Graphics

[Danne79]

Hi, wille there be any graphics drivers for Linux so we can use it as a media player or will there only be Android media player that is supported?

/D

[Vroomer]

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!

[taros]

The boards have the Mali 400 MP2 GPU.

[psypro]

Hi, wille there be any graphics drivers for Linux so we can use it as a media player or will there only be Android media player that is supported?

/D

Pine64 corp support only Android.
"Open community" can try to make one, that might not happen, and will take long time if.
Hope devs will clary this, if I am wrong.

[monmoonmooonmoooon]

The boards have the Mali 400 MP2 GPU.

What that really means?

[tkaiser]

The boards have the Mali 400 MP2 GPU.

What that really means?

Nothing in the context of 'media player'. Have a look at

http://linux-sunxi.org/Mali400 (2D/3D acceleration)
http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX (HW accelerated video)

Since the Pine guys will end up collecting a million or even more maybe there's a little chance that they can convince Allwinner to open up their code so linux-sunxi devs have not to reverse engineer everything again.

[taros]

The boards have the Mali 400 MP2 GPU.

What that really means?

The GPU is made by another company called ARM Holdings and it is up to them to release a free graphics driver.
See the specs at http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/m...ifications

The graphics driver also needs to be accelerated in order to show high definition video in Linux.

[ajstarks]

Will there be support for hardware accelerated 2D via OpenVG?

[BobF]

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.

[o9guy]

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.