SBC's with better mainline Linux support than Raspberry Pi?
Rasbperry Pi is a popular choice as a SoC / SBC Linux board. But you have to use their custom linux kernel. Are there Linux boards with decent mainline Linux kernel support?
Device Tree Source. It’s a text description of the hardware. The kernel uses it to load and configure drivers. It’s the most critical set of information for supporting any particular board.
Can’t even being to agree enough on this. Unless you specifically need something that an SBC - ARM or X86 - offers, a second hand thin client or USFF computer will be a better fit, plus they come with high-quality power supplies and solid cases.
Well, not really. The HP g3 mini is roughly the size of a paperback book and costs around 100€, depending on the specs. Similar devices of slightly older makes are even cheaper.
So, yes, they are physically larger, but still pretty small. Chances are, you don’t actually need a tiny device like a Pi, so you should at least consider SFF PCs.
You most likely do not want to run a mainline kernel / system. Run Armbian instead, it is Debian optimized for SBCs, it has a very good track record and sometimes is the only option after manufacturers stop creating images for their old boards.
Generic images / mainline kernel might underperform in your board, the GPIO and other low level components will, most likely, not work and you might burn your storage as logging and other I/O intensive operations aren’t tweaked for SD/eMMC. Armbian aims to fix all those issues and provides continuous system and kernel updates long after the manufacturer stops doing so.
Yes www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/ a friend has a couple of those all running Armbian just fine. With all SBCs the trick is to get something that is supported by Armbian.
Having a board which is supported by mainline doesn’t imply running a mainline kernel. Having mainline support is a huge advantage regardless of which kernel is run on a board.
Anything less than mainline support is ewaste imo. Look how terrible the pi graphics support used to be but now thanks to excellent upstream kernel/Mesa drivers it’s great and will continue to work/improve for the foreseeable future.
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