5 ms·

> The reason you don't see them all that often is that none of them have close to the usability of the Pi I think what OP wanted is usable NUC alternative on A

> The reason you don't see them all that often is that none of them have close to the usability of the Pi I think what OP wanted is usable NUC alternative on ARM (popularity is the result of that and is really proportional), so little ARM hardware is tolerably compatible with Linux (be it GPU driver, network driver, bootloader or whatever else cr*p ARM hardware makers keep to themselves), unlike NUCs which is actually really nicely compatible with Linux.

giobox 8y ago
> I think what OP wanted is usable NUC alternative on ARM (popularity is the result of that and is really proportional) There's a little truth to that, but it also overlooks the huge effort the Pi Foundation has made to foster a community, which I think is the one thing the Pi team do that other board manufacturers simply haven't come close to matching. I'd personally argue it's the work of the Pi Foundation that has lead to the boards success more so than the boards themselves, which to be honest are increasingly pretty under powered compared to almost all rivals and have very long intervals between upgrades. It has probably also helped that the Pi Foundation is a charity promoting CS education in schools, rather than a commercial enteriprise.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  > but it also overlooks the huge effort the Pi Foundation has made to foster a community I think I didn't overlook it, Linux already has a huge community, they had to roll their own (community) because they weren't compatible enough, this is better than none, but not as good as it could be.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
  Mainline drivers or bust. Today we no longer absolutely need to make compromises and rely on corporate support for out of tree kernelsm
- imtringued 8y ago
  I don't think so. I feel like the Pi is dragging down the rest of the industry by using broadcom chips based on a GPU that has been obsolete for a long time.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    How can the Pi be dragging down the industry that it created and is still dominating by a hefty margin? People already have plenty of alternatives but somehow their price/performance ratio renders them to obscurity. Perhaps that must mean something.
    - oarsinsync 8y ago
      A small player in an industry doesn't have the volume to drag down the industry, only the dominant player does. The dominant player in this instance is insisting on using chipsets that are effectively obsolete when compared to the competition. As a result, the community that they command continues to work on supporting this obsolete hardware, rather than newer hardware. Network effects exist here just like in many other industries.
djsumdog 8y ago
Exactly this. ARM is not a platform. It's some SoC where each manufacture solders some random pins to random chips. Few manufactures publish device tress and only the dead Windows phones have UEFI+ARM (with their locked bootloaders. Fuck you MS). If ARM manufactures want to get serious about devices for enthusiasts, hobbits and Linux users, they need more UEFI+ARM solutions that can boot plain old Linux or Windows 10 ARM.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  > Fuck you MS To be fair I've yet to see a good ARM manufacturer and they'd all deserve a "fuck you".
  - floatboth 8y ago
    Rockchip, Marvell, AMD (barely an ARM manufacturer, but SoftIron sells them), Cavium (mostly on super-expensive servers though)
    - dcbadacd 8y ago
      Pretty sure Rockchip has violated Linux's GPL. Rest of who you listed I've never seen/used in real life.
      - floatboth 8y ago
        Maybe a very long time ago. Or you're confusing them with Allwinner. Rockchip has the source of all the things on their GitHub, and a ton of commits in mainline Linux.
      - fake-name 8y ago
        You've never heard of amd?
      - userbinator 8y ago
        I think they did, but I'll take GPL violations and (possibly leaked?) publicly available documentation over GPL-compliant source code dumps (which are next-to-useless for actually understanding the hardware anyway.)
lhl 8y ago
To be fair, the OP wanted a <28W TDP NUC, and honestly, I'm also a bit mystified by the question as the market is lousy with them. If you do a search for Apollo Lake NUC or SBC (6-12W) you'll get dozens of results. The followup Gemini Lake boards are also starting to appear and it looks like there's even a 4.5W Core-M Kaby Lake SBC coming out (LattePanda Alpha - ridiculously overpriced for general use IMO considering you can get 15W 8250U NUCs for less). Gigabyte, Zotac, Asus and tons of Chinese OEMs all sell 15W U processor NUCs (as well as Apollo Lake options).

giobox 8y ago

> I think what OP wanted is usable NUC alternative on ARM (popularity is the result of that and is really proportional) There's a little truth to that, but it also overlooks the huge effort the Pi Foundation has made to foster a community, which I think is the one thing the Pi team do that other board manufacturers simply haven't come close to matching. I'd personally argue it's the work of the Pi Foundation that has lead to the boards success more so than the boards themselves, which to be honest are increasingly pretty under powered compared to almost all rivals and have very long intervals between upgrades. It has probably also helped that the Pi Foundation is a charity promoting CS education in schools, rather than a commercial enteriprise.

dcbadacd 8y ago
> but it also overlooks the huge effort the Pi Foundation has made to foster a community I think I didn't overlook it, Linux already has a huge community, they had to roll their own (community) because they weren't compatible enough, this is better than none, but not as good as it could be.
HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
Mainline drivers or bust. Today we no longer absolutely need to make compromises and rely on corporate support for out of tree kernelsm
imtringued 8y ago
I don't think so. I feel like the Pi is dragging down the rest of the industry by using broadcom chips based on a GPU that has been obsolete for a long time.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  How can the Pi be dragging down the industry that it created and is still dominating by a hefty margin? People already have plenty of alternatives but somehow their price/performance ratio renders them to obscurity. Perhaps that must mean something.
  - oarsinsync 8y ago
    A small player in an industry doesn't have the volume to drag down the industry, only the dominant player does. The dominant player in this instance is insisting on using chipsets that are effectively obsolete when compared to the competition. As a result, the community that they command continues to work on supporting this obsolete hardware, rather than newer hardware. Network effects exist here just like in many other industries.

djsumdog 8y ago

Exactly this. ARM is not a platform. It's some SoC where each manufacture solders some random pins to random chips. Few manufactures publish device tress and only the dead Windows phones have UEFI+ARM (with their locked bootloaders. Fuck you MS). If ARM manufactures want to get serious about devices for enthusiasts, hobbits and Linux users, they need more UEFI+ARM solutions that can boot plain old Linux or Windows 10 ARM.

dcbadacd 8y ago
> Fuck you MS To be fair I've yet to see a good ARM manufacturer and they'd all deserve a "fuck you".
- floatboth 8y ago
  Rockchip, Marvell, AMD (barely an ARM manufacturer, but SoftIron sells them), Cavium (mostly on super-expensive servers though)
  - dcbadacd 8y ago
    Pretty sure Rockchip has violated Linux's GPL. Rest of who you listed I've never seen/used in real life.
    - floatboth 8y ago
      Maybe a very long time ago. Or you're confusing them with Allwinner. Rockchip has the source of all the things on their GitHub, and a ton of commits in mainline Linux.
    - fake-name 8y ago
      You've never heard of amd?
    - userbinator 8y ago
      I think they did, but I'll take GPL violations and (possibly leaked?) publicly available documentation over GPL-compliant source code dumps (which are next-to-useless for actually understanding the hardware anyway.)

lhl 8y ago

To be fair, the OP wanted a <28W TDP NUC, and honestly, I'm also a bit mystified by the question as the market is lousy with them. If you do a search for Apollo Lake NUC or SBC (6-12W) you'll get dozens of results. The followup Gemini Lake boards are also starting to appear and it looks like there's even a 4.5W Core-M Kaby Lake SBC coming out (LattePanda Alpha - ridiculously overpriced for general use IMO considering you can get 15W 8250U NUCs for less). Gigabyte, Zotac, Asus and tons of Chinese OEMs all sell 15W U processor NUCs (as well as Apollo Lake options).