Graphics

[UnixOutlaw]

I'm not bothered about graphics acceleration in Linux (it would be nice, but not a "show stopper")... I'm getting 2 x 2GB Pine A64 - will run Android on one - and Linux with Docker containers on the other... Frankly I'd prefer Debian Jessie 64 bit to any other ARM Linux distro (I've got 2 x NextThing CHIPs and 1 x BananaPI all running some variant of Jessie - the banana sits on top of my wifi router and runs BIND for my internal networks - forget about running a GUI on the BananaPI and that's more powerful than a (original) RaspberryPI.

I'm really hoping there will be a stable build of Ubuntu (headless / server) or Debian 64 bit available when these things are delivered...

If I was going to run a GUI on Linux on one of these, I'd be going XFCE4 - b_gger Unity or Gnome3 or KDE!

---

I am interested in the built in graphics this thing can put out as well.

Looking at Linux for this and game support. There are several MMO's that offer Linux clients, A Tale in the Desert comes to mind. For my MMO of choice, the processor of Pine64 is more than enough. Just haven't seen any success of WINE and DirectX working for people. Anyway, I will see if I can get Asheron's Call working. Ha!

Wine on an ARM CPU?  I think not...  Good luck finding binaries for these things for the ARM architecture...

Probably have more luck getting Windows RT running in 32 bit on the Pine :-)

I doubt if ANY game developers are porting any of their games to run on Linux on ARM cpu...  never mind 64 bit...

[Ghost]

Seems like longsleep has gotten accelerated video decoding running in Linux:

http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?t...72#pid3472

[coleshores]

I'm not bothered about graphics acceleration in Linux (it would be nice, but not a "show stopper")...  I'm getting 2 x 2GB Pine A64 - will run Android on one - and Linux with Docker containers on the other...  Frankly I'd prefer Debian Jessie 64 bit to any other ARM Linux distro (I've got 2 x NextThing CHIPs and 1 x BananaPI all running some variant of Jessie - the banana sits on top of my wifi router and runs BIND for my internal networks - forget about running a GUI on the BananaPI and that's more powerful than a (original) RaspberryPI.

I'm really hoping there will be a stable build of Ubuntu (headless / server) or Debian 64 bit available when these things are delivered...

If I was going to run a GUI on Linux on one of these, I'd be going XFCE4 - b_gger Unity or Gnome3 or KDE!

---

I am interested in the built in graphics this thing can put out as well.

Looking at Linux for this and game support. There are several MMO's that offer Linux clients, A Tale in the Desert comes to mind. For my MMO of choice, the processor of Pine64 is more than enough. Just haven't seen any success of WINE and DirectX working for people. Anyway, I will see if I can get Asheron's Call working. Ha!

Wine on an ARM CPU?  I think not...  Good luck finding binaries for these things for the ARM architecture...

Probably have more luck getting Windows RT running in 32 bit on the Pine :-)

I doubt if ANY game developers are porting any of their games to run on Linux on ARM cpu...  never mind 64 bit...

Actually you can run Wine with Eltechs ExaGear Desktop.  Many older applications and games from the late 90s era run pretty well on it.

[tllim]

Seems like longsleep has gotten accelerated video decoding running in Linux:

http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?t...72#pid3472

This is a good news :-)

[lenny.raposo-pine64.pro]

A little birdy showed me something that will be happening after April 4th that may make 3d acceleration 1 less worry for linux in terms of the mali 400.

Keep fingers crossed.

[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 ]

[mar81018]

And that's what disturbed me about my PI when I got it. To actually have to pay for the accelerated graphics driver was an insult.

Is pine64 going to get us an accelerated graphics driver?  I would guess that's an important thing concerning this board.

It might seem like nitpicking but you're not paying for accelerated graphics on the Pi.  The pi, out of box, is perfectly capable of accelerated graphics (i.e. vertexes, triangles, fill, framebuffering, etc.) -- you can run 3D games / demos all day long.  Additionally, VLC and Kodi have zero problems playing most 1080p video streams.  What you buy is a CODEC license.  A CODEC is used to decode specific video stream formats in hardware.  The two CODECS offered are MPEG2 and VC1.  The reason you have to pay for this is because the owner of the CODEC charges for use of that CODEC and the Pi foundation saw that as an additional expense that kept their price point farther away.  MPEG2 is owned by the MPEG group and VC1 is owned my Microsoft.  VLC can still play most of these video streams, but in some cases such as high bitrates, video does stutter if the accelerated CODEC isn't used.  Bu again, this doesn't mean the Pi doesn't have video acceleration without the CODECS.

In contrast, Allwinner has decent video hardware but doesn't publish the details of how to use it.  You can draw a screen all day but the CPU has to draw every piece and there is no hardware acceleration available to Linux because they won't open up the information needed by the community.  Even if you get the Allwinner folks to play ball with the GPL you may not get the hardware accelerated CODEC the pi offers.   

Again, it may seem like nitpicking but there is a significant difference between hardware accelerated graphics and CODEC licenses.

Are we still talking about the PIne64 or the Pi? I thought I was on a forum for the Pine64 but you are taling about the Pi now. Did you mean to reference the Pine64 instead of the Pi?

---

And that's what disturbed me about my PI when I got it. To actually have to pay for the accelerated graphics driver was an insult.

Is pine64 going to get us an accelerated graphics driver?  I would guess that's an important thing concerning this board.

It might seem like nitpicking but you're not paying for accelerated graphics on the Pi.  The pi, out of box, is perfectly capable of accelerated graphics (i.e. vertexes, triangles, fill, framebuffering, etc.) -- you can run 3D games / demos all day long.  Additionally, VLC and Kodi have zero problems playing most 1080p video streams.  What you buy is a CODEC license.  A CODEC is used to decode specific video stream formats in hardware.  The two CODECS offered are MPEG2 and VC1.  The reason you have to pay for this is because the owner of the CODEC charges for use of that CODEC and the Pi foundation saw that as an additional expense that kept their price point farther away.  MPEG2 is owned by the MPEG group and VC1 is owned my Microsoft.  VLC can still play most of these video streams, but in some cases such as high bitrates, video does stutter if the accelerated CODEC isn't used.  Bu again, this doesn't mean the Pi doesn't have video acceleration without the CODECS.

In contrast, Allwinner has decent video hardware but doesn't publish the details of how to use it.  You can draw a screen all day but the CPU has to draw every piece and there is no hardware acceleration available to Linux because they won't open up the information needed by the community.  Even if you get the Allwinner folks to play ball with the GPL you may not get the hardware accelerated CODEC the pi offers.   

Again, it may seem like nitpicking but there is a significant difference between hardware accelerated graphics and CODEC licenses.

Are we still talking about the PIne64 or the Pi? I thought I was on a forum for the Pine64 but you are taling about the Pi now. Did you mean to reference the Pine64 instead of the Pi?

---

And that's what disturbed me about my PI when I got it. To actually have to pay for the accelerated graphics driver was an insult.

Is pine64 going to get us an accelerated graphics driver?  I would guess that's an important thing concerning this board.

It might seem like nitpicking but you're not paying for accelerated graphics on the Pi.  The pi, out of box, is perfectly capable of accelerated graphics (i.e. vertexes, triangles, fill, framebuffering, etc.) -- you can run 3D games / demos all day long.  Additionally, VLC and Kodi have zero problems playing most 1080p video streams.  What you buy is a CODEC license.  A CODEC is used to decode specific video stream formats in hardware.  The two CODECS offered are MPEG2 and VC1.  The reason you have to pay for this is because the owner of the CODEC charges for use of that CODEC and the Pi foundation saw that as an additional expense that kept their price point farther away.  MPEG2 is owned by the MPEG group and VC1 is owned my Microsoft.  VLC can still play most of these video streams, but in some cases such as high bitrates, video does stutter if the accelerated CODEC isn't used.  Bu again, this doesn't mean the Pi doesn't have video acceleration without the CODECS.

In contrast, Allwinner has decent video hardware but doesn't publish the details of how to use it.  You can draw a screen all day but the CPU has to draw every piece and there is no hardware acceleration available to Linux because they won't open up the information needed by the community.  Even if you get the Allwinner folks to play ball with the GPL you may not get the hardware accelerated CODEC the pi offers.   

Again, it may seem like nitpicking but there is a significant difference between hardware accelerated graphics and CODEC licenses.

Are we still talking about the PIne64 or the Pi? I thought I was on a forum for the Pine64 but you are taling about the Pi now. Did you mean to reference the Pine64 instead of the Pi?