I.P yet because it's new, so this won't yet work on it, but in theory I think that's all that's missing.
eeZi 11y ago
Actually, this has lead to an extensive mainlining effort [1] which has resulted in better mainline support than many other boards. [1]: https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort

geerlingguy 11y ago

I've run into this with all the AllWinner-derived boards. The software stack requires more work to set up, has more small bugs that are harder to fix (mostly because there aren't a thousand blog posts and forum topics on the exact fix, like there are with anything Pi/Broadcom-related), and has often incomprehensible documentation that's buried in forums or outdated and slow-to-load sites.

carussell 11y ago

FWIW, if anyone missed it, the author of the article here does say that the CHIP will soon be using mainline Linux, but he (unfortunately) doesn't go into detail and doesn't link to a source.

makomk 11y ago

If you're just using it as a headless server, you can run standard Debian on this generation of Allwinner hardware. You download a Debian Jessie installer image from the Debian website, load it on an SD card, hook up a serial console and go through the install process as usual with the standard Debian-packaged kernel. Debian doesn't have the device tree specifying how hardware is hooked up on the C.H.I.P yet because it's new, so this won't yet work on it, but in theory I think that's all that's missing.

eeZi 11y ago

Actually, this has lead to an extensive mainlining effort [1] which has resulted in better mainline support than many other boards. [1]: https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort