5 ms·

I like the idea, but they need to make the chip actually open so decent drivers can be created. Most non-Pi SBCs are terribly hard to get working.

by hajile 4y ago

sitzkrieg 4y ago
the pi is remarkably less open than many of these other sbcs. its just more popular in both developer and mindshare
- oneplane 4y ago
  The Broadcom chip, yes, but the NDA-encumbered firmware has been reduced to such an extent that you can in fact boot this either fully-functional with very few closed blobs, or almost-fully-functional with no closed blobs at all. All device drivers onwards are just open and can be kept up to date and used in custom kernels all you want. This is the big difference with other SBCs where you can't really use the devices without closed, version-locked drivers and blobs, and there is no incentive for the manufacturer to make a super-thin encumbered shim to give the most leverage and freedom for everyone else to build on top of that. The popularity didn't arrive before the intent and work was done to make it hackable, it was the other way around. That, in turn, created the mindshare to make community-driven drivers and alternate firmwares for the VideoCore boot stage. This is also why they kept the BCM lineage as simple as possible across the PI revisions so all the public reverse engineering and hard work wasn't for nothing and was still portable. None of this can be said about any RockChip, MediaTek or HiSilicon SoC. Those are more of a consume-and-throw-away type of deal, except for maybe the high-end long-life platforms that share IP with Android devices that also happen to have PM-OS or some XDA fanbase to work on it. Even then they usually lack community knowledge and commercial effort to make it worthwhile. The closest was the TI-based series like the BeagleBone, and that was for precisely the same reason the Pi got a good start. The bad thing about the BeagleBone was that it didn't have a "see something on your monitor out of the box" experience.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    BeagleBones also don't seem to get updated very often. The BeagleBone black is overdue for a version 2 with a faster CPU, double the memory, and double the built-in eMMC; especially at the $50 price point.
  - gnramires 4y ago
    There's also the Olimex boards (and related Freedombox project)[1], which can boot with no binary blobs :) They have an interesting philosophy in their definition of OSHW includes making it easy for others to produce their boards. So not just publishing schematics, but facilitating manufacturing as much as possible. > Olimex's A20 OLinuXino Lime2 is a fully Open Source Hardware (OSHW) single board computer. This means that the designer is actively helping people using the platform for their own designs, and supports them in adding hardware functionality and production advice. This is a part of freedom that is often overlooked, but very much aligned with the FreedomBox goals. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/A20-OLinuXino-Lime2 https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/A20-OLinuXino-Li... [1b] https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-LIME2/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-... [1c] https://www.armbian.com/olimex-lime-2-emmc/ https://www.armbian.com/olimex-lime-2-emmc/
    - sitzkrieg 4y ago
      i have olimexs sunxi boards and they have a blob bootloader with no sources so they are not completely covered, only hardware as it mentions. but this is common for arm of course. on the flipside thats still leagues above rpis and you can buy the chips for your own use unlike the broadcom ones
      - oneplane 4y ago
        Thun sunxi family of chips is really badly supported by the manufacturers, but the mainlining effort (as documented at https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort) is going pretty well. It's still a bit risky if you don't buy an entire integration package from one of the big vendors and at that point you're NDA'ed so hard you might as well go Broadcom or Qualcomm.
sheepybloke 4y ago
Completely agree! I bought a couple of Orange Pi Zero's a while ago to make a small cluster. As soon as you want to do something slightly more than just booting it into linux, you quickly fall into a space with little to no documentation. If you're lucky, you can find a sketchy media share site with some documents, or an abandoned forum post. Incredibly annoying when you just want to get something running.

I like the idea, but they need to make the chip actually open so decent drivers can be created. Most non-Pi SBCs are terribly hard to get working.

by hajile 4y ago

I like the idea, but they need to make the chip actually open so decent drivers can be created. Most non-Pi SBCs are terribly hard to get working.

sitzkrieg 4y ago

the pi is remarkably less open than many of these other sbcs. its just more popular in both developer and mindshare

oneplane 4y ago
The Broadcom chip, yes, but the NDA-encumbered firmware has been reduced to such an extent that you can in fact boot this either fully-functional with very few closed blobs, or almost-fully-functional with no closed blobs at all. All device drivers onwards are just open and can be kept up to date and used in custom kernels all you want. This is the big difference with other SBCs where you can't really use the devices without closed, version-locked drivers and blobs, and there is no incentive for the manufacturer to make a super-thin encumbered shim to give the most leverage and freedom for everyone else to build on top of that. The popularity didn't arrive before the intent and work was done to make it hackable, it was the other way around. That, in turn, created the mindshare to make community-driven drivers and alternate firmwares for the VideoCore boot stage. This is also why they kept the BCM lineage as simple as possible across the PI revisions so all the public reverse engineering and hard work wasn't for nothing and was still portable. None of this can be said about any RockChip, MediaTek or HiSilicon SoC. Those are more of a consume-and-throw-away type of deal, except for maybe the high-end long-life platforms that share IP with Android devices that also happen to have PM-OS or some XDA fanbase to work on it. Even then they usually lack community knowledge and commercial effort to make it worthwhile. The closest was the TI-based series like the BeagleBone, and that was for precisely the same reason the Pi got a good start. The bad thing about the BeagleBone was that it didn't have a "see something on your monitor out of the box" experience.
- jandrese 4y ago
  BeagleBones also don't seem to get updated very often. The BeagleBone black is overdue for a version 2 with a faster CPU, double the memory, and double the built-in eMMC; especially at the $50 price point.
- gnramires 4y ago
  There's also the Olimex boards (and related Freedombox project)[1], which can boot with no binary blobs :) They have an interesting philosophy in their definition of OSHW includes making it easy for others to produce their boards. So not just publishing schematics, but facilitating manufacturing as much as possible. > Olimex's A20 OLinuXino Lime2 is a fully Open Source Hardware (OSHW) single board computer. This means that the designer is actively helping people using the platform for their own designs, and supports them in adding hardware functionality and production advice. This is a part of freedom that is often overlooked, but very much aligned with the FreedomBox goals. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/A20-OLinuXino-Lime2 https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/A20-OLinuXino-Li... [1b] https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-LIME2/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-... [1c] https://www.armbian.com/olimex-lime-2-emmc/ https://www.armbian.com/olimex-lime-2-emmc/
  - sitzkrieg 4y ago
    i have olimexs sunxi boards and they have a blob bootloader with no sources so they are not completely covered, only hardware as it mentions. but this is common for arm of course. on the flipside thats still leagues above rpis and you can buy the chips for your own use unlike the broadcom ones
    - oneplane 4y ago
      Thun sunxi family of chips is really badly supported by the manufacturers, but the mainlining effort (as documented at https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort) is going pretty well. It's still a bit risky if you don't buy an entire integration package from one of the big vendors and at that point you're NDA'ed so hard you might as well go Broadcom or Qualcomm.

sheepybloke 4y ago

Completely agree! I bought a couple of Orange Pi Zero's a while ago to make a small cluster. As soon as you want to do something slightly more than just booting it into linux, you quickly fall into a space with little to no documentation. If you're lucky, you can find a sketchy media share site with some documents, or an abandoned forum post. Incredibly annoying when you just want to get something running.