keith

Hi, TallMan, ...And here was me thinking I was all alone with my disillusionment of the way software has developed! I have to agree with most of your sentiments, with one exception. I have been a long time user of Linux (I stress user, as opposed to developer). This came about because more years ago than I care to remember, I worked for two major German companies on development of what was then known as Point-to-Multipoint communications, which later became the foundation for modern mobile phone network backbone communications. As part of this work, we had to carry out network planning for what are now the major phone network operators. Basically this consisted of predicting whether links would work under varying conditions (this was at frequencies up to 20 GHz). The tools we had to do this were the usual company Microsoft computer setups, satellite photographs of the area (in digital format), and a software tool written in Unix which used this data to predict lines of communication in 3 dimensions. This was my first experience of Unix, and it became a bit of a life-changer. Those of us who had to learn our way round it (as users), eventually all realised very quickly how much better/faster/more reliable it was than anything from anyone else, especially Microsoft. Of course, getting Unix for personal use at the time was not really on, but eventually Linus Torvalds produced Linux, and I for one never looked back. I'm well aware that users of Linux are regarded as nerds, and I'm happy with that, even if I try not to be one! As I got older, I eventually began to lose my interest in programming (another story!), but I am still a Linux user, and always will be. Its true it has its problems - but then all OS's have problems. In my opinion, sadly, these problems are not really the software as such - its almost always down to lack of information, or the proliferation of false and misleading information - after all, until recent years, developers set out with good intentions. Perhaps I can draw a parallel with my experiences in this thread using Armbian - While information and help does exist (Armbian documentation, for example), it is limited, and by no means comprehensive. It seems to be very difficult to make people understand that an OS is a tool, and should be usable, just like a screwdriver or a hammer, yet all too often the information to make productive use of the OS is simply not available. Instead, people like me rely on the good offices of people such as yourself - yet where would we be if the Internet didn't exist?. I do agree with you that even Linux is becoming 'overburdened' - but to some extent, that is one of its virtues - I have been able to make ancient computers run using Linux - Windows can't even make the transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 unless the user buys a new machine. At least Linux has never declared good equipment obsolete, like Microsoft. It is easy for me to see a very close similarity between Armbian and Linux - I know this is intended, because of the Debian connection, so for people like me thats no bad thing. I can also see the attraction of RISC-V (probably too late for me to take it up), but one can hope these develop in a more organised, less monetised way than some OS's. Great to hear about the Commodore - a classic!. I still have my very first personal computers - a Sinclair Z80, which still works, although its keyboard has troubles. I got it around 1981, and it was one of the early self-assembly versions without a case. No-one was more surprised than me when the thing worked. Maybe I'll find another keyboard for it - I also have books giving its full ROM listing, and a circuit diagram, and 'advanced' programming - or BASIC in other words. Then I moved on to an Oric Atmos, produced in 1984 by Tangerine Computers (Shades of Orange!). It was a 'real' computer, with a proper keyboard, and used a Rockwell 6502. I did a lot of machine code programming on it, and very quickly changed the processor to a 65C02, which has a better, expanded instruction set. (in ths days, the 650s was often cited as having the first Reduced Instruction Set). I also still have it in working condition, plus a full ROM listing/circuit, and books on programming it (machine code). The BASIC it used was also very good. Later machines included a Dragon, Atari520 and some forgotten (perhaps for the best) . Like you the OPi is my first ARM device (actually given to me by a friend). I was interested in a Raspberry PI 5 (I have an old RasPi3), but they were so hard to get and expensive, I gave up. (I think the friend gave up on the OPi, which was why I ended up with it)! I also would have like to have seen most modern OS's lead to development of better systems, but I guess it won't happen in my lifetime, but at least I can support work on things like ARM and RISC-V. Incidentally, did you see that Qualcom won a case brought against them by ARM because techniques developed by ARM were allegedly used by Qualcom in their mobile phone processors? - probably not a good thing for ARM. And finally...I'm still stuck with this confounded stray icon on my Armbian installation, so another night searching for it.I 'm quite impressed otherwise - it seems very fast and efficient, (compared to my Ryzen7 Desktop machine) so I'll keep at it - It has most of the software on it that I need for now, so its definitely usable. I know about the hidden and system folders in Linux, and they are fairly easy to access in Linux Mint, but a search doesn't throw it up (yet) - I'll keep trying. Thanks for the Help, Keith

Hi, Werner and Tallman. The slow update did seem a bit odd to me - its why I mentioned my good network connection. I'll try again later and see what happens. I am in eastern europe, and we don't normally get this kind of problem. I used to have a network connection of only 6 Mbit/s until about a year ago, and even that worked OK at the time. (948 Mbit/s as we have now is great). Normally my Linux Mint apt-update is usually less than a minute. Tallman:- we seem to have common likes and dislikes!. First, Firefox is definitely not installed on my Armbian, so I'll have a look at trying to install it later. Like you, I also dislike Snap and Flatpak packages. My first experience with a computer was back in the early 1960's with a Honeywell 803 - it had 1K x 18bit word magnetic memory, so any program written to run on it (usually Algol 63 - more or less machine code) had to be *tiny*. A colleague wrote a successful program to play whist on it - it rather makes the bloat associated with snap/flatpak packages look very silly to someone like me. My programming experience ended some years ago for various reasons, but I am firmly convinced that modern machines could be far faster and more efficient than they are if modern programmers had to use much less memory. We had to be very careful how we used space, and spent time optimizing anything we wrote. (actually not written - it was mostly hand-punched paper tape. (whats a keyboard)? I believe if modern programmers had to do this, we would not hear so much about the insecurity of software/networks - and I won't even go into how much companies like Microsoft appear to contribute to this bloat. I would have thought that an OS should contain all the elements (dependency files) necessary to run any software compatible with the hardware, so therefore it should only be necessary to install 'system' packages, instead of snap/flatpak with all the attendant dependencies (bloat). - Sorry - rant over. Finally, another question, which is driving me nuts. While I was playing with Armbian, I accidentally dragged the LibreOffice Write icon over the Armbian Config Icon, and got a new 'unnamed icon' folder - and I can find no way to get rid of it. I assumed this created a similarly named folder somewhere, so all I had to do was delete it but extensive file searching hasn't traced it so far - any pointers please? Thanks again, Keith Edit: thanks for that Torz77 - should be able to find it, I guess.

Thanks for the information, everyone. I transferred the OS to the EMMC as recommended by CryBaby, and all is running well. I am slowly finding my way round Armbian - not too difficult, due to the similarities between Armbian and Linux Mint. So far, the only thing I really dislike is the Chromium Web-Browser. Not Chromium per se, but its infested with Google, and if there is one thing that I have always considered detrimental to any computer is Google (and Microsoft). I've been looking for another browser to install, but no luck so far - any recommendations, anyone? - as a Linux user, I would like Firefox, but so far, haven't found it. The software cache seems very slow to update - Its been about 30 minutes so far, and has not even reached 50% - I'm comparing again to Linux Mint, which usually updates the cache in 2 or 3 minutes (I have a fibre-optic internet connection, with 948 Mbit/s upload/480 Mbit/s Download, and its connected by cable, not wireless, so not slow). It looks as though I will have to stop using '-' as a connector between parts of my text - I just read somewhere that it has been hi-jacked by the AI wallies to indicate that a particular text is generated by AI. I may make mistakes and be slow, but I'm definitely not Artificial Idiocy (I know - you're Natural Idiocy.....😉 Seriously - thanks for all the help you provided - I've got from a pricey little brick to a useable computer with your inputs - thanks again, Keith

So I now got Edge 6.16.4 Kernel on my SD card, and I want to boot from either EMMC or SATA to take advantage of the extra speed. Arbian-config presents several options. Which option is generally recommended, from the 5 shown in Armbian-config?. For me, Option 3 (boot from EMMC, System on SATA, USB or NVMe) seems to be what I want, but I am interested to hear any recommendations or problems, since this is and Edge Kernel. Tanks, Keith

Thanks for that , TallMan. You told me I needed 6.16.4 - and it took me a while to realise that I could probably find it using the Armbian-config. I thought I did pretty much as you describe, but it wouldn't boot, so I guess I did something wrong, (Probably picked up the faulty card mentioned above!). but didn't have time yesterday to try again - so thats for this evening. I'll get there eventually, I hope. At the moment I guess I'm still scared I'm going to do something irrepairable, because up til now I've always been a user, so not too adventurous yet. Keith

TallMan - Thanks for the recommendations. I thought I would try them, and use it as a learning experience for Armbian - I made a hash of it, I think, and sorry, I need some help again. First I looked for kernel 6.16.4 online, and found at least two, with different SHA checksums. Then it occurred to me that perhaps they were listed in Armbios-config, so after reading about it in the documentation, I booted it and eventually found a list of kernels available, so I selected Vendor 6.16.4 and tried to install it. Somewhere I went wrong, but don't know where - the process seemed to be running fine, and something (?) seemed to be installed. Eventually it needed a reboot - but once again I had a brick. I didn't get as far as installing the OS on EMMC or SSD. I reflashed the SD card with vendor kernel 6.1 as previously, to start again from scratch, but am not confident about trying the update again - hence the need for one or two pointers. Sorry about this - your help would be appreciated. Keith

SteeMan - OK - so as a total non-developer, I will steer clear of 'mainline kernels (at least until I can learn some more😀 TallMan - I only wish everyone online was as helpful as you have been. I actually got the thing to work using your instructions, which is a first for me using online 'help'. I no longer have a useless brick. I have a red/blue flashing LED, a working desktop, and (now) a need to learn something about Armbian - this being my first sight of it. Some of it looks familiar from Mint due to the Debian heritage I also want to learn how to make the OPi boot from either the EMMC or the SDD, as I understand this is much faster - although it works, booting from the SD card clearly doesn't do justice to the OPi hardware (and life is too short😀. Thanks to all who responded - you all helped. Keith

Thanks again for the inputs - I'm slowly working through the instructions, and hopefully learning. TallMan is right - I meant 1 TB, not 1 GB - (it was tiring day!) I'm not really bothered at this stage with which OS Image I use - My original intention was to get the thing going, then eventually try each available OS until I found something I could live with. Normally I use Linux Mint on my desktop computer (user - not nerd!), so this was why Ubuntu came to the top of the pile for testing because of the common Debian background, but not necessarily as the 'finished' job. I more or less did as suggested above (using the Orange Ubuntu 'Official' download. As noted, I seem to have had a dead SD card, and did not have the error reported after validation after I got a new card - but the odd thing now is that although the old 'faulty' SD card at least produced a 'splash' screen, the new card does nothing - the OPi just does a good imitation of a warm brick. I did the SHA check, and the Etcher validation was OK, so presumably the burnt image was OK (?). I'll work through Tall Mans instructions, and see what happens, and report back - thanks for the detailed description - its more useful than many people realise to someone who doesn't do this sort of thing every day. Just out of curiosity - is the 'no-video output' of Armbian 6.12 a bug (as I suspect) or deliberate - and if so why? Thanks again for the help. Keith

Thanks for the input, CryBaby. First off - I'm a total dummy when it comes to the OrangePi - no idea where to start, so any help is appreciated. I think my PSU is OK - it (apparently) was supplied with the OPi (I was given it as well), and it is rated at 4 amperes. I measured the voltage when loaded, and it is 5.12 volts, so I guess it is OK. After the problems with the SD card, - I tried again installing Balena Etcher on my Linux Mint PC, but when I tried to burn an image (I tried several, not just Ubuntu), it appears to do this, then fails just as the verification process ends. I then tried the AppImage version of Etcher from the OrangePi downloads, and this did the same thing - failure at the end of verification. So, as you suggest, I suspected a dud SD card, but I had no spare, so just tried what I had (I know ....sorry!), and this is when I get the splash image and nothing further. I now have a new SD card, and the image burn/verification appears to be OK - no errors. But now the OPi board does not appear to switch on - The LED remains red, and I can feel that the components on the board are getting warm, but no video output. If there is a bootloader, where is it located? and can I reload it it to be sure it is there (I understand your comment about getting a flash screen, but I have my doubts about the integrity of any of the software after what I was told about the OPi) Thanks for your help, Keith.

Sorry if I have come to the wrong place. A friend has given me an Orange Pi 5 Plus, fitted with a 1GB SSD, and I have been trying to get it started up. According to its previous owner, the SSD had been completely erased (I don't know why). It had no SD card with it when I got it. I downloaded the online instruction manuals, and set about trying to start it up, using a suitable 32GB SD card. I first tried with (OrangePi) Ubuntu, but ran into problems using Balena Etcher. It apparently transfers the Ubuntu Image to the SD card, but just as it appears to complete the process of verification, it produces a helpful error message ('There was an Error'....). I also tried with other OSes, with the same result, so it seems to be either me or the OPi which is having problems. After a bit of research, I found a description of using the Linux command 'dd' to transfer an image, so I did this, under a machine with Linux Mint - this appeared to go OK. I then plugged in the SD card, and powered up the OPi. After a delay, I get what looks like a Ubuntu 'splash' page on screen, and it appears to go through an installation process (? not sure if thats whats happening). However, after several minutes, there is a message saying there is an error, and a desktop session will be started to allow debugging - but I can't get anything else to happen. I have asked the previous owner, but he says probably the bootloader is missing. (I suspect he never got it running). Here I come unstuck - I can't find any info on bootloaders - like what it is, where to get it, what to do with it, etc, so I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. I have gone through the instruction manual, but it seems to be slightly out of date, and I had no success using its instructions. Ideally, I would like to boot the OPi from the SSD, if that is possible, but have no idea how to go about this - and there seems to be a great deal of conflicting (wrong?) info online. I did try the Orange Pi 'official' forums, but got lost in the chinese messages which came up.