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Im a big supporter of RISC-V doing my best to buy the hardware where possible and use it. The biggest hindrance to it is lack of software and distro support.

Im a big supporter of RISC-V doing my best to buy the hardware where possible and use it. The biggest hindrance to it is lack of software and distro support. The VisionFive2 is a lovely board but so far we only have a barren bootrom. No idea of OpenGl, OpenCl work on it! Someone lied about distro support being confirmed. StarFive probably... But those lies could torpedo the whole project. The early days of android were bogged down with complaints of fragmentation, patchy support.

rwmj 4y ago
We're actually waiting for VF2 boards to be delivered and then we'll have a go at porting Fedora 37.
GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
The star64 (from pine64) might have a better chance of being well-supported
- snvzz 4y ago
  With the same SoC, it should be about identical support-wise. It just launched, give it time. The whole point of VisionFive 2 is precisely to get these boards to developers in large numbers so that it can all be bootstrapped.
- count 4y ago
  It's been a while but nothing from pine64 was well supported without hacky 3rd party custom kernel rolls and the like, with no apparent effort to move stuff into mainline. I hope that's changed?
  - opan 4y ago
    Look at the PinePhone, Pinebook Pro, and RockPro64. All have mainline support and you can run several distros on them. I consider them the gold standard in this space, although it's thanks largely to the community and not the actual company. Anything newer than RK3399 will probably take a few years to become very good, but I'm sure mainline support is in the cards so long as the device is popular enough and Pine64 can sell enough. (Their PineCube IP camera device was a failure in recent years) postmarketOS also does a lot in this space. Their developers often help to improve support for everyone on a board.
    - count 4y ago
      I got them all when they came out (trying to help support the concept, even if execution wasn't quite there yet). I haven't used them in a while, because it was such a shitshow. Glad to hear things have gotten better, might need to dig them out of the closet.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mananaysiempre 4y ago
Is there a decent hardware manual even for the first VisionFive, say to the extent the original BeagleBoards had one (even if the Pis never did)? I wanted to write a (slow) emulator that could at least boot the Ubuntu image into text mode, but I have absolutely no idea how it all hangs together beyond the SoC docs. For that matter, the page for the Unmatched doesn’t have a link to a hardware manual either.
Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
>The biggest hindrance to it is lack of software and distro support. https://debian.starfivetech.com/ https://debian.starfivetech.com/ Ubuntu is working on it as well. May already be done I'm not sure As for software see RISC-V Summit 2022—StarFive's Efforts in Fuelling RISC V Software Ecosystem[0] There is a lot of work being put into this, not only by StarFive but by other companies, the Chinese government (via the Chinese Academy of Sciences), researchers and hobbyists (once boards arive). [0]https://youtube.com/watch?v=VfA2HLibOOY https://youtube.com/watch?v=VfA2HLibOOY
- andrekandre 4y ago
  just booted up in debian on the visionfive 2 just this night (flashed to an sdcard from that very same link above) though 4k monitors dont work yet from hdmi... seems some kind of bug...
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Let me guess : issues coming from recent monitors expecting DRM ?
    - monocasa 4y ago
      I've heard that the first rev of the boards have some signal integrity issues that should be fixed in later revs.
snvzz 4y ago
>The VisionFive2 is a lovely board but so far we only have a barren bootrom. No idea of OpenGl, OpenCl work on it! It is the first raspberry-pi like <$100 RISC-V SBC, and it only started shipping to customers last week. It is also the first board with a large run (long thousands vs short hundreds). Maybe there's just one Debian image and little documentation on how to get it all up and running, but that's today. In a month, it'll be a different story. That's the whole point of getting these into the hands of developers.

rwmj 4y ago

We're actually waiting for VF2 boards to be delivered and then we'll have a go at porting Fedora 37.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago

The star64 (from pine64) might have a better chance of being well-supported

snvzz 4y ago
With the same SoC, it should be about identical support-wise. It just launched, give it time. The whole point of VisionFive 2 is precisely to get these boards to developers in large numbers so that it can all be bootstrapped.
count 4y ago
It's been a while but nothing from pine64 was well supported without hacky 3rd party custom kernel rolls and the like, with no apparent effort to move stuff into mainline. I hope that's changed?
- opan 4y ago
  Look at the PinePhone, Pinebook Pro, and RockPro64. All have mainline support and you can run several distros on them. I consider them the gold standard in this space, although it's thanks largely to the community and not the actual company. Anything newer than RK3399 will probably take a few years to become very good, but I'm sure mainline support is in the cards so long as the device is popular enough and Pine64 can sell enough. (Their PineCube IP camera device was a failure in recent years) postmarketOS also does a lot in this space. Their developers often help to improve support for everyone on a board.
  - count 4y ago
    I got them all when they came out (trying to help support the concept, even if execution wasn't quite there yet). I haven't used them in a while, because it was such a shitshow. Glad to hear things have gotten better, might need to dig them out of the closet.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mananaysiempre 4y ago

Is there a decent hardware manual even for the first VisionFive, say to the extent the original BeagleBoards had one (even if the Pis never did)? I wanted to write a (slow) emulator that could at least boot the Ubuntu image into text mode, but I have absolutely no idea how it all hangs together beyond the SoC docs. For that matter, the page for the Unmatched doesn’t have a link to a hardware manual either.

Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago

>The biggest hindrance to it is lack of software and distro support. https://debian.starfivetech.com/ https://debian.starfivetech.com/ Ubuntu is working on it as well. May already be done I'm not sure As for software see RISC-V Summit 2022—StarFive's Efforts in Fuelling RISC V Software Ecosystem[0] There is a lot of work being put into this, not only by StarFive but by other companies, the Chinese government (via the Chinese Academy of Sciences), researchers and hobbyists (once boards arive). [0]https://youtube.com/watch?v=VfA2HLibOOY https://youtube.com/watch?v=VfA2HLibOOY

andrekandre 4y ago
just booted up in debian on the visionfive 2 just this night (flashed to an sdcard from that very same link above) though 4k monitors dont work yet from hdmi... seems some kind of bug...
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Let me guess : issues coming from recent monitors expecting DRM ?
  - monocasa 4y ago
    I've heard that the first rev of the boards have some signal integrity issues that should be fixed in later revs.

snvzz 4y ago

>The VisionFive2 is a lovely board but so far we only have a barren bootrom. No idea of OpenGl, OpenCl work on it! It is the first raspberry-pi like <$100 RISC-V SBC, and it only started shipping to customers last week. It is also the first board with a large run (long thousands vs short hundreds). Maybe there's just one Debian image and little documentation on how to get it all up and running, but that's today. In a month, it'll be a different story. That's the whole point of getting these into the hands of developers.