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?
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.
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.
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.
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