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More RAM than the Raspberry Pi 3 and gigabit ethernet for a lower cost. However, my experience with ODroid and CHIP has shown me that having a large developer c

by aftbit 11y ago

More RAM than the Raspberry Pi 3 and gigabit ethernet for a lower cost. However, my experience with ODroid and CHIP has shown me that having a large developer community is super important. Anybody can whip up a single-board computer using cheap smartphone SoCs, but getting a solid, reliable kernel with open source drivers is far from easy. For example, I was unable to use V4L with my webcam on CHIP. The install was simple on my RPi. Another - I recently tried to build the dmx_usb kernel driver on an ODroid C1. Nope, their sources are missing a bunch of headers. Both of these things were absolutely trivial on an RPi. Just install some packages and go.

bravo22 11y ago
The drivers and kernel support is provided by the chip vendor.
- bronson 11y ago
  Thats way oversimplified. These chip vendors have all supplied source dumps for their drivers. The reason the RPi works so well is all the work they're doing integrating their distributions (Raspbian is particularly good) and upstreaming stuff into the kernel.
  - bravo22 11y ago
    I'm not disagreeing about the work that RPi is doing. I was addressing this part: "getting a solid, reliable kernel with open source drivers is far from easy." If the chip vendor doesn't provide the drivers then the integrator can't either.
  - makomk 11y ago
    There's actually a fairly productive community-driven effort to upstream support for Allwinner boards: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort I'm running Debian stable with a vanilla 4.5 kernel on my Cubieboard at the moment; the official Debian kernel works too but doesn't support audio out. Unfortunately, it's been somewhat slow going.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  Anecdote : allwinner (or mediatek, cant remember now) developers that showed up at Linaro (last or 2 years ago) all sported iphones - this is all you need to know about support level of chinese SoC vendors.
wyldfire 11y ago
> large developer community is super important ... solid, reliable kernel with open source drivers is far from easy. I agree -- I think a corollary is that a larger installed base of users will yield overall better quality. If you're using a very small subset of the accessory features, you might find that this is a good value. I've had good luck with ODROID XU3 but I only use it for ssh-ing and building/testing code. The RPi is often worth the additional money for the quality and community benefits.
bratsche 11y ago
> my experience with ODroid and CHIP has shown me that having a large developer community is super important Did you have a bad experience with these? I was thinking of buying either an ODroid or Raspberry Pi 3, now I'm curious to hear what your experiences are.
- geerlingguy 11y ago
  It can be a good or bad experience, depending on what exactly you want to do. specs-wise, there are many options that beat the Pi. But getting certain things done will be harder (or impossible) on non-Pis, unless you're an experienced kernel hacker (and even then)... See my review of the ODROID-C2 / compared to Pi 3 for more thoughts[1] [1] http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/review-odroid-c2-compared-raspberry-pi-3-and-orange-pi-plus http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/review-odroid-c2-compa...
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  I have an ODROID X2 and it was beyond faff - needed its own special PSU (not MicroUSB), wouldn't boot with any USB drives plugged in (power issues), would occasionally just not boot at all, corrupted the SD card a few times, etc. Was a lovely powerful platform -when it worked-. The Pis are woeful when you compare them for raw power but they're orders of magnitude less dicking about and that's important.
blacksmith_tb 11y ago
Agreed. You can save money, or time buying some of the other ARM-based dev boards, and I would prefer to save time, in most cases. If none of the Pi-s suit your needs, Beagleboards are a good alternative that are well-supported and much-used.
jboynyc 11y ago
I have a Hackberry A10 board. The company behind it, Miniand, just disappeared from the web at one point, along with their website and the discussion forum it had hosted. So yes, user and developer community and sustainable backing is very important.

by aftbit 11y ago

bravo22 11y ago

The drivers and kernel support is provided by the chip vendor.

bronson 11y ago
Thats way oversimplified. These chip vendors have all supplied source dumps for their drivers. The reason the RPi works so well is all the work they're doing integrating their distributions (Raspbian is particularly good) and upstreaming stuff into the kernel.
- bravo22 11y ago
  I'm not disagreeing about the work that RPi is doing. I was addressing this part: "getting a solid, reliable kernel with open source drivers is far from easy." If the chip vendor doesn't provide the drivers then the integrator can't either.
- makomk 11y ago
  There's actually a fairly productive community-driven effort to upstream support for Allwinner boards: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort I'm running Debian stable with a vanilla 4.5 kernel on my Cubieboard at the moment; the official Debian kernel works too but doesn't support audio out. Unfortunately, it's been somewhat slow going.
rasz_pl 11y ago
Anecdote : allwinner (or mediatek, cant remember now) developers that showed up at Linaro (last or 2 years ago) all sported iphones - this is all you need to know about support level of chinese SoC vendors.

wyldfire 11y ago

> large developer community is super important ... solid, reliable kernel with open source drivers is far from easy. I agree -- I think a corollary is that a larger installed base of users will yield overall better quality. If you're using a very small subset of the accessory features, you might find that this is a good value. I've had good luck with ODROID XU3 but I only use it for ssh-ing and building/testing code. The RPi is often worth the additional money for the quality and community benefits.

bratsche 11y ago

> my experience with ODroid and CHIP has shown me that having a large developer community is super important Did you have a bad experience with these? I was thinking of buying either an ODroid or Raspberry Pi 3, now I'm curious to hear what your experiences are.

geerlingguy 11y ago
It can be a good or bad experience, depending on what exactly you want to do. specs-wise, there are many options that beat the Pi. But getting certain things done will be harder (or impossible) on non-Pis, unless you're an experienced kernel hacker (and even then)... See my review of the ODROID-C2 / compared to Pi 3 for more thoughts[1] [1] http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/review-odroid-c2-compared-raspberry-pi-3-and-orange-pi-plus http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/review-odroid-c2-compa...
zimpenfish 11y ago
I have an ODROID X2 and it was beyond faff - needed its own special PSU (not MicroUSB), wouldn't boot with any USB drives plugged in (power issues), would occasionally just not boot at all, corrupted the SD card a few times, etc. Was a lovely powerful platform -when it worked-. The Pis are woeful when you compare them for raw power but they're orders of magnitude less dicking about and that's important.

blacksmith_tb 11y ago

Agreed. You can save money, or time buying some of the other ARM-based dev boards, and I would prefer to save time, in most cases. If none of the Pi-s suit your needs, Beagleboards are a good alternative that are well-supported and much-used.

jboynyc 11y ago

I have a Hackberry A10 board. The company behind it, Miniand, just disappeared from the web at one point, along with their website and the discussion forum it had hosted. So yes, user and developer community and sustainable backing is very important.