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>This means that I was able to grab the Windows 11 ISO and install it. I was able to go to Debian’s homepage, grab the latest ISO and just, well, install it? S

>This means that I was able to grab the Windows 11 ISO and install it. I was able to go to Debian’s homepage, grab the latest ISO and just, well, install it? Still the biggest advantage x86 has over ARM in my opinion. I hope one day common ARM processors become as flexible. Either way its amazing to see x86 processors so cheap, low power, and still rather powerful. I hope to see more devices using these N100's

geerlingguy 2y ago
Ampere is the main company with that kind of setup (with full EDK II BIOS and UEFI), but they still target server / HEDT, not desktop, and certainly not the SBC/hobby space. I asked Raspberry Pi about the likelihood of seeing UEFI support this year and it didn't sound like it was a priority, at least not for the Pi 5 generation. Would still love to see it, as it would let distro maintainers focus less on a few "premiere" Arm boards and be able to just have one distro for aarch64.
- p_l 2y ago
  RPi is, AFAIK, doable to run UEFI, but you need to DIY a bit.
javchz 2y ago
I agree. I recently got a Raspberry Pi 5 and regret not getting one of these N100s instead for a small home server. A lot of the killer features of the Pi like using a traditional phone charger, being passively cooled, and being "cheap" are no longer there if you want a stable system. On the other hand, the "low power" from ARM systems, it's not that big of a lip compared to a traditional X64 mini-PC CPUs.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yep. I was in the same spot. The N100 is also cheaper if you factor in the adapter, case, nvme etc. I had a N100 for 100 bucks. Much better than a pi for a small home assistant server IMO. Raspberries are no longer cheap nor especially good value for money. Things were really different at the time of their introduction. There wasn't really anything similar except the Marvell based sheevaplug. The only thing I'd use a pi for now is something that really needs GPIO as well as significant processing (eg more than an esp32 offers).
- icelancer 2y ago
  The RPi ecosystem is more or less only valuable for the HATs, the form factor, and accessories/code that works with it out of the box. I've moved on to N100s for most of the low-cost stuff but RPi HATs and the GPIO stuff give it pretty good future value for awhile, I think.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    I think that's the most interesting part of this particular board - the built in RP2040 and 40 pin header for Pi hats. With the Pi 5 splitting off GPIO to an external chip anyways there really isn't much advantage to having a "real" Pi for GPIO/hats vs this - some stuff around firmware/software image integration for really complicated hats mostly.
irusensei 2y ago
You can use aarch64 ISOs on some ARM64 computers through UEFI, RPi3+ included. Need to install firmware though. Similar if you use Tow-boot on some Pine64 devices and there is a project for recent Rockchip boards. I have 2 Rockpro64s which I boot and installed the default ISO of Fedora Server from an ISO file on USB.
dingi 2y ago
I hope Intel continue updating/improving their low power offerings like N100. It has been a great little CPU so far. ARM ecosystem seriously lags behind x86 in terms of standardization. Hunting down ISOs for devices other than popular ARM boards gonna be impossible once the vendor ends supporting their heavily patched Kernel. Seems like that the ARMified future is not gonna be the rosy dream as vendors want us to believe.

geerlingguy 2y ago

Ampere is the main company with that kind of setup (with full EDK II BIOS and UEFI), but they still target server / HEDT, not desktop, and certainly not the SBC/hobby space. I asked Raspberry Pi about the likelihood of seeing UEFI support this year and it didn't sound like it was a priority, at least not for the Pi 5 generation. Would still love to see it, as it would let distro maintainers focus less on a few "premiere" Arm boards and be able to just have one distro for aarch64.

p_l 2y ago
RPi is, AFAIK, doable to run UEFI, but you need to DIY a bit.

javchz 2y ago

I agree. I recently got a Raspberry Pi 5 and regret not getting one of these N100s instead for a small home server. A lot of the killer features of the Pi like using a traditional phone charger, being passively cooled, and being "cheap" are no longer there if you want a stable system. On the other hand, the "low power" from ARM systems, it's not that big of a lip compared to a traditional X64 mini-PC CPUs.

wkat4242 2y ago
Yep. I was in the same spot. The N100 is also cheaper if you factor in the adapter, case, nvme etc. I had a N100 for 100 bucks. Much better than a pi for a small home assistant server IMO. Raspberries are no longer cheap nor especially good value for money. Things were really different at the time of their introduction. There wasn't really anything similar except the Marvell based sheevaplug. The only thing I'd use a pi for now is something that really needs GPIO as well as significant processing (eg more than an esp32 offers).
icelancer 2y ago
The RPi ecosystem is more or less only valuable for the HATs, the form factor, and accessories/code that works with it out of the box. I've moved on to N100s for most of the low-cost stuff but RPi HATs and the GPIO stuff give it pretty good future value for awhile, I think.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  I think that's the most interesting part of this particular board - the built in RP2040 and 40 pin header for Pi hats. With the Pi 5 splitting off GPIO to an external chip anyways there really isn't much advantage to having a "real" Pi for GPIO/hats vs this - some stuff around firmware/software image integration for really complicated hats mostly.

irusensei 2y ago

You can use aarch64 ISOs on some ARM64 computers through UEFI, RPi3+ included. Need to install firmware though. Similar if you use Tow-boot on some Pine64 devices and there is a project for recent Rockchip boards. I have 2 Rockpro64s which I boot and installed the default ISO of Fedora Server from an ISO file on USB.

dingi 2y ago

I hope Intel continue updating/improving their low power offerings like N100. It has been a great little CPU so far. ARM ecosystem seriously lags behind x86 in terms of standardization. Hunting down ISOs for devices other than popular ARM boards gonna be impossible once the vendor ends supporting their heavily patched Kernel. Seems like that the ARMified future is not gonna be the rosy dream as vendors want us to believe.