5 ms·

what holds me back from Odroid is their scarce support to updates. I remember the Odroid X series left to ancient Ubuntu and kernel due lack of upstream support

what holds me back from Odroid is their scarce support to updates. I remember the Odroid X series left to ancient Ubuntu and kernel due lack of upstream support. Better buy a RPi4 with a NAS Hat

3np 6y ago
There's always Armbian, or installing vanilla Ubuntu with appropriate modules.
- mister_hn 6y ago
  then you might incur in some strange issue with drivers or graphics.
  - 3np 6y ago
    Welcome to the world of computers, I guess? Apart from iOS on supported hardware, I'm yet to experience a platform that's been entirely free of such issues.
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      There's a lot of gray area between "entirely free of such issues" and "completely unusable." The AMLogic chips on mainline linux are much closer to the latter than the former.
      - 3np 6y ago
        As long as you're on a board with good community usage in Armbian (Odroid is one of the most popular brands and some have official support), I don't think it's much worse than vanilla Ubuntu on any common laptop or desktop. Pick up a sketchy Android TV box from Ali that's not in the top 3 and yes, you're in for some "fun" times.
        aidenn0 6y ago
        panfrost is buggy as hell on my Odroid-C2. To the point where I have to use the framebuffer driver to run X.
      - entropicdrifter 6y ago
        It's worth noting however that the Odroid C4 (which has the exact same chipset as this NAS) currently has official Armbian support with a 5.8 kernel
bonkabonka 6y ago
I'd second that; ODROID is a platform to avoid. A couple of years ago I bought a C2 and it still hasn't progressed beyond the 3.14 kernel required by the versions of Android Samsung was shipping on phones using that chip[1]. Also, getting the display working correctly with a monitor attached via an HDMI to DVI-D cable was obnoxious (again reflecting the CPU's Android heritage - hardware expects to be told exactly what's attached and doesn't try to detect anything). [1]: https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-c2/software/building_kernel https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-c2/software/building_kernel
- entropicdrifter 6y ago
  Armbian has both Debian and Ubuntu running a 5.8 kernel for the Odroid C2: https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/ https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/
  - bonkabonka 6y ago
    Oh, excellent! Thank you for that pointer. =)
- 3np 6y ago
  I think it's more about aligning expectations. If you expect a flashable vendor-provided OS image with long-term support and vendor repos that get continuous updates, I think you'll be frustrated with anything else than a Raspberry Pi or NVIDIA Jetson. If you're fine with community images and configuring/compiling kernels yourself, vendors like Odroid/RockPi/NanoPi/OrangePi/Pine64 are fanastic. They're hardware manufacturers, not an OS vendor. At least the spec is open enough that anyone has the ability to do things like Armbian without having to do reverse-engineering or extracting data from binary blobs (which is the case with a lot of other vendors). The Odroid C2 was released in 2016 and is now EoL.
  - bonkabonka 6y ago
    Yeah, I got excited about it because of an HN post and jumped in for the "It's just like the Raspberry Pi but more!" For all my disappointment, it has served as a useful lesson on early-adoption and expectation management. =) So I'm not regretful, just cautious.
fulafel 6y ago
Yep, this is the most common gotcha on ARMs, with few exceptions.
foresto 6y ago
I look forward to more ARM boards getting mainline kernel support for exactly this reason. > Better buy a RPi4 with a NAS Hat Do you know of such a HAT that does USB-attached SCSI Protocol correctly and reliably, and passes through SMART reporting without meddling, and doesn't inappropriately spin down the disks under its control? I wouldn't mind bookmarking such a thing if it exists. I considered the RPi for a recent NAS build, but I didn't want the higher CPU load imposed by a USB-to-SATA bridge (as compared to native/PCIe SATA), nor did I want to play chipset roulette looking for a SATA bridge free from the problems I mentioned above. I ended up using a RockPro64 with a Marvell 88SE9235 PCIe SATA card. It works well, and boots mainline Debian with no vendor blobs. Assuming the electronics don't wear out, I expect it will continue to run fully-updated linux for a long time to come.

what holds me back from Odroid is their scarce support to updates. I remember the Odroid X series left to ancient Ubuntu and kernel due lack of upstream support. Better buy a RPi4 with a NAS Hat

3np 6y ago

There's always Armbian, or installing vanilla Ubuntu with appropriate modules.

mister_hn 6y ago
then you might incur in some strange issue with drivers or graphics.
- 3np 6y ago
  Welcome to the world of computers, I guess? Apart from iOS on supported hardware, I'm yet to experience a platform that's been entirely free of such issues.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    There's a lot of gray area between "entirely free of such issues" and "completely unusable." The AMLogic chips on mainline linux are much closer to the latter than the former.
    - 3np 6y ago
      As long as you're on a board with good community usage in Armbian (Odroid is one of the most popular brands and some have official support), I don't think it's much worse than vanilla Ubuntu on any common laptop or desktop. Pick up a sketchy Android TV box from Ali that's not in the top 3 and yes, you're in for some "fun" times.
      - aidenn0 6y ago
        panfrost is buggy as hell on my Odroid-C2. To the point where I have to use the framebuffer driver to run X.
    - entropicdrifter 6y ago
      It's worth noting however that the Odroid C4 (which has the exact same chipset as this NAS) currently has official Armbian support with a 5.8 kernel

bonkabonka 6y ago

I'd second that; ODROID is a platform to avoid. A couple of years ago I bought a C2 and it still hasn't progressed beyond the 3.14 kernel required by the versions of Android Samsung was shipping on phones using that chip[1]. Also, getting the display working correctly with a monitor attached via an HDMI to DVI-D cable was obnoxious (again reflecting the CPU's Android heritage - hardware expects to be told exactly what's attached and doesn't try to detect anything). [1]: https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-c2/software/building_kernel https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-c2/software/building_kernel

entropicdrifter 6y ago
Armbian has both Debian and Ubuntu running a 5.8 kernel for the Odroid C2: https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/ https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/
- bonkabonka 6y ago
  Oh, excellent! Thank you for that pointer. =)
3np 6y ago
I think it's more about aligning expectations. If you expect a flashable vendor-provided OS image with long-term support and vendor repos that get continuous updates, I think you'll be frustrated with anything else than a Raspberry Pi or NVIDIA Jetson. If you're fine with community images and configuring/compiling kernels yourself, vendors like Odroid/RockPi/NanoPi/OrangePi/Pine64 are fanastic. They're hardware manufacturers, not an OS vendor. At least the spec is open enough that anyone has the ability to do things like Armbian without having to do reverse-engineering or extracting data from binary blobs (which is the case with a lot of other vendors). The Odroid C2 was released in 2016 and is now EoL.
- bonkabonka 6y ago
  Yeah, I got excited about it because of an HN post and jumped in for the "It's just like the Raspberry Pi but more!" For all my disappointment, it has served as a useful lesson on early-adoption and expectation management. =) So I'm not regretful, just cautious.

fulafel 6y ago

Yep, this is the most common gotcha on ARMs, with few exceptions.

foresto 6y ago

I look forward to more ARM boards getting mainline kernel support for exactly this reason. > Better buy a RPi4 with a NAS Hat Do you know of such a HAT that does USB-attached SCSI Protocol correctly and reliably, and passes through SMART reporting without meddling, and doesn't inappropriately spin down the disks under its control? I wouldn't mind bookmarking such a thing if it exists. I considered the RPi for a recent NAS build, but I didn't want the higher CPU load imposed by a USB-to-SATA bridge (as compared to native/PCIe SATA), nor did I want to play chipset roulette looking for a SATA bridge free from the problems I mentioned above. I ended up using a RockPro64 with a Marvell 88SE9235 PCIe SATA card. It works well, and boots mainline Debian with no vendor blobs. Assuming the electronics don't wear out, I expect it will continue to run fully-updated linux for a long time to come.