4 ms·

Regarding the graveyard - just looking around my office I see a variety of Khadas products that are essentially useless. I have a RockPi 4-something running Arm

Regarding the graveyard - just looking around my office I see a variety of Khadas products that are essentially useless. I have a RockPi 4-something running Armbian that is one `apt-get full-upgrade` away from not booting (has happened before) that already has extremely temperamental video and NVMe (the selling point). A few Odroid boards that fall somewhere in between... Plus a few random generics that are long forgotten and not even worth mentioning. Yes, ideally support hits mainline. However, in practice between Linux mainline, things like Mesa for video, etc it just doesn't happen and trying to sell/tell people otherwise is disingenuous at best. I agree there is significant value in the comfort of Linux but WRT to ESP32 I would argue the Arduino/PlatformIO ecosystem around them is actually second to the Raspberry Pi in terms of community support. There are "ready to go plug these variables in" examples for nearly anything you want to do that the hardware is capable of floating around everywhere on the internet. You can buy "ESP32 Cams" with TF Lite object detection from Amazon[0]. Also, not to be argumentative but the Kirkwood SheevaPlug line (I was early on that too) is the ARM equivalent of a truly embedded Intel Core something that no one dare touches if it's still running (it's USB 2). Somewhat strange thing is I've worked on "commercial" embedded projects with things like the iMX line and Yocto - and the support there is pretty incredible. [0] - https://www.amazon.com/s?k=esp32+cam&crid=R6C4OGY5Y5D3&sprefix=esp32+cam%2Caps%2C88&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=esp32+cam&crid=R6C4OGY5Y5D3&spref...

rektide 4y ago
> Also, not to be argumentative but the Kirkwood SheevaPlug line (I was early on that too) is the ARM equivalent of a truly embedded Intel Core something that no one dare touches if it's still running (it's USB 2). But unlike everything else you've complained about, it has good upstream support & is reliable & all it's peripherals are quite un-flakey. I have upgraded my kernels numerous times. I do run Debian/testing. I haven't in a bit, but they would still run, and better than before. You absolutely are correct about most of your complaints. There's a huge world of Ambian & other SBC that are off-tree semi-supported worlds to try to make shitty vendor crap keep going for a bit. And it's flakey, unreliable, & unmaintainable. But you are dead wrong about Kirkwood. Upstreaming means something & it has kept a lot of decade old devices running & stable & happy & it's just obvious. The negative experiences you cite are real, but they're a owed to a variety of over-aggressive under-budget hardware builds and more-so to never ever having actual real support, to never having had drivers good enough to get upstreamed, to being a bunch of shitty off-tree vendor code that is just poorly done. The network of enthusiasts trying to hack access to these sytems, to make off-tree Ambian or OpenWRT support at any cost is admirable, but ultimately, the actual cost of doing the right thing, like Free Electron does, is tiny, especially versus the pain incurred from not doing the right thing. I think you're missing that distinction, by lumping these all together. USB2 is also really not that bad for many remote-storage applications. It's also a bit comedic to, in one sentance, blast it as bad, then go on to talk about ESP32 systems & other microcontrollers. Which can almost never saturate even USB2, & almost never have any kind of USB3 what-so-ever. Sure they may run TensorFlow Lite. But they are markedly smaller systems. Just company community support seems arbitrary. Maybe Arduino has the best support community on the planet. It's still a vastly less capable platform with incredibly less software available to help you build systems/solutions out of. And showing up to Arduino will be a unique bespoke different experience, whereas running a Linux system will have a common frame of reference & transferable experience into the rest of computing, as well as having the world's best library of software & tools available for you to use (which Arduino/platformio have not even the faintest most shallow shadow of).
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  Yes, it may seem like I'm complaining - but my observations (complaints, as you say) come from the perspective of someone who has experience in this field and someone who wanders in the space expecting something even resembling a Raspberry Pi experience. Kirkwood is 2009, that's where my "USB 2" comment came from. Only in the completely fringe grey-beard ARM ecosystem would it even come up in discussion (this thread). For the rest of the world it's completely irrelevant and relegated to history. Especially for HN - where a substantial portion of top rated stories are ML model developments from 30 minutes ago. Kirkwood is in The Smithsonian by comparison. Frankly, even referencing it or using it as a point of discussion only further proves my point of how far/long mainline ARM support is. No one thinks, tries, or is under the impression that ESP32 is a storage controller to try to saturate anything. I think we're talking past each other on that point.

rektide 4y ago

> Also, not to be argumentative but the Kirkwood SheevaPlug line (I was early on that too) is the ARM equivalent of a truly embedded Intel Core something that no one dare touches if it's still running (it's USB 2). But unlike everything else you've complained about, it has good upstream support & is reliable & all it's peripherals are quite un-flakey. I have upgraded my kernels numerous times. I do run Debian/testing. I haven't in a bit, but they would still run, and better than before. You absolutely are correct about most of your complaints. There's a huge world of Ambian & other SBC that are off-tree semi-supported worlds to try to make shitty vendor crap keep going for a bit. And it's flakey, unreliable, & unmaintainable. But you are dead wrong about Kirkwood. Upstreaming means something & it has kept a lot of decade old devices running & stable & happy & it's just obvious. The negative experiences you cite are real, but they're a owed to a variety of over-aggressive under-budget hardware builds and more-so to never ever having actual real support, to never having had drivers good enough to get upstreamed, to being a bunch of shitty off-tree vendor code that is just poorly done. The network of enthusiasts trying to hack access to these sytems, to make off-tree Ambian or OpenWRT support at any cost is admirable, but ultimately, the actual cost of doing the right thing, like Free Electron does, is tiny, especially versus the pain incurred from not doing the right thing. I think you're missing that distinction, by lumping these all together. USB2 is also really not that bad for many remote-storage applications. It's also a bit comedic to, in one sentance, blast it as bad, then go on to talk about ESP32 systems & other microcontrollers. Which can almost never saturate even USB2, & almost never have any kind of USB3 what-so-ever. Sure they may run TensorFlow Lite. But they are markedly smaller systems. Just company community support seems arbitrary. Maybe Arduino has the best support community on the planet. It's still a vastly less capable platform with incredibly less software available to help you build systems/solutions out of. And showing up to Arduino will be a unique bespoke different experience, whereas running a Linux system will have a common frame of reference & transferable experience into the rest of computing, as well as having the world's best library of software & tools available for you to use (which Arduino/platformio have not even the faintest most shallow shadow of).

kkielhofner 4y ago
Yes, it may seem like I'm complaining - but my observations (complaints, as you say) come from the perspective of someone who has experience in this field and someone who wanders in the space expecting something even resembling a Raspberry Pi experience. Kirkwood is 2009, that's where my "USB 2" comment came from. Only in the completely fringe grey-beard ARM ecosystem would it even come up in discussion (this thread). For the rest of the world it's completely irrelevant and relegated to history. Especially for HN - where a substantial portion of top rated stories are ML model developments from 30 minutes ago. Kirkwood is in The Smithsonian by comparison. Frankly, even referencing it or using it as a point of discussion only further proves my point of how far/long mainline ARM support is. No one thinks, tries, or is under the impression that ESP32 is a storage controller to try to saturate anything. I think we're talking past each other on that point.