Graphics

[Andrew2]

forget about running a GUI on the BananaPI

Not with the crappy manufacturer provided OS images but since the linux-sunxi community made some huge progress in the past I just tried it out. 

Main purpose was testing the Armbian build system and for that I was using an old Banana Pi without SD card only connected to display, build host through USB and GbE network. I let an desktop jessie image build that automatically booted the Banana through USB and let it then load the rootfs through NFS. All the stuff is HW accelerated (both GPU and video) and I simply played an h.264 1080p video smoothlessly with sound.

At the moment any A20 board outperforms Pine64 when it's about desktop usage. But this will change soon if all the necessary stuff will be ported by the community to A64 (that is also able to decode HEVC HW accelerated). One important factor when it's about using any SBC for any sort of desktop stuff with Linux is I/O latency. As long as the homedir is on an ultra slow SD card forget about it. Since eMMC is not available on Pine64 the best idea is to move rootfs/homedir to a connected USB device (on the Banana Pi I tested with a SATA SSD: way more responsive)


[1] Armbian build process:

Code:

root@armbian:/var/git/Armbian# ./compile.sh KERNEL_ONLY=no BOARD=bananapipro BRANCH=default PROGRESS_DISPLAY=plain RELEASE=jessie BUILD_DESKTOP=yes EXTENDED_DEBOOTSTRAP=yes ROOTFS_TYPE=fel FEL_AUTO=yes FIXED_IMAGE_SIZE=3000 PROGRESS_LOG_TO_FILE=yes
[ o.k. ] Creating board support package. [ bananapipro ]
[ o.k. ] Fingerprinting. [ Armbian 5.05 Bananapipro Debian jessie default Linux 3.4.110 ]
[ o.k. ] Building deb package. [ linux-jessie-root-bananapipro_5.05_armhf.deb ]
[ o.k. ] Starting build process for [ bananapipro jessie ]
[ warn ] Assuming linux-image-sun7i_5.05_armhf.deb supports fel
[ o.k. ] Extracting jessie_desktop-ng.e8e...1ca.tgz [ 1 days old ]
jessie_desktop-ng.e8e...1ca.tgz:  610MiB [ 104MiB/s] [===================================================================================================>] 100%
[ o.k. ] Fixing release custom applications. [ jessie ]
[ o.k. ] Install kernel [ linux-image-sun7i_5.05_armhf.deb ]
[ o.k. ] Install u-boot [ linux-u-boot-sun7i_5.05_armhf.deb ]
[ o.k. ] Install headers [ linux-headers-sun7i_5.05_armhf.deb ]
[ o.k. ] Install firmware [ linux-firmware-image-sun7i_5.05_armhf.deb ]
[ o.k. ] Creating boot scripts [ bananapipro ]
[ o.k. ] Installing desktop [ XFCE ]
[ o.k. ] Installing desktop-extras for sunxi [ sunxi ]
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
[ o.k. ] Installing external applications [ USB redirector ]
[ o.k. ] Installing external applications [ RT8192 driver ]
[ o.k. ] Installing external applications [ MT7601U - driver ]
[ o.k. ] Calling image customization script [ customize-image.sh ]
[ o.k. ] Starting FEL boot [ bananapipro ]
[ o.k. ] Loading files via [ FEL USB ]
100% [================================================]  5626 kB,  555.5 kB/s
100% [================================================]    50 kB,  510.3 kB/s
100% [================================================]     0 kB,   98.2 kB/s
[ o.k. ] Press <b> to boot again, <q> to finish [ FEL ]