Allwinner

[nomadewolf]

Allwinner seems to want to get market share in this boards

Why should they? They sell millions of SoCs for Android gadgets where nobody cares about quality of drivers or this disturbing 'open source' thing.

Just look at all the new boards that came and are comming out.
All based on Allwinner SoCs... Why is that? I suppose it's because Allwinner is practically giving them away, and reason to do that is gaining market share. If i'm not mistaken, Allwinner is a recent competitor so it makes sense.
Also "this disturbing 'open source' thing" that nobody cares means that we could have a better chance of accelerated graphics in linux, wich is something that really makes a difference to me.

Do you know have  other chinese cpu socs is no open source ?

Is not only allwinner  , i don't know why no one say this

I do know that.
In fact i would even farther and say that i don't know any chinese cpu SoC that is open source.
I althought i would much rather have it opensource, i would be happy with good driver support from them.
But we have neither.
And that's the real deal breaker, for me at least.
I do not speak of others, because this forum is about Allwinner and Pine64.
We want it to succeed and be better, and for that we must point what we perceive as flaws.

The thing is, other than the Raspberry Pi, no other SBC was able to acheive real success. And the reasons i perceive for that are great support and accelerated graphics.

Just my 2 cents, which i sincerely hope helps Allwinner and Pine64 achieve great success!

[Debcool]

@nomadewolf
Can't agree more.
Finaly, this is not a technical issue but more a Policy one of the company(Allwiner). I hope they will re-think their position and be more open minded/friendly.
A+
Debcool

[tkaiser]

Allwinner seems to want to get market share in this boards

Why should they? They sell millions of SoCs for Android gadgets where nobody cares about quality of drivers or this disturbing 'open source' thing.

Just look at all the new boards that came and are comming out.
All based on Allwinner SoCs... Why is that?

It isn't. Amlogic, Actions Semi, Rockchip just to name a few. They all developed some sort of 'love' for open source stuff in the meantime and their Cortex-A53 designs are way more interesting compared to the A64.
Allwinner is intersting due to being dirt-cheap and the strong linux-sunxi community (vendors seem to rely on in the meantime to do their work). The people behind the C.H.I.P. were clever by choosing an old Allwinner design (the R8 is based on the A13) and by hiring free-electrons to do the mainlining work. Therefore they will end up with an SBC that's useable with Linux. This won't apply to the PineA64 when shipping since they made the mistake to choose a brand new Allwinner SoC.

Well, maybe it's not a mistake if you're running a kickstarter campaing since people buy numbers. They think '64 bit' are twice as... what? They prefer '64 bit' over '32 bit' without having the slightest idea why. Numbers sell.

I still don't get why anything should change now when Pine Corp might order 50k A64 to solder them on SBCs. They sell way more SoCs to manufacturers of Android devices where no one cares about kernel version, driver quality or closed source drivers (that work within Android but not with Linux). Dealing with the linux community means more efforts and less income.

[nomadewolf]

Allwinner seems to want to get market share in this boards

Why should they? They sell millions of SoCs for Android gadgets where nobody cares about quality of drivers or this disturbing 'open source' thing.

Just look at all the new boards that came and are comming out.
All based on Allwinner SoCs... Why is that?

It isn't. Amlogic, Actions Semi, Rockchip just to name a few. They all developed some sort of 'love' for open source stuff in the meantime and their Cortex-A53 designs are way more interesting compared to the A64.
Allwinner is intersting due to being dirt-cheap and the strong linux-sunxi community (vendors seem to rely on in the meantime to do their work). The people behind the C.H.I.P. were clever by choosing an old Allwinner design (the R8 is based on the A13) and by hiring free-electrons to do the mainlining work. Therefore they will end up with an SBC that's useable with Linux. This won't apply to the PineA64 when shipping since they made the mistake to choose a brand new Allwinner SoC.

Well, maybe it's not a mistake if you're running a kickstarter campaing since people buy numbers. They think '64 bit' are twice as... what? They prefer '64 bit' over '32 bit' without having the slightest idea why. Numbers sell.

I still don't get why anything should change now when Pine Corp might order 50k A64 to solder them on SBCs. They sell way more SoCs to manufacturers of Android devices where no one cares about kernel version, driver quality or closed source drivers (that work within Android but not with Linux). Dealing with the linux community means more efforts and less income.

Thanks for the clarification.
Do you know of any SBC that hats Gigabit LAN, 2GB RAM and good linux support?

[tkaiser]

Do you know of any SBC that hats Gigabit LAN, 2GB RAM and good linux support?

Cubietruck: http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubietech_Cubietruck (don't confuse it with the now available 'Cubietruck Plus' that's the same weird design as the Banana Pi M3 using H8/A83T SoC, that might never receive full mainline kernel support, lack's I/O bandwidth and uses the same ultra-slow USB-to-SATA bridge)

ODROID XU4: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

And then the next 2 Cortex-A53 devices I will test are Geekbox and ODROID-C2: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic...ter/page-2

Mainlining support questionable or not existent at the moment but feature both GBit Ethernet and 2 GB RAM.

Apart from that the next device interesting for the project I contribute to (Armbian) is the Turris Omnia based on Marvell's Armada 385. Well, these SoCs might be more expensive than the simple Pine64 board but they're suited for more professional use cases: http://www.marvell.com/embedded-processors/armada-38x/

[nomadewolf]

Do you know of any SBC that hats Gigabit LAN, 2GB RAM and good linux support?

Cubietruck: http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubietech_Cubietruck (don't confuse it with the now available 'Cubietruck Plus' that's the same weird design as the Banana Pi M3 using H8/A83T SoC, that might never receive full mainline kernel support, lack's I/O bandwidth and uses the same ultra-slow USB-to-SATA bridge)

ODROID XU4: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

And then the next 2 Cortex-A53 devices I will test are Geekbox and ODROID-C2: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic...ter/page-2

Mainlining support questionable or not existent at the moment but feature both GBit Ethernet and 2 GB RAM.

Apart from that the next device interesting for the project I contribute to (Armbian) is the Turris Omnia based on Marvell's Armada 385. Well, these SoCs might be more expensive than the simple Pine64 board but they're suited for more professional use cases: http://www.marvell.com/embedded-processors/armada-38x/

The ODROID seems to have terrible Linux support, not to mention their boards apparently only have 4 weeks warranty...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDXXQhg--ro



The Cubietruck seems like a nice board also, but suffers from the same problem...
https://youtu.be/Mx5FgDAGJw4?t=5m48s

The Turris Omnia also looks promising, but its a router...
I don't really care much about paying a bit more. I just want something with enough power to not be sluggish, enough RAM not to starve after a couple of apps and decent support.

[tkaiser]

Sorry but I won't look at youtube reviews made by disappointed individuals. I rely on my own experiences and the community.

And I buy stuff with normal warranty (pollin.de sells Hardkernel stuff and there are several CubieTech sellers here).

The Cubietruck is supported by mainline kernel and the same applies to the XU4 also (but still a bit experimental). Some stuff that works with the vendor's outdated kernels won't work with mainline (and some stuff might never work). But since I care more about headless/server mode that doesn't affect me that much.

In case you're searching for a good Linux desktop experience I would simply avoid ARM. I tried it several times but it always sucked. Especially since I'm used to do my usual desktop stuff within OS X (that makes massive use of GPU/VPU acceleration) I just get mad when looking at stuttering videos or sludgy window compositing and so on.

[nomadewolf]

Sorry but I won't look at youtube reviews made by disappointed individuals. I rely on my own experiences and the community.

And I buy stuff with normal warranty (pollin.de sells Hardkernel stuff and there are several CubieTech sellers here).

The Cubietruck is supported by mainline kernel and the same applies to the XU4 also (but still a bit experimental). Some stuff that works with the vendor's outdated kernels won't work with mainline (and some stuff might never work). But since I care more about headless/server mode that doesn't affect me that much.

In case you're searching for a good Linux desktop experience I would simply avoid ARM. I tried it several times but it always sucked. Especially since I'm used to do my usual desktop stuff within OS X (that makes massive use of GPU/VPU acceleration) I just get mad when looking at stuttering videos or sludgy window compositing and so on.

Thanks.
Might go with LattePanda instead.
Think that might have good Linux support? Since it's Intel Processor and graphics...

[tkaiser]

Might go with LattePanda instead.
Think that might have good Linux support? Since it's Intel Processor and graphics...

Attention, there we're talking about Cherry/Bay Trail and the situation differs much from x86 we're used to. It's worth to read through the comments here: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/...olinuxino/ (and BTW it's worth to read Olimex' blog all the time since quite a few embedded experts share their knowledge in the comments)

[nomadewolf]

Might go with LattePanda instead.
Think that might have good Linux support? Since it's Intel Processor and graphics...

Attention, there we're talking about Cherry/Bay Trail and the situation differs much from x86 we're used to. It's worth to read through the comments here: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/...olinuxino/ (and BTW it's worth to read Olimex' blog all the time since quite a few embedded experts share their knowledge in the comments)

Yeah, i think i will wait until the board is out so i can see what it can and cannot do...