Dan25

Mainline works, I'm using it for a project myself (driving a large P2314T touchscreen), just don't expect to play GPU intensive video games on it. Its a $35 board that has eMMC, much better I/O and a decently designed SoC, short of the BeagleBoneBlack there really isn't a much better board to buy in this space with these features when it comes to full, libre support, especially if you are on a budget.
 
If you want a minimal Debian build with kernel 4.10, I have one kicking around. HDMI is fully working! Alternatively, just wait a few days for the driver updates to land. These volunteers are working as fast as they can, can't blame 'em.
 
By the way, a friend of mine is working on building Armbian as a service, whereby you can build Armbian images with the packages/scripts you want included from the getgo (for easy mass deployment/initial setup), it may be of use soon.

Mainline works, I'm using it for a project myself (driving a large P2314T touchscreen), just don't expect to play GPU intensive video games on it. Its a $35 board that has eMMC, much better I/O and a decently designed SoC, short of the BeagleBoneBlack there really isn't a much better board to buy in this space with these features when it comes to full, libre support, especially if you are on a budget.
 
If you want a minimal Debian build with kernel 4.10, I have one kicking around. HDMI is fully working! Alternatively, just wait a few days for the driver updates to land. These volunteers are working as fast as they can, can't blame 'em.
 
By the way, a friend of mine is working on building Armbian as a service, whereby you can build Armbian images with the packages/scripts you want included from the getgo (for easy mass deployment/initial setup), it may be of use soon.

Hey all,
I've been using Allwinner boards for the last couple of years and Armbian+forums have made this a workable thing that I promote to my friends as being The Way To Go instead of being a big fat waste of time. 
Igor + Tkaiser (and anyone else forgive me if I didn't give you a shout) - You fucking rock.  You really do; you've all provided amazing amounts of support for multiple kernels and userspaces and in the face of (at least) bullshit from the chip vendors, yet you are absolutely crucial to them being taken seriously.
The work from Armbian has (for me) made the difference between BananaPi, OrangePi, etc all being an unusable washout of #ShitDidn'tWork, to being something I am excited to build into things and personally promote.
 
Igor, Tkaiser; I've never met you but your work speaks for itself; you give a shit and you keep giving and shit and THANK YOU FOR THAT.
I just donated you some $. If you're still reading this and you're using their work, you might think about doing same.   FWIW; what turned my head is seeing Igor and crew putting _years_ of work into this. 
 
Anyway, much, much, much appreciated. From one to another; good job.
DrTune

How is blocking tivoization a bad thing? I've built commercial products on the OrangePi PC, the relevant project is on github with a nice little bash script to install & configure it all, but the thing is, if you design your business model well, having tivoized hardware is not useful or beneficial.
 
Red Hat and other giants have gotten this far without Tivoizing their offerings, and the only businesses intent on doing so are either doing it to protect a weak business model, or arcane reasons that generally do not make sense and will not generate extra revenue.

Go patch the kernel module and test it, then submit a pull request. That'd be the fastest way to get this fixed.

How is blocking tivoization a bad thing? I've built commercial products on the OrangePi PC, the relevant project is on github with a nice little bash script to install & configure it all, but the thing is, if you design your business model well, having tivoized hardware is not useful or beneficial.
 
Red Hat and other giants have gotten this far without Tivoizing their offerings, and the only businesses intent on doing so are either doing it to protect a weak business model, or arcane reasons that generally do not make sense and will not generate extra revenue.