10-23-2020, 02:54 AM
Thanks. I have a personal preference for openSUSE as my default distro as it's RPM based (as are some of the non-Linux things I like to use), has an insane number of packages, and is easy to create repeatable builds of custom packages and installation images (both locally and in the cloud).
If a package isn't available for the distro variant (such as Tumbleweed aarch64 as used here), it's trivial to fork the upstream package for the flavor you're using. If it builds and operates well, it's again usually trivial to get it packaged with the main package, especially if it's a stock part of the main x64 package set.
While the Debians (including Ubuntu and Armbian) have much more visible ecosystems, it's a lot harder for individuals to make a difference due to the learning curve and the difficulty in making packages available for other testers (while PPAs have fixed this some, it's still a lot of effort).
I'm a huge general fan of having a large toolbox to choose from, to make sure that whatever needs to be done can be done well. Consider this my contribution to the toolbox. While I didn't have a hand in getting the platform running, I felt the least I could do was document the state of affairs to the best of my ability (which means it's limited to how I've used and abused it, of course). This is a community of do-ers, so someone is bound to want to do something that a Debian makes difficult, and CentOS doesn't have packages for, and something like Arch is just too rough-edged for. And, for them, there is now another option!
I would like to fix some of the issues noted, but I'm gonna need to buy a few more Rock64s first. Hopefully the effects of the pandemic upon my life will ease a bit soon, and then I can do so. Notably, I'd love to investigate the cold-boot hang and the spidf log spew. I also would like to investigate the graphics woes since if I *do* need a console over HDMI, I don't want it to jitter at random.
But if you do try it out, let me know what your experiences are. Just really do remember it's a JeOS image, so there's minimal packages and zero hand holding. It might be worth installing a full desktop version in a VM to play with alongside.
If a package isn't available for the distro variant (such as Tumbleweed aarch64 as used here), it's trivial to fork the upstream package for the flavor you're using. If it builds and operates well, it's again usually trivial to get it packaged with the main package, especially if it's a stock part of the main x64 package set.
While the Debians (including Ubuntu and Armbian) have much more visible ecosystems, it's a lot harder for individuals to make a difference due to the learning curve and the difficulty in making packages available for other testers (while PPAs have fixed this some, it's still a lot of effort).
I'm a huge general fan of having a large toolbox to choose from, to make sure that whatever needs to be done can be done well. Consider this my contribution to the toolbox. While I didn't have a hand in getting the platform running, I felt the least I could do was document the state of affairs to the best of my ability (which means it's limited to how I've used and abused it, of course). This is a community of do-ers, so someone is bound to want to do something that a Debian makes difficult, and CentOS doesn't have packages for, and something like Arch is just too rough-edged for. And, for them, there is now another option!
I would like to fix some of the issues noted, but I'm gonna need to buy a few more Rock64s first. Hopefully the effects of the pandemic upon my life will ease a bit soon, and then I can do so. Notably, I'd love to investigate the cold-boot hang and the spidf log spew. I also would like to investigate the graphics woes since if I *do* need a console over HDMI, I don't want it to jitter at random.
But if you do try it out, let me know what your experiences are. Just really do remember it's a JeOS image, so there's minimal packages and zero hand holding. It might be worth installing a full desktop version in a VM to play with alongside.