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I disagree, the exceptions are not "few" and by making smart purchase decisions you can pretty much expect mainline support. You have to look at the trajectory
by chithanh 5y ago
I disagree, the exceptions are not "few" and by making smart purchase decisions you can pretty much expect mainline support. You have to look at the trajectory of things and ongoing efforts.
For example my $15 Orange Pi PC (Allwinner H5 SoC) that I bought many years ago from AliExpress went from no mainline at all to excellent with only minor parts like the Crypto engine still requiring kernel patches.
This is thanks to the linux-sunxi, lima, and other efforts. For AMLogic there is linux-meson. For RockChip this is more spotty, but you can look at what Pine64 did in the past and their track record is actually pretty good.
- mrslave 5y agoIs there an enthusiast website/community database of boards with clear documentation of Linux support, 3rd-party dependencies (patches needed, binary blobs), etc.?
- chithanh 5y agoSupport for boards (once the SoC is supported) is normally a low-hanging fruit, this only depends on getting the proper device trees merged. Various projects keep status pages of their mainlining efforts. Example for Allwinner hardware from the linux-sunxi project: https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort Generally, SoCs that have lots of things marked "WIP" have community attention and are probably going to work at some point without kernel patches.