rant - userland is 32-bit

[bitbank]

Part of the reason I bought the Rock64 is to have a decent aarch64 system with more RAM and faster USB than some of my other ARM64 SBCs. Today while trying to build one of my projects, I discovered that the Linaro Linux distributed with the Rock64 has a 64-bit kernel, but 32-bit userland. This caused my build script to fail because uname returns only aarch64 as the system type. Besides this very disappointing news, so far, I've encountered the following issues with the board:

1) No SPI driver in current linux distribution
2) USB loses power and won't respond
3) Missing wifi drivers for my wifi dongles
4) Half of the GPIO header is unusable because it has conflicts or has been repurposed

What's the point of selling a 64-bit board that only runs 32-bit software? The Cortex-A53 is an old, slow ARM design and it's only benefit is that it supports the ARMv8 register model and instruction set. A new build of Linux can fix this 32/64-bit situation, but the other problems on my list will keep me from ever using it in projects. It looks like this board will join many others collecting dust in the desk drawer of shame.

/rant

[Luke]

Part of the reason I bought the Rock64 is to have a decent aarch64 system with more RAM and faster USB than some of my other ARM64 SBCs. Today while trying to build one of my projects, I discovered that the Linaro Linux distributed with the Rock64 has a 64-bit kernel, but 32-bit userland. This caused my build script to fail because uname returns only aarch64 as the system type. Besides this very disappointing news, so far, I've encountered the following issues with the board:

1) No SPI driver in current linux distribution
2) USB loses power and won't respond
3) Missing wifi drivers for my wifi dongles
4) Half of the GPIO header is unusable because it has conflicts or has been repurposed

What's the point of selling a 64-bit board that only runs 32-bit software? The Cortex-A53 is an old, slow ARM design and it's only benefit is that it supports the ARMv8 register model and instruction set. A new build of Linux can fix this 32/64-bit situation, but the other problems on my list will keep me from ever using it in projects. It looks like this board will join many others collecting dust in the desk drawer of shame.

/rant

The stock build has 32 bit user-land but the community builds come in both 32 and 64 bit variants. 
As for issues, they are worked on - read what I responded to user radek in this thread (don't want to repeat myself).

[xalius]

Most of RK's userland stuff has been 32-bit for now (mpp, media libraries etc...) but they have 64bit versions in their upstream repo now, as lukasz said, the community builds come in armhf and aarch64 versions, I only used 64bit rootfs so far for my stuff...

The production boards have an added power switch for USB2 with current limiter and apparently the GPIO0_A2 that controls it is floating, so that needs a software fix to set the GPIO on boot, but my production boards did not arrive yet so I can't test my solution...

I enabled a lot of wifi drivers in 4.4.70 a while back, but a lot of them are actually out of tree (some popular Realtek) and need the modules to be built separately...

[stuartiannaylor]

Most of RK's userland stuff has been 32-bit for now (mpp, media libraries etc...) but they have 64bit versions in their upstream repo now, as lukasz said, the community builds come in armhf and aarch64 versions, I only used 64bit rootfs so far for my stuff...

The production boards have an added power switch for USB2 with current limiter and apparently the GPIO0_A2 that controls it is floating, so that needs a software fix to set the GPIO on boot, but my production boards did not arrive yet so I can't test my solution...

I enabled a lot of wifi drivers in 4.4.70 a while back, but a lot of them are actually out of tree (some popular Realtek) and need the modules to be built separately...

I think there is a lot going on at the moment but unlike other SoCs Rockchip & Pine are opensource and Pine is community orientated and there doesn't seem to be the usual process of denial to ensure dust collection.
Xalius is waiting for a production board, I am a noob and I am waiting for a production board but the way I see things is because we have a RK33xx series SoC we are part of a huge ongoing effort.

On the forum people keep asking about UEFI and maybe but likely to be U-Boot but both likely to be part of BL3 in the arm-trusted-firmware which is receiving commits thick and fast.
This process should all become a snip when the Yocto support is complete and even a lesser mortal like myself might be able create custom Linux-based systems without having to think about hardware.
There is a whole rake of stuff going on and being honest I do agree as at this point in time with this hardware a 32bit userland is a complete chocolate kettle. Its a pointless cul-de-sac and I have to ask what the purpose of that Linaro image is for apart from to confuse the hell out of the community.
It would also seem the community images are confusing in that we have 32 & 64bit userland and I have to agree that there is little point in this board mixing a 64bit kernel with a 32bit userland.

Really there seems to be 1 guy doing a huge amount of work in the right direction and maybe this mixture is part of the development process but generally its dead on the button with very fast responses.
I am actually really confused at the 'official' pine image as it seems like a lot of bloat but maybe its a reference image for hardware and board purposes for something immediate.

So there is a shit load going on at the moment and the biggest problem for me is presentation as actually it is confusing as hell, without the board I have been blind and I am just starting to get to grips with things now.
Its also not going to get better is people don't post which specific hardware has no support.
Its also not going to get better if the community don't ask that user to create an issue on github for that specific hardware so there is a list of open issues without driver support.

IMO a 32bit userland on a RK33xx series chip is a brain fart but the biggest problem is the presentation as its seems to be a silent but deadly type.
Its why I got a Rock64 its sort of in the name.