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+--- Thread: state of the union? (/showthread.php?tid=18960)
state of the union? - WhiteHexagon - 12-20-2023
I saw the PineTabV back in stock
but shipping comes out at $74! that's before ~100eur import fees. So that's going to add up to around 300 eur! more than a galaxy tab A8 LTE 
As much as I'd like to continue supporting the pine64 community and concept, I dont see how this will work once they switch to the advertised 'retail prices'. But it got me wondering about the pine64 community... I am still new here, and having fun messing around with my PP and Zig, but in the short 8 months since my purchase, blog posts have dried up, developers seem to be leaving, store links are outdated and information missing or misleading. I know there are other channels more active than this board, but the lack of transparency and updates here is a little concerning. I'd like to commit more time to the PP, but seems kinda pointless if the community is crumbling?
So what is the state of the union?
RE: state of the union? - KC9UDX - 12-20-2023
Here's my observation:
Status videos don't come often anymore. I gather this is because of a lack of volunteers. I don't follow blog posts. But nothing else seems to have changed. I do see tllim here more often lately. I find the store horrible. There don't seem to be direct ways of finding most products that people here talk about. There are pages that Yandex can find, but no way that I can see to directly navigate to them. The original Pinebook is still listed, with no status; we all know it's not in production.
So really, I don't see anything happening worth worrying about.
RE: state of the union? - diederik - 12-20-2023
(12-20-2023, 12:13 PM)WhiteHexagon Wrote: I saw the PineTabV back in stock
The PT-V (4GB) would cost me $160 + $39 shipping + 21% VAT ($42) + some import fees, but surely not €100, so it seems your place/country of residence is a major obstacle here.
I don't know if they ever switch to 'retail prices' though ...
Quote:But it got me wondering about the pine64 community... I am still new here, and having fun messing around with my PP and Zig, but in the short 8 months since my purchase, blog posts have dried up, developers seem to be leaving, store links are outdated and information missing or misleading. I know there are other channels more active than this board, but the lack of transparency and updates here is a little concerning. I'd like to commit more time to the PP, but seems kinda pointless if the community is crumbling?
So what is the state of the union?
There are several things that worry and/or bug me (too) and lack of transparency is one of them ...
RE: state of the union? - bosi564 - 12-20-2023
The last rumor I read was in october on mastodon: "According to a rockchip employee, Rockchip is preparing to add RK3588 video output support to mainline Linux."
From https://mastodon.social/@CounterPillow/111234578399386896 (the same (i'm assuming) user appears to also post here).
I can't even speculate what that means or if it's true.
RE: state of the union? - diederik - 12-20-2023
(12-20-2023, 03:21 PM)bosi564 Wrote: The last rumor I read was in october on mastodon: "According to a rockchip employee, Rockchip is preparing to add RK3588 video output support to mainline Linux."
From https://mastodon.social/@CounterPillow/111234578399386896 (the same (i'm assuming) user appears to also post here).
I can't even speculate what that means or if it's true.
Yes it's the same user and yes it's true and it has been accepted by the kernel (subsystem) maintainer:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rockchip/20231211115547.1784587-1-andyshrk@163.com/
This means that it should become part of the 6.8 kernel.
This is really cool, but AFAIK not (yet?) relevant for Pine64 as they don't have a rk3588 based board (apart from the QuartzPro64 provided to devs).
I don't consider those rumors though as it all happens in the open on (f.e.) the linux-rockchip mailing list.
RE: state of the union? - bosi564 - 12-20-2023
(12-20-2023, 05:24 PM)diederik Wrote: ...
I don't consider those rumors though as it all happens in the open on (f.e.) the linux-rockchip mailing list.
I didn't check if it was true. Thanks for the tip. I'll go read on the development efforts (if any) on HDMI for rockchip 3566
RE: state of the union? - WhiteHexagon - 12-21-2023
(12-20-2023, 01:04 PM)diederik Wrote: The PT-V (4GB) would cost me $160 + $39 shipping + 21% VAT ($42) + some import fees, but surely not €100, so it seems your place/country of residence is a major obstacle here.
I don't know if they ever switch to 'retail prices' though ...
There are several things that worry and/or bug me (too) and lack of transparency is one of them ...
yeah the 100e includes VAT at 21%, customs fees, customs processing fees, VAT on customs fees etc etc. The shipping drops to 39$ if I select a bigger city, but still makes the A8 look cheap.
Regarding 'retail prices', also seems misleading then, and why mislead the community you are hoping will do the development.
Another strange thing is the BES driver thing, how come the community didnt specify a Wifi chip that already has open source drivers in linux kernal? It seems at least they had enough input to keep the SPI functionality, although that also seems a bit ambiguously worded.
Anyway the whole setup feels confusing at this point. As a developer I expected some kind of road map to retail rollout, and estimated production runs. For all I know I am developing software for 42 PP users worldwide
Thanks for listening. /rant
RE: state of the union? - Kevin Kofler - 12-22-2023
Well, almost anything you develop for the PinePhone (anything except very hardware-specific software) should also run on the PinePhone Pro, on Purism's phones, on phones with postmarketOS installed, well, post-market, etc.
As for the BES thing, "the community" only found out when the designs were already finished and production was already running.
RE: state of the union? - WhiteHexagon - 01-01-2024
(12-22-2023, 04:16 PM)Kevin Kofler Wrote: Well, almost anything you develop for the PinePhone (anything except very hardware-specific software) should also run on the PinePhone Pro, ...
Ah yes, well... hehe, the stuff I've done so far is all low level A64 register based. I couldnt make sense of linux project layout, and so I decided I wanted to have a go at a microkernel approach following Lupyuen's great tutorials
and the rather poor 'official' hardware documentation... So unfortunately wont get reused since I havent seen any other allwinner A64 devices around I guess it is a bit of an old SoC at this point to be getting further use. Anyway it is all a good learning experience, especially since I was still quite new to Zig, and Zig being quite new itself, so I got to redesign it a few times already as they added more language features.
RE: state of the union? - Kevin Kofler - 01-01-2024
Well, yes, the NuttX port to the hardware is of course hardware-specific.
That said, I believe Lupyuen and you now have the port in a state where you should be able to start doing UI/UX work that will also benefit other ports of NuttX to smartphones.
(But I still believe developing GNU/Linux userspace applications would have a higher return on investment. NuttX is a niche OS on what is already very niche hardware. And userspace stuff is also more easy to port to other hardware, if it does not already just work without any porting. But of course, you are free to develop what you find fun to develop.)