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rant: I've learned, excluding microcontrollers such as the wonderful rp2040, every ARM & RISC-V SBC I've been interested in purchasing relies on some extremely

by mouse_ 4y ago

rant: I've learned, excluding microcontrollers such as the wonderful rp2040, every ARM & RISC-V SBC I've been interested in purchasing relies on some extremely proprietary and paranoid bits. If the device has a massive, undying following, like the Raspberry Pi, people will find a way to bring it into the future and keep it useful. If not, well, in as little as a year or so the manufacturer will likely simply tell you to buy the new one. Truly useful, truly open hardware, cannot exist under current market conditions, for one reason or another. For now, we're all stuck with defaults; despite all of our progress, every computer you can imagine primarily using relies on someone's monopoly, and I imagine there is a nonzero amount of wealthy, powerful people who do not want this arrangement to change.

pmw 4y ago
Yes, this is a problem. ARM SystemReady certification program is aiming to solve it. Unfortunately the only boards that meet this certification are significantly more expensive. For example, Honeycomb LX2 (https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/honeycomb-lx2/ https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h...) -- very solid, great specs, upgradeable RAM up to 64 GB, but its price has been increasing over time, now at $919. Still, looks tempting to me.
phh 4y ago
Rockchip devices have stellar mainline (that chip rk3588 doesn't have it yet), for business reasons (radxa relies on it for industrial support, Chromebooks push mainline very heavily). I can't speak for this new one, but previous rockchip flagship (rk3399) have exactly one binary blob, which is used for display port over usb-c. Everything else is supported as open source, and mostly supported mainline (Linux and uboot and atf)
- rzzzt 4y ago
  I hear Rockchip, I am immediately reminded of the November 31st bug of the rk808: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=f076ef44a44d02ed91543f820c14c2c7dff53716 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
  - mouse_ 4y ago
    That's hilarious, I hadn't seen this.
argulane 4y ago
You just need to look harder to find ARM SoC-s with mainline Linux support. Allwinner SoC have pretty active community that provides really good hw support. https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page Pine64 and Olimex have several hw boards available to buy. Another one is NXP IM.X series that also has really good mainline Linux support.

by mouse_ 4y ago

pmw 4y ago

Yes, this is a problem. ARM SystemReady certification program is aiming to solve it. Unfortunately the only boards that meet this certification are significantly more expensive. For example, Honeycomb LX2 (https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/honeycomb-lx2/ https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h...) -- very solid, great specs, upgradeable RAM up to 64 GB, but its price has been increasing over time, now at $919. Still, looks tempting to me.

phh 4y ago

Rockchip devices have stellar mainline (that chip rk3588 doesn't have it yet), for business reasons (radxa relies on it for industrial support, Chromebooks push mainline very heavily). I can't speak for this new one, but previous rockchip flagship (rk3399) have exactly one binary blob, which is used for display port over usb-c. Everything else is supported as open source, and mostly supported mainline (Linux and uboot and atf)

rzzzt 4y ago
I hear Rockchip, I am immediately reminded of the November 31st bug of the rk808: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=f076ef44a44d02ed91543f820c14c2c7dff53716 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
- mouse_ 4y ago
  That's hilarious, I hadn't seen this.

argulane 4y ago

You just need to look harder to find ARM SoC-s with mainline Linux support. Allwinner SoC have pretty active community that provides really good hw support. https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page Pine64 and Olimex have several hw boards available to buy. Another one is NXP IM.X series that also has really good mainline Linux support.