6 ms·

I think the main issues with all of these rasbi alternatives is the software. As ... quirky ... as the rasbi is, the software support and optimisation is excell

by dtx1 9y ago

I think the main issues with all of these rasbi alternatives is the software. As ... quirky ... as the rasbi is, the software support and optimisation is excellent. There are several speed comparisons on youtube where the rasbi beats a lot of the competition through sheer software optimisation. Honestly, without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is really useful.

voltagex_ 9y ago
Software can be fixed by a large enough number of developers and users. Where the Raspberry Pi wins is community. I've got so many other boards but none of them work quite as well as the Pi.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  Mainline kernel support is a big big issue, and it can't always be fixed by the community. There are a number of well supported Allwinner boards out there at very competitive prices though, we use them in production due to their price, lack of mSD corruption issues, and bandwidth (all the USB/Ethernet ports are directly wired on the OrangePi PC+, no bottlenecking like on the Raspi).
- userbinator 9y ago
  Where the Raspberry Pi wins is community. From what I've observed, the community feels almost like a walled garden in terms of mentality: if you're doing what everyone else is doing, it's great. If you try to go beyond that, don't be surprised if you encounter hostility or discouragement. By "go beyond that", I mean simple things like trying to find the electrical specifications of the GPIO pins. The comments here are worth reading, for example: http://tansi.info/rp/interfacing5v.html http://tansi.info/rp/interfacing5v.html
StudentStuff 9y ago
Allwinner based boards have mainline kernel support for most features, they're one of a handful of vendors that has mainline support (primarily due to community efforts). I personally like the OrangePi boards due to price & reliability, easy to set and forget without worrying about mSD corruption. http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page is pretty useful for a list of boards and info.
- dtx1 9y ago
  nice, thank you
- stefan_ 9y ago
  Not for any of the GPUs. If all you want is a terminal, you can pretty much buy anything..
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    You can run Gnome just fine, hardware accelerated video decoding/encoding works, HDMI with a few features is mainline, the only thing left is the Mali GPU, which is a fairly simple GPU as far as that kind of hardware goes, as compared to AMD or Nvidia GPUs. On that note, there has been a fair bit of activity on Lima as of late, which is a big change from a few years ago: https://github.com/yuq/linux-lima/tree/lima-4.16-rc5/drivers/gpu/drm/lima https://github.com/yuq/linux-lima/tree/lima-4.16-rc5/drivers...
    - TheCycoONE 9y ago
      Isn't Lima for 200 and 400 series. Tinkerboard needs has a 700 which already has kernel support but will need Panfrost for open source userspace.
      - StudentStuff 9y ago
        Lima is for 200 and 400 series, which were what we were discussing earlier in this thread.
      - quanto 9y ago
        how mature is Panfrost? I have a board with Mali T720 (Allwinner H6) and I cannot get any GPU support currently.
        petecox 9y ago
        Does libhybris work with Allwinner SBCs? i.e. using ARM's proprietary driver for Mali from Android. (FOSS drivers might be in development but pragmatically I'd choose something that works)
zeth___ 9y ago
There's the olimex fully open source computers that have everything documented and don't need binary blobs to run. https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardwa...
Baeocystin 9y ago
All I really want is a pi with networking that isn't forced through a USB 2.0 channel. I'm genuinely surprised that this is still an issue, even with their most recent hardware.
comboy 9y ago
Long story short most other boards are not really cheaper if take into assumption that your time is not free. Unless you enjoy hours of wtfs googling and trying to figure out why does this thing does not do what you want it to, then you are spending a few hours to save a few bucks. You can judge how rational that is based on your hourly rate. Just because RPi is popular it's way more likely that somebody has already solved given problem for you. So the only argument would be that other boards are more powerful. Does that really matter in 99% of use cases though?
Azrathud 9y ago
The Rockchip RK3288 SoC used in this particular board is used in some chromebooks and uses ARMv7 on a 32-bit processor which I think may indicate decent kernel support
jsilence 9y ago
The Armbian community provides a distribution that is not only optimized for almost each and every ARM based SBC board out there, but they provide a build environment that allows you to individually tweak and tinker your own image. http://armbian.com/ http://armbian.com/
pizza234 9y ago
What type of optimization you specifically refer to, and which benchmarks? Changes to the ARM CPUs across producers are minor, and the packages are also practically the same (the distributions are few). > without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is really useful. it's not clear if you refer to SBCs in general, or Pi alternatives. nonetheless, essentially all of them have Linux support (at least, Armbian support); of course, having upstream support would make them more usable, but this is different from "useful".
AshleysBrain 9y ago
I have to say, having tried both the RPi and Tinker Board, the Tinker Board's GPU driver is far better. Yes, it's proprietary, but unfortunately the RPi driver is simply not reliable enough to run something like WebGL in Chromium. It's slow and glitchy. The Tinker Board runs WebGL like a dream by comparison.
snarfy 9y ago
This is my take away also. I have all the rpi models, a few beaglebones, banana pi, and odroid. If there is something specific you are trying to do, you'll want an SBC that is geared towards that purpose (sata, adc, etc). If you just want an SBC as a general computer, rpi is your best bet.

by dtx1 9y ago

voltagex_ 9y ago

Software can be fixed by a large enough number of developers and users. Where the Raspberry Pi wins is community. I've got so many other boards but none of them work quite as well as the Pi.

StudentStuff 9y ago
Mainline kernel support is a big big issue, and it can't always be fixed by the community. There are a number of well supported Allwinner boards out there at very competitive prices though, we use them in production due to their price, lack of mSD corruption issues, and bandwidth (all the USB/Ethernet ports are directly wired on the OrangePi PC+, no bottlenecking like on the Raspi).
userbinator 9y ago
Where the Raspberry Pi wins is community. From what I've observed, the community feels almost like a walled garden in terms of mentality: if you're doing what everyone else is doing, it's great. If you try to go beyond that, don't be surprised if you encounter hostility or discouragement. By "go beyond that", I mean simple things like trying to find the electrical specifications of the GPIO pins. The comments here are worth reading, for example: http://tansi.info/rp/interfacing5v.html http://tansi.info/rp/interfacing5v.html

StudentStuff 9y ago

Allwinner based boards have mainline kernel support for most features, they're one of a handful of vendors that has mainline support (primarily due to community efforts). I personally like the OrangePi boards due to price & reliability, easy to set and forget without worrying about mSD corruption. http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page is pretty useful for a list of boards and info.

dtx1 9y ago
nice, thank you
stefan_ 9y ago
Not for any of the GPUs. If all you want is a terminal, you can pretty much buy anything..
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  You can run Gnome just fine, hardware accelerated video decoding/encoding works, HDMI with a few features is mainline, the only thing left is the Mali GPU, which is a fairly simple GPU as far as that kind of hardware goes, as compared to AMD or Nvidia GPUs. On that note, there has been a fair bit of activity on Lima as of late, which is a big change from a few years ago: https://github.com/yuq/linux-lima/tree/lima-4.16-rc5/drivers/gpu/drm/lima https://github.com/yuq/linux-lima/tree/lima-4.16-rc5/drivers...
  - TheCycoONE 9y ago
    Isn't Lima for 200 and 400 series. Tinkerboard needs has a 700 which already has kernel support but will need Panfrost for open source userspace.
    - StudentStuff 9y ago
      Lima is for 200 and 400 series, which were what we were discussing earlier in this thread.
    - quanto 9y ago
      how mature is Panfrost? I have a board with Mali T720 (Allwinner H6) and I cannot get any GPU support currently.
      - petecox 9y ago
        Does libhybris work with Allwinner SBCs? i.e. using ARM's proprietary driver for Mali from Android. (FOSS drivers might be in development but pragmatically I'd choose something that works)

zeth___ 9y ago

There's the olimex fully open source computers that have everything documented and don't need binary blobs to run. https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardwa...

Baeocystin 9y ago

All I really want is a pi with networking that isn't forced through a USB 2.0 channel. I'm genuinely surprised that this is still an issue, even with their most recent hardware.

comboy 9y ago

Long story short most other boards are not really cheaper if take into assumption that your time is not free. Unless you enjoy hours of wtfs googling and trying to figure out why does this thing does not do what you want it to, then you are spending a few hours to save a few bucks. You can judge how rational that is based on your hourly rate. Just because RPi is popular it's way more likely that somebody has already solved given problem for you. So the only argument would be that other boards are more powerful. Does that really matter in 99% of use cases though?

Azrathud 9y ago

The Rockchip RK3288 SoC used in this particular board is used in some chromebooks and uses ARMv7 on a 32-bit processor which I think may indicate decent kernel support

jsilence 9y ago

The Armbian community provides a distribution that is not only optimized for almost each and every ARM based SBC board out there, but they provide a build environment that allows you to individually tweak and tinker your own image. http://armbian.com/ http://armbian.com/

pizza234 9y ago

What type of optimization you specifically refer to, and which benchmarks? Changes to the ARM CPUs across producers are minor, and the packages are also practically the same (the distributions are few). > without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is really useful. it's not clear if you refer to SBCs in general, or Pi alternatives. nonetheless, essentially all of them have Linux support (at least, Armbian support); of course, having upstream support would make them more usable, but this is different from "useful".

AshleysBrain 9y ago

I have to say, having tried both the RPi and Tinker Board, the Tinker Board's GPU driver is far better. Yes, it's proprietary, but unfortunately the RPi driver is simply not reliable enough to run something like WebGL in Chromium. It's slow and glitchy. The Tinker Board runs WebGL like a dream by comparison.

snarfy 9y ago

This is my take away also. I have all the rpi models, a few beaglebones, banana pi, and odroid. If there is something specific you are trying to do, you'll want an SBC that is geared towards that purpose (sata, adc, etc). If you just want an SBC as a general computer, rpi is your best bet.