NicoD

Thank you for your very complete answer. I'm ignorant when it comes to these things. I saw that "new hardware : RockPi4" So I thought it was now supported more easily with kernel 5.1. Not as simple as I thought clearly. I'm planning a video about the NanoPi M4 and RockPi4B in some weeks. So it would have been great. I should have known it wasn't that simple... since it never is I'm learning every day. Thanks

This is exactly what I had predicted. If you can't beat them, join them, and kill them from within. First they tried fighting it. Then they started to buy themself into Linux, and slowly they are taking control of many important aspects. I don't know if what they are planning is good for the open source community. They can easily add things and then copyright it so Linux goes backwards, or even gets to be unuseable. I hope they really mean it that "Microsoft loves Linux". But I'm having troubles believing this. It isn't in the companies culture. It does look promising, and might be an improvement. But I'm always paranoid when it comes to Microsoft. I once worked for a major tech company(1999-2003), Lernhout & Hauspie. They made speech technology in the late 90's and early 2000's. They started working together with Microsoft. Until everything was almost finished and then Microsoft pulled themselfs out the project. Everything did end up in Windows XP (Microsoft SAM). And they even left markers to L&H in it, not caring about removing it. L&H went bust(other reasons). Now the technology is used for Siri, and a lot more speech to text and text to speech systems, and even google translate has it's origions with L&H. Microsoft is still the same company, but they try to show another face. No difference with Apple.

Did you try if 3.5mm works after that? It's just resetting the devices. Open pulseaudio and go to configuration and disable the hdmi-sound. (hdmi only has outputs) Then see if your sound works.

With Armbian you can install from sd to emmc with : sudo armbian-config Then something like copy to eMMC or hard disk. It's very easy. Good luck with it.

Could anyone also enable kernel 5.1 for the RockPi4 dev on the Armbian build script please? I would love to test it out with Armbian. I'm very curious how it is. I've just started building a dev 5.0 for the RockPi4 and saw there's now Disco. Also very curious about that. I love new things to test, and this time it doesn't cost me money

This is probably because nothing has been adjusted for the new sd-card reader in the Rock64V3. Is this with every OS? And with every kind of sd-card? Did any developer get a board, and have they looked at the problem? It could be you're giving away eMMC's for nothing.

For eMMC you can use the eflasher image. You put that on an sd-card, and boot with the sd-card and eMMC connected. It will then install the image onto the eMMC. It's a bit a walk around. This works a lot better with armbian. It's not normal if that takes so long to upgrade. Is the network connection good? Do you use wifi or ethernet? I think if you just remove hostapd everything should work with apt. Otherwise use aptitude to fix the problem. The use is the same as apt, but when it can't install or remove, it gives you different choices of what it can do. Sometimes you've got to choose no many times until the right sollution is found. Sometimes is quickly. You can also get help on the friendlyElec forum on that. There should be a few people keepin an eye and ear open there for those issues. I only use armbian, but tried FriendlyDesktop last week to test their OpenGL drivers. I didn't have problems I couldn't quickly resolve. With Lubuntu armhf there is a problem with keyboard configuration. This is my fix for that. Problem with keyboard-configuration Before upgrade do : sudo locale-gen "en_GB.UTF-8" sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales sudo nano /etc/environment add -> LC_ALL="en_GB.utf8" Armbian is in my eyes as good as perfect on the M4. I don't know of anything important not working. Bluetooth does work, sudo armbian-config -> network devices ->install bluetooth For the 3.5mm audio jack there's an easy fix. Download this file (open terminal and type this) wget https://forum.armbian.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=4093 Run the following command alsactl --file ./asound.state.draft.201902018 restore With that I don't know anything else not working. Greetings.

How can I test this? I checked the build script but couldn't see anything different. Or is it already in the default build script for the latest build?

Hi. You can control the temperature of most SBC's by downclocking them. The Tinker Board overheats too quickly, but you can clock it to 1.6Ghz so it doesn't throttle(quickly). Or you can use a better heatsink. The NanoPi M4 has a maximum temperature of 69°C when clocked at 1.8Ghz/1.4Ghz. While clocked at 2Ghz/1.5Ghz it goes over it's throttle mark of 85°C without a fan. What other trades does the board need? Does it need USB3, gigabit ethernet, must it be raspberry pi compatible gpio's, ...? The most important factor seems to me that it must be stable and well supported. The Tinker Board isn't the best, it's got powering issue's since it's powered with microUSB. And it's the only board that broke(burned out hdmi caps) that I've had. I'm not too gentle with my boards, but the Tinker I had almost never used. I bought a new one and never used that one either. They are also very overpriced. The NanoPi M4 is the best all round board in my opinion. It's got everything a modern SBC should have, and it's very stable. I don't think I ever had mine crash. It depends on what your needs are, but an older well supported board like the Odroid C2 could be good too. It doesn't overheat. At 1.5Ghz it doesn't go over 70°C. It's powered with a barrel jack, it's very stable. But I do not know for how long they will keep selling them. It's an older quad-core SBC, but still the best IMO. It's the fastest when overclocked, doesn't consume too much, and it doesn't overheat. Temperatures Odroid C2 ---------------------- No OC : Idle with fan : 27°C 1.5Ghz Maxed fan : 40°C Idle no fan : 36°C Maxed no fan : 68°C OC : Idle with fan : 27°C 1.75Ghz Maxed out with fan : 42°C Idle no fan : 36°C Maxed out no fan : 71°C There are many companies who make industrial SBC's. But I know little to nothing of those. There are many SBC's, but making the right choice is very important. Most look good on paper, but that's not always the same in practice. The Rock64 for example could be great for your goals. But I haven't had good experiences with it. So I can't advice that. I think the PineH64 model b could become a good one too. But software isn't ready for it, and I don't know/think it's selling well. So the user base will be limited too. It does seem more stable to me than the Rock64 is. And quite a lot faster too.

Hi. The Armbian images for the NanoPi M4 are well advanced. I heard bluetooth isn't working now. (bluetooth works, install with armbian-config) Otherwise everything should work well. The FriendlyARM images are also not that bad. There is an issue with hostapd. But if you don't need it, then you can just remove it. Armbian is clocked at 2Ghz/1.5Ghz vs 1.8Ghz/1.4Ghz on the FriendlyElec images. So it is quite a bit faster. But that's at the cost of higher temperatures and a higher power consumption. You can of course clock it lower in Armbian if you want that. If it would not be for the other RK3399 boards(RockPro64, RockPi4,..), then the NanoPi M4/NanoPC T4/NEO4 would probably have been in the supported list a long time ago. They are already in it on the build script. If you have issue's, then please report them.

Indeed. I love it to have these awesome boards for this price. The possibillity's are limitless with them. I didn't think 2 years ago we would have gotten this far. The XU4 was also a powerhouse. But these arm64 boards are just something else. The N2 does have a good power solution. It's powered with 12V barrel jack. I've never seen such stable voltages on the 5V lane on an SBC. But it's got it's issue's as well. And yes, multi-core performance is only important for applications that can make good use of it. Many applications still favor single core performance.

Balbes now also has an Armbian image with the Odroid 4.9 kernel. All the recent fixes or already in the kernel since it's recently build. Go to Odroid N2 -> DEV -> in his download link. For me it's a perfect image. If you need zram, then you need to do : sudo apt install zram-config and then sudo nano /etc/rc.local -> add zramctl --find --size 1800M mkswap /dev/zram0 swapon /dev/zram0 Everything else seems to work out of the box.

It all depends on what you want to compare. Comparing the CPU is the easiest. In my opinion it's best to use 7zip single core benchmark(since 100% use) and multiply that by the number of cores at that speed. I only use decompression numbers because I do not want to mix compression with decompression. The Nvidia Jetson Nano has 1421 single-core x 4 = 5684 (approximation of it's maximum possible CPU computation power) The Odroid N2(no OC) small cores : 1647 x 2 = 3297 + (big cores 1905 x 4 = 7620) = 10917 (again approximation, just a number...) The NanoPi M4 small cores : 1335 x 4 = 5340 + (big cores 2005 x2 = 4010) = 9350 (....) The NanoPC T3+ : 1290 x 8 cores = 10320 (....) To compare GPU power is a lot harder. And most important about SBC's is drivers for it, and in that case the NVIDIA Jetson Nano probably outclasses the N2. The N2 doesn't have good GPU/VPU drivers for Linux. The N2's GPU is also very powerful, but can't be used the way the Nano's GPU can be used. I've got a new USB3 4K camera. The N2 can't handle more than 720p 60fps software encoding. While the Nano would have no problems with 4K hardware encoding. And even multiple camera's at a time. You can run a Android benchmark to get some sort of GPU score. But it doesn't say anything about the useability in Linux. For that the numbers aren't that important, but how well you can use it for the goal you've got for it. I now could use the Nano with the USB3 camera. Would have made life a lot easier to review the camera. I would have loved to buy the Nano. But it was that or the N2. Now saving money for a big trip. Maybe after that I'll see to source one. The N2 does excell in power consumption. Only about 6W maxed out(only CPU). That's lower than some quad-core SBC's. Probably the 12nm that's the biggest cause for this. Thanks to your software it's an amazing SBC for me. I had 3 weeks of troubles and bad luck with the Odroid OS'es. I installed your Bionic 4.9 DEV and haven't had any issue. Haven't shut it down since I installed Armbian. Do you know anything of comming availabillity of X11/VPU drivers? That would be a gamechanger for it. I hope it's going to be in mainline too. The N2 could be an awesome Linux desktop "PC" for many. I don't know many Linux desktop tasks that need more CPU power than this. Now the NanoPi M4 is still better for that(and for NAS). And here a link to my review video about the Odroid N2 for those interested. NicoD - Odroid N2 Full Linux Review

Hi all. I've made a new review video about the Odroid N2. It an amzaing beast of an SBC. But it ain't perfect for everyone. Geetings, NicoD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dylc0GjeyM8 @balbes150 Tanks for the great image.

Not easily. And it depends on which SBC you've got. I think it should work on a well supported armhf SBC. You can try to compile it yourself. https://github.com/martinohanlon/mcpi If you use kernel 5.x there's a change it could work. Please let us know if you get it to work.

It's easy copying an Armbian image from sd-card to eMMC. In therminal you type : sudo armbian-config There's an app there to copy everything to where you want it. Once that's done you should be able to do what you want. The image isn't ready yet, but once it's set up right it is useable. For sound an USB audio adapter is best. Everything runs better at a lower display resolution. Preferably 720p to watch youtube with firefox for example. If you want it to do heavy computaions then it's best to cool it well with a good heatsink, or heatsink+fan, or clock it a little lower. It throttles quickly otherwise. To go from a Raspberry Pi to an Orange Pi is a drastic step. They are the most opposit of all. They make no good software for any of their boards, they give no support to the community. They sell a lot, but it's more a help yourself thing. That's why Armbian is awesome, it gives a use to those many boards bought for what was written on paper, but would never realise that without Armbian. For great software on it you'll have to wait a few months. Until then you've got to help yourself with whats arround. I find the Armban now miles ahaid of any Orange Pi image. Their latest image could only be clocked at 1.5Ghz, they took away the highest clocks to it would behave.

Run a virtual machine with Ubuntu Bionic 18.04 on VirtualBox on a x86 machine. In that virtual machine, do this to download the buildscript : sudo apt-get -y -qq install git git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/armbian/build cd build To start the build sudo ./compile.sh It's very simple. Just follow the instructions. Here the link to the docs https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/ I was always distracted by the list "what do I need" because of the bullet points. But it's just very simple.

I build complete distro. Now built Armbian Bionic 5.83 with default kernel for the M4.

People are working on hdmi-sound. Only thing you can do for better video performance is lowering your display resolution to 720p. Then you can watch 1080p videos. Otherwise wait for kernel 5.2.

At least dataleaks don't polute the environment Edit : And I'm not American so I've got nothing to worry about

Electric cars exist longer than gas driven cars. More than half of all vehicles in the early 1900's were electric vehicles. It worked then. Now what happened that it doesn't work now anymore?

Thanks. I'll try that. I'm building a new bionic image for the M4(just because). It'll take some time. I want an Atomic Pi to build my images. Guess I'll order me one.

I get the error GL/gl.h: No such file or directory I did install the dev libraries. I've searched for it, it should be in libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev and mesa-common-dev. I've just received 3 x 32GB eMMC modules for the M4(gotten from a viewer ), so I've got to reinstall anyway. I installed them, that broke dpkg. (I didn't expect anything else) I'll start again without the script and see what the standard drivers can do, and I'll try to find out what everything does. I know nothing of this, but I can learn. Thanks for the support

For some tasks the T3+ is faster. But only tasks that scale well over multiple cores like Blender. Most applications don't do that well and prefere a better single core performance. I indeed menth the Fire3. Too many names. That should be the most powerful for a low price, but indeed not much usb ports. You mentioned the Atomic Pi. Could be a valible option. It's cheap, x86 and very fast for that price. I once made a list of benchmarks of most of my sbc's. It is confusing since there ain't no perfect benchmark tools(and I wanted to show discrepencies). But it gives an idea of what you can expect. 7 zip, single core scores are important(small core-big core). Multi-core doesn't give exact results(not 100% se). Igrnore gtkperf, gimp and sysbench. I only used that to show it was useless. The H3 performs a bit worse than the Rock64 at 1.3Ghz. I should have added one, I've got enough of them but don't like them much except for light data server. You can perform the 7-zip tests yourself on the H3. Install p7zip-full, then 7z b (multicore test) sudo taskset c 0 7z b (single core) I only use decompression numbers since I do not want to mix compression with decompression and get a number of nothing. I also still think the M4 is the best choice. The only sbc that never had issues, and I use it daily.

Hi. You seem to have done your homework well. Those are indeed all the most powerful boards. But other needs are important too. Like how much ram do you need, is power efficiency an issue? Does your task scale well over multiple cores? What voltage do you want it to use? For example when ram isn't that important you could go for the smaller NanoPi NEO4 with the same Soc as the M4, but only 1GB ram. But good cooling is needed with that. The NEO3 is even a bit more powerful with 8 cores of 1.4Ghz. But single core performance is a lot worse. Power consumption is then again better than the RK3399's. There's also the NanoPC T3+ with that SoC, but a bigger footprint and 2GB ram. The Odroid N2 is the most powerful of all in CPU power. It does need a higher voltage than the others. It's very new and not super stable yet. But I've tried a new Armbian image today on it and it seems to be better than anything else for it. Too early to know. The H6's are pretty powerful for a quad-core sbc. Also very new and software isn't ready. It needs sufficient cooling to get the most out of it, but it's doable. I see the PineH64 model b becomming a good board. but that has 2.4Ghz wifi vs 5Ghz wifi of the Orange Pi3. I've got most of those boards. And the overall best board is the NanoPi M4 for me. Very fast, stable, good Armbian software, great connectivity. It does consume the most of all when maxed out. Or the Odroid XU4 is also a very powerful board, octa-core. But hard to cool. I hope that helps.