16 ms·

They have dismal linux support. Old kernels; and no releases. Poor video drivers. http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=238060 http://forum.kodi.tv/showthrea

They have dismal linux support. Old kernels; and no releases. Poor video drivers. http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=238060 http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=238060 the current lubuntu image does not even exist. http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/PiPlus2e/2016-06-06/piplus2e_283fd175b5088ab3a61f92aec50.html http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/PiPlus2e/2016-06-0...

webaholic 10y ago
Is it only the raspberry pi which sees effort to have upstream kernel support? Or are there any other similar boards doing better than the pi?
- Uberphallus 10y ago
  If you don't care about graphics, i.MX6 boards are pretty well supported.
  - carussell 10y ago
    There's a lot of uncertainty about how long that will last since NXP/Freescale is now Qualcomm's manufacturing arm.
- brudgers 10y ago
  My take is that nobody is doing better than Pi in terms of the community Pi targets, e.g. students, amateurs and greenhorns alongside professionals. There's a critical mass with Pi that attracts industry players to be on the platform with what counts for decent support in the embedded world, e.g. Microsoft and Canonical. For me, that's worth $15 per board.
  - geezerjay 10y ago
    > For me, that's worth $15 per board. Unfortunately, the Raspberry Pi 3 sells for over 50€ per board. The Raspberry Pi zero, in spite of being marketed as a 10€ computer, in practice can't be purchased at all.
    - brudgers 10y ago
      In the US, the Pi 3 runs about $35 on Amazon. VAT may effect pricing in other places.
    - Tepix 10y ago
      The Raspberry Pi Zero has been in stock for the last couple of weeks. Look at http://www.whereismypizero.com/ http://www.whereismypizero.com/
      - blacksmith_tb 10y ago
        The Zero is a very different devboard, though - you will need to invest in assorted adapters and hubs if you want to connect it to just about anything other than power... it is useful in small spaces, but for anything else spending a little more to get something like the CHIP is well worth it, and for use a small PC, going to the RPi 3 is probably wiser.
        Florin_Andrei 10y ago
        Yup, that's how it's supposed to be. Want to make a micro-computer? Get the RPi 3. Want to make a robot or drone? Get the RPi Zero.
      - noonespecial 10y ago
        "THIS PRODUCT IS LIMITED TO 1 UNIT PER CUSTOMER" Always. Everywhere. Wanted 25 units to teach a robot class to some local kids at the Hackerspace. Had to buy 3's instead. Even if I'd placed 25 separate orders, the cost of individual shipping on each vs the cost savings of the combined shipping on the 3's put the price within spitting distance. Pi zero is an ad. A loss leader. A way to have an answer, any answer, to the flood of $7 Allwinner wonder-boards on AliExpress.
    - whiskers 10y ago
      The Raspberry Pi 3 is available from many vendors for $35 + sales taxes. You can pick it up on our site for £32 including VAT (that's EUR30 before taxes or EUR36 including taxes): https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-3 https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-3
- Zekio 10y ago
  the Pine64's kernel support is basically being done entirely by a community member
  - webaholic 10y ago
    Is the graphics driver also being worked upon? I think Pine64 uses mali which is not well supported by upstream.
- mmebane 10y ago
  ODroid C2 and XU4 have been making progress, though last I saw they weren't really stable yet. I think HardKernel, the manufacturer, is providing some level of support for the mainlining effort. Next Thing says the C.H.I.P. (or at least the C.H.I.P. Pro) runs mainline Linux, but that's not really comparable to the current Raspberry Pi.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    Does it have support for the graphics though? That's the first big stumbling block these alternate SBCs run into. Without support for graphics acceleration you won't be able to play video properly or run fancy desktop apps. It's a huge drawback these days.
    - odesian 10y ago
      I believe C.H.I.P. does now.
      - jandrese 10y ago
        In a pre-alpha driver as I recall.
- thom_nic 10y ago
  Texas Instruments am335x also is a popular chip with upstream support (Beaglebone Black & Olinuxino am3352-som and quite a few other vendors have modules based on it.) If you want a canonical list, look in the kernel arch/arm/boot/dts source: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/arch/arm/boot/dts?id=refs/tags/v4.4.30 https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st... Actually it looks like there are quite a few Allwinner devices listed (look for sun__...)
aeruder 10y ago
I don't understand why they go through so much effort to churn out these boards that are made useless by lack of upstreaming. Oh, wait, because idiots like me keep buying them and finding this out too late. Thanks for saving me $20 this time.
- ainiriand 10y ago
  HN just saved me money, another idiot here.
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  Could you explain "lack of upstreaming?" I get, via context, and know what upstream is, I context of OSs, I've never read a "lack of."
  - planteen 10y ago
    The board requires custom modifications to the kernel. These modifications never get cleaned up and submitted as patches to the kernel. So you are stuck with a kernel frozen in time.
    - alistproducer2 10y ago
      got it. thanks!
    - jff 10y ago
      And this is the situation with damn near every ARM board you can buy! It's depressing. I finally had to give up on my Efika MX smartbook because they never got past a 2.6 kernel, which IIRC eventually meant I couldn't upgrade libc past a certain point, which meant I couldn't upgrade anything else.
      - planteen 10y ago
        Yes it is and it is terrible. The lack of upstreaming also makes things like applying the PREEMPT_RT patches much more difficult than it should be. You might be stuck at a version of the kernel where PREEMPT_RT was never released, not to mention you will be missing the PREEMPT_RT changes in the custom code.
phineastcat 10y ago
Crappy upstream kernel support on alternative boards is probably why the Raspberry Pi is king of this kingdom. I chose to forgo all the cheaper options from China for a recent project, and instead go with (considerably) more expensive Raspberry Pi 3's, because I didn't want to risk the shite software support. I know I'm going to get kernel and firmware upgrades on those boards for a good long while, and that's one less thing I have to worry about.
- jandrese 10y ago
  I bought one board with an Allwinner chip on it. Great specs, but utterly useless. There is no support for the graphics driver, tons of bugs in the chipset, and virtually no help online unless maybe if you speak Mandarin. I'm not making that mistake again.
- carussell 10y ago
  You could have gone with the one of the BeagleBone varieties. BeagleBoard seems to be the only real contender that the Pi line faces, from a community standpoint. Each unit is a few bucks more, but that'll go towards strengthening an ecosystem around boards that are even more open than what you get with the Pi. It's hard to get the benefits of volume when everyone keeps going for the cheaper-right-now board in order to maximize their own short-term benefits. Contributing to the network effect by buying a Pi because it's cheaper and more popular is not exactly the thing that will lead to Broadcom getting rebuffed and having to answer for all their problems.
Ecio78 10y ago
Have you checked armbian? for example: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/724-quick-review-of-orange-pi-one/ http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/724-quick-review-of...
50CNT 10y ago
It could have been so great, but wasn't meant to be. I got exited for a moment, and then my hopes were dashed. 49RMB for a zero is like cereal money. It's the price of 490g Kellogs Fruit Muesli on Taobao. There had to be a catch. But at least I didn't spend 128RMB on a SBC that doesn't work, then 8 hours on trying to make it run. Edit: Having looked checked for authorized resellers of Raspberry Pis in China, it just got more confusing. What happened to EGOMAN, which the Raspberry Pi foundation partnered up in 2013 to produce Raspberry Pis? They only have the first model red pi, and they have stopped advertising them. They make waterproof heartrate monitors now. Seed studio is one of 2 authorized resellers of element14 in China. They're based in Shenzhen. They sell in JPY, but not RMB. How does that work? The only authorized reseller that actually sells on taobao is Hangzhou Junroc Electronic Technology co ltd. They sell Model 3 B's for 195RMB + 10RMB shipping. Why do Element14 and RS China charge 260RMB? How do they sell these for cheaper than their distributor? Overhead? Aren't they made here? How does the ODROID2 work? It's 40USD, or 52,800 won in Korea. 52,800 won is 46USD. Granted, there's 16$ shipping for international orders. Nothing makes sense to me anymore.
kylegordon 10y ago
Do the above arguments apply to the board range, or just their distro? Whilst not yet supporting Orange Pi PC2, what about Armbian? http://www.armbian.com http://www.armbian.com
hrjet 10y ago
Compared to RaPi it looks bad, but if you compare OrangePi to say ESP8266, it looks like a good deal (for certain projects): * OS and scheduler v/s low-level partially documented SDK * 2GB RAM v/s 100s of KB in ESP8266 * 16GB Flash v/s couple of MB Flash on ESP8266 * All other goodies: 4USB ports, Audio/Video, HDMI, Camera, SATA, IR * 15$ v/s 5$
rbanffy 10y ago
> They have dismal linux support. Old kernels; and no releases. Poor video drivers. Unpatched ancient kernels are the future of IoT botnets.
DrPhish 10y ago
All this talk has made me glad to pay the premium to stay with x86/amd64 supported boards. I've been buying PC-Engines for years, and run whatever I please on them (but mostly OpenBSD). They are 3x the price of the RPi (more if you want WiFi, bluetooth etc), but for certain applications, are quite a bit more powerful and flexible. This is especially true if you want to remain up to date for years. I have never been left without an upgrade path. https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://pcengines.ch/newshop.php?c=4 https://pcengines.ch/newshop.php?c=4
- chx 10y ago
  There's the UP board now, Cherry Trail Atom in a RasPi format, and the UP Squared (Apollo Lake, Altera Max 10 (2K) right,physically about double the RasPi) in Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/802007522/up-squared-the-first-maker-board-with-intel-apollo https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/802007522/up-squared-th... . If not for boards, I just bought this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019Z8T9J0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019Z8T9J0 complete, passive PC for less $150, it has four Ethernet ports and a HDMI and a Broadwell (not Atom!) CPU. It's rather incredible how cheap PCs gotten.
cheiVia0 10y ago
While AllWinner provides dismal driver support, there's quite a big third party effort to get proper mainline support for their chips (Free Electrons being the biggest contributor, I think). A good reference of what you can expected can be found here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort Of course it takes time to clean it up into a mainlineable state. Some years ago I got a "Cubietruck" (A20) and it was somewhat disappointing - the gigabit ethernet (which was the selling point for me) only got to only about double of 100Mbit, using up one of the two cores. It would also have network connections hang once in a while. This spring I dusted it off and managed to install the latest mainline kernel, and with the exception of onboard NAND (not really necessary since it has SATA), everything I care about works perfectly. I get proper gigabit without CPU stress, and everything is rock stable. tl;dr: it's worth looking at older devices of they fit your need
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ssvb 10y ago
The Kodi people are not to be trusted on this matter, it's just an ugly political game. See http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=1497&pid=13513#pid13513 http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=1497&pid=13513#pi... And also https://github.com/linux-sunxi/libvdpau-sunxi https://github.com/linux-sunxi/libvdpau-sunxi if you are actually interested in a working hardware accelerated video decoding. To sum it up, hardware video decoding acceleration works fine with fully open source drivers on Allwinner hardware, but the Kodi application just does not want to use them. Fortunately there are also other open source media players, which can do the job. As for the lubuntu image, anyone can take any ARM Linux distribution rootfs and combine it with the Linux kernel, built for Allwinner hardware (both mainline and legacy kernels exist). You can find a lot of tutorials at https://linux-sunxi.org https://linux-sunxi.org But if you are not a very experienced user, I strongly suggest you to try something like the armbian distribution first.

webaholic 10y ago

Is it only the raspberry pi which sees effort to have upstream kernel support? Or are there any other similar boards doing better than the pi?

Uberphallus 10y ago
If you don't care about graphics, i.MX6 boards are pretty well supported.
- carussell 10y ago
  There's a lot of uncertainty about how long that will last since NXP/Freescale is now Qualcomm's manufacturing arm.
brudgers 10y ago
My take is that nobody is doing better than Pi in terms of the community Pi targets, e.g. students, amateurs and greenhorns alongside professionals. There's a critical mass with Pi that attracts industry players to be on the platform with what counts for decent support in the embedded world, e.g. Microsoft and Canonical. For me, that's worth $15 per board.
- geezerjay 10y ago
  > For me, that's worth $15 per board. Unfortunately, the Raspberry Pi 3 sells for over 50€ per board. The Raspberry Pi zero, in spite of being marketed as a 10€ computer, in practice can't be purchased at all.
  - brudgers 10y ago
    In the US, the Pi 3 runs about $35 on Amazon. VAT may effect pricing in other places.
  - Tepix 10y ago
    The Raspberry Pi Zero has been in stock for the last couple of weeks. Look at http://www.whereismypizero.com/ http://www.whereismypizero.com/
    - blacksmith_tb 10y ago
      The Zero is a very different devboard, though - you will need to invest in assorted adapters and hubs if you want to connect it to just about anything other than power... it is useful in small spaces, but for anything else spending a little more to get something like the CHIP is well worth it, and for use a small PC, going to the RPi 3 is probably wiser.
      - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
        Yup, that's how it's supposed to be. Want to make a micro-computer? Get the RPi 3. Want to make a robot or drone? Get the RPi Zero.
    - noonespecial 10y ago
      "THIS PRODUCT IS LIMITED TO 1 UNIT PER CUSTOMER" Always. Everywhere. Wanted 25 units to teach a robot class to some local kids at the Hackerspace. Had to buy 3's instead. Even if I'd placed 25 separate orders, the cost of individual shipping on each vs the cost savings of the combined shipping on the 3's put the price within spitting distance. Pi zero is an ad. A loss leader. A way to have an answer, any answer, to the flood of $7 Allwinner wonder-boards on AliExpress.
  - whiskers 10y ago
    The Raspberry Pi 3 is available from many vendors for $35 + sales taxes. You can pick it up on our site for £32 including VAT (that's EUR30 before taxes or EUR36 including taxes): https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-3 https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-3
Zekio 10y ago
the Pine64's kernel support is basically being done entirely by a community member
- webaholic 10y ago
  Is the graphics driver also being worked upon? I think Pine64 uses mali which is not well supported by upstream.
mmebane 10y ago
ODroid C2 and XU4 have been making progress, though last I saw they weren't really stable yet. I think HardKernel, the manufacturer, is providing some level of support for the mainlining effort. Next Thing says the C.H.I.P. (or at least the C.H.I.P. Pro) runs mainline Linux, but that's not really comparable to the current Raspberry Pi.
- jandrese 10y ago
  Does it have support for the graphics though? That's the first big stumbling block these alternate SBCs run into. Without support for graphics acceleration you won't be able to play video properly or run fancy desktop apps. It's a huge drawback these days.
  - odesian 10y ago
    I believe C.H.I.P. does now.
    - jandrese 10y ago
      In a pre-alpha driver as I recall.
thom_nic 10y ago
Texas Instruments am335x also is a popular chip with upstream support (Beaglebone Black & Olinuxino am3352-som and quite a few other vendors have modules based on it.) If you want a canonical list, look in the kernel arch/arm/boot/dts source: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/arch/arm/boot/dts?id=refs/tags/v4.4.30 https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st... Actually it looks like there are quite a few Allwinner devices listed (look for sun__...)

aeruder 10y ago

I don't understand why they go through so much effort to churn out these boards that are made useless by lack of upstreaming. Oh, wait, because idiots like me keep buying them and finding this out too late. Thanks for saving me $20 this time.

ainiriand 10y ago
HN just saved me money, another idiot here.
alistproducer2 10y ago
Could you explain "lack of upstreaming?" I get, via context, and know what upstream is, I context of OSs, I've never read a "lack of."
- planteen 10y ago
  The board requires custom modifications to the kernel. These modifications never get cleaned up and submitted as patches to the kernel. So you are stuck with a kernel frozen in time.
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    got it. thanks!
  - jff 10y ago
    And this is the situation with damn near every ARM board you can buy! It's depressing. I finally had to give up on my Efika MX smartbook because they never got past a 2.6 kernel, which IIRC eventually meant I couldn't upgrade libc past a certain point, which meant I couldn't upgrade anything else.
    - planteen 10y ago
      Yes it is and it is terrible. The lack of upstreaming also makes things like applying the PREEMPT_RT patches much more difficult than it should be. You might be stuck at a version of the kernel where PREEMPT_RT was never released, not to mention you will be missing the PREEMPT_RT changes in the custom code.

phineastcat 10y ago

Crappy upstream kernel support on alternative boards is probably why the Raspberry Pi is king of this kingdom. I chose to forgo all the cheaper options from China for a recent project, and instead go with (considerably) more expensive Raspberry Pi 3's, because I didn't want to risk the shite software support. I know I'm going to get kernel and firmware upgrades on those boards for a good long while, and that's one less thing I have to worry about.

jandrese 10y ago
I bought one board with an Allwinner chip on it. Great specs, but utterly useless. There is no support for the graphics driver, tons of bugs in the chipset, and virtually no help online unless maybe if you speak Mandarin. I'm not making that mistake again.
carussell 10y ago
You could have gone with the one of the BeagleBone varieties. BeagleBoard seems to be the only real contender that the Pi line faces, from a community standpoint. Each unit is a few bucks more, but that'll go towards strengthening an ecosystem around boards that are even more open than what you get with the Pi. It's hard to get the benefits of volume when everyone keeps going for the cheaper-right-now board in order to maximize their own short-term benefits. Contributing to the network effect by buying a Pi because it's cheaper and more popular is not exactly the thing that will lead to Broadcom getting rebuffed and having to answer for all their problems.

Ecio78 10y ago

Have you checked armbian? for example: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/724-quick-review-of-orange-pi-one/ http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/724-quick-review-of...

50CNT 10y ago

It could have been so great, but wasn't meant to be. I got exited for a moment, and then my hopes were dashed. 49RMB for a zero is like cereal money. It's the price of 490g Kellogs Fruit Muesli on Taobao. There had to be a catch. But at least I didn't spend 128RMB on a SBC that doesn't work, then 8 hours on trying to make it run. Edit: Having looked checked for authorized resellers of Raspberry Pis in China, it just got more confusing. What happened to EGOMAN, which the Raspberry Pi foundation partnered up in 2013 to produce Raspberry Pis? They only have the first model red pi, and they have stopped advertising them. They make waterproof heartrate monitors now. Seed studio is one of 2 authorized resellers of element14 in China. They're based in Shenzhen. They sell in JPY, but not RMB. How does that work? The only authorized reseller that actually sells on taobao is Hangzhou Junroc Electronic Technology co ltd. They sell Model 3 B's for 195RMB + 10RMB shipping. Why do Element14 and RS China charge 260RMB? How do they sell these for cheaper than their distributor? Overhead? Aren't they made here? How does the ODROID2 work? It's 40USD, or 52,800 won in Korea. 52,800 won is 46USD. Granted, there's 16$ shipping for international orders. Nothing makes sense to me anymore.

kylegordon 10y ago

Do the above arguments apply to the board range, or just their distro? Whilst not yet supporting Orange Pi PC2, what about Armbian? http://www.armbian.com http://www.armbian.com

hrjet 10y ago

Compared to RaPi it looks bad, but if you compare OrangePi to say ESP8266, it looks like a good deal (for certain projects): * OS and scheduler v/s low-level partially documented SDK * 2GB RAM v/s 100s of KB in ESP8266 * 16GB Flash v/s couple of MB Flash on ESP8266 * All other goodies: 4USB ports, Audio/Video, HDMI, Camera, SATA, IR * 15$ v/s 5$

rbanffy 10y ago

> They have dismal linux support. Old kernels; and no releases. Poor video drivers. Unpatched ancient kernels are the future of IoT botnets.

DrPhish 10y ago

All this talk has made me glad to pay the premium to stay with x86/amd64 supported boards. I've been buying PC-Engines for years, and run whatever I please on them (but mostly OpenBSD). They are 3x the price of the RPi (more if you want WiFi, bluetooth etc), but for certain applications, are quite a bit more powerful and flexible. This is especially true if you want to remain up to date for years. I have never been left without an upgrade path. https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://pcengines.ch/newshop.php?c=4 https://pcengines.ch/newshop.php?c=4

chx 10y ago
There's the UP board now, Cherry Trail Atom in a RasPi format, and the UP Squared (Apollo Lake, Altera Max 10 (2K) right,physically about double the RasPi) in Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/802007522/up-squared-the-first-maker-board-with-intel-apollo https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/802007522/up-squared-th... . If not for boards, I just bought this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019Z8T9J0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019Z8T9J0 complete, passive PC for less $150, it has four Ethernet ports and a HDMI and a Broadwell (not Atom!) CPU. It's rather incredible how cheap PCs gotten.

cheiVia0 10y ago

While AllWinner provides dismal driver support, there's quite a big third party effort to get proper mainline support for their chips (Free Electrons being the biggest contributor, I think). A good reference of what you can expected can be found here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort Of course it takes time to clean it up into a mainlineable state. Some years ago I got a "Cubietruck" (A20) and it was somewhat disappointing - the gigabit ethernet (which was the selling point for me) only got to only about double of 100Mbit, using up one of the two cores. It would also have network connections hang once in a while. This spring I dusted it off and managed to install the latest mainline kernel, and with the exception of onboard NAND (not really necessary since it has SATA), everything I care about works perfectly. I get proper gigabit without CPU stress, and everything is rock stable. tl;dr: it's worth looking at older devices of they fit your need

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ssvb 10y ago

The Kodi people are not to be trusted on this matter, it's just an ugly political game. See http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=1497&pid=13513#pid13513 http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=1497&pid=13513#pi... And also https://github.com/linux-sunxi/libvdpau-sunxi https://github.com/linux-sunxi/libvdpau-sunxi if you are actually interested in a working hardware accelerated video decoding. To sum it up, hardware video decoding acceleration works fine with fully open source drivers on Allwinner hardware, but the Kodi application just does not want to use them. Fortunately there are also other open source media players, which can do the job. As for the lubuntu image, anyone can take any ARM Linux distribution rootfs and combine it with the Linux kernel, built for Allwinner hardware (both mainline and legacy kernels exist). You can find a lot of tutorials at https://linux-sunxi.org https://linux-sunxi.org But if you are not a very experienced user, I strongly suggest you to try something like the armbian distribution first.