NicoD

GPU drivers have nothing to do with Armbian. Armbian can only show how to use them. We are not driver developers.
It is expected that the blob Rockchip driver runs way better than the open-source panfrost/panfork drivers. Panfrost might improve in time. N2/N2+/VIM3 at first also performed worse than RK3399 but after time it now outperforms RK3399 by a lot.
Both drivers are very useful to me.
You can use the blob by running in x11 and run your program with "malirun programname"
Not everything will work, but for example PS2 emulation works perfect like that.

Video playback has nothing to do with GPU drivers but VPU drivers. For that there is the multimedia ppa from AmazingFate. 

Ok. I'll wait till things are fixed.
I did just test install to NVMe and boot from sd and it indeed didn't work as it should. Couldn't boot into x anymore. Install to eMMC does work. 
I'm already very happy to have this. I can have the same setup on my trip as I've got on my main desktop at home with the Mekotronics mini.
With a 1TB NVMe for movies. That's great
I was really let down by the FE images for it. Seems there's degression. The old R6S image was better than the new R6C Ubuntu. Big thank you!

@NicoD i think you should make a video after we get stable images. Currently something is broken 

Added to Armbian build system https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/fd6a6dec66839b8ceeea22fc3792a9fce1df9fde

Thanks to @Efe Çetin
 
 
Lets keep it in WIP section for awhile until we don't do more testings. I found out armbian-install doesn't work well so this needs to be fixes, perhaps something else ...

Download:

https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-r6s/
(unofficial WIP support)

Someone asked in a different thread how I got Dolphin to run so thought I'd start a thread so not to pollute the other one.
Basically it wasn't that hard especially if youve done some git'hubbing before.
 
I think I followed the 'Ubuntu' instructions here.
Make sure you get the dependencies and do all the steps correctly.
It should build without problems if you do.  (remember you have a lot of cores on Opi5 so can use 'make -j6' or even higher)
 
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/wiki/Building-for-Linux
 
 
You then want to set a config flag to make Dolphin use GLES instead of big brother OpenGL.
(you probably want to run it at least once to generate the config files)
 
nano ~/.config/dolphin-emu/GFX.ini
add a line:
PreferGLES = True
 
But when running one of the more common games I got a shader compilation error.
I hacked around that and also reported it on the Dolpin bug report site and it should be fixed soon when the 'PR' gets accepted.
In the meantime you can read here what to do,
 
https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/13198#
 
 
Note that in my youtube video I get a good fps but later on in the game when you get to the first village the transparencies in the central square bonfire completely kills fps.
The same happens in Metroid Prime when you have the large bluish holo walls in view.
Mario Kart runs pretty well most of the time. Mario Sunshine as well at least in the plaza area I have't tried further.
 
 
Cheers and Good Luck!
 
 

Interview with @rpardini.
 

Interview with @rpardini.
 

Hi all.
I'm working on a script that can install different Linux gaming tools like Box86, Box64, PPSSPP, ...
For now it can only install box86 and box64. There is also an issue installing wine, so this doesn't work either.
 
https://github.com/NicoD-SBC/armbian-gaming
 
Download and unzip and run script : sudo /bin/bash ./armbian-gaming.sh When ready I'll make a video about it and give more info.
 
I've tested it on the PineBookPro with Hirsute.
With the Odroid N2+ you need to activate panfrost, install dependecies for N2+, and then install box86. Tho it didn't work as it should.
If "install box86" gives a build error, try the dependencies for N2+ and try "install box86" again.
 
Please let me know your experiences on other systems.
 

@NicoDVersion 20230219. No manual copying of dtb is needed anymore, all support is included in u-boot, i.e. after writing the image to USB\SD, you can use it immediately. The installation on eMMC has been checked.
 
ps All the necessary changes will automatically get into the official relise version, you can build your own version of the images  

@balbes150I already made the video. I did say in it the sollution for eMMC install is in this thread.
 
 

@balbes150Wifi works.
I'm starting to make the video about your Armbian image on Khadas Edge2. Good work. It's a great experience.

@NicoDVersion 20230211 Armbian for khadas edge2 - added support for HW 3D . The result of gnome3+wayland+arm-blob gave about 3800 parrots. For details on how to install HW and testing, see this topic.
 
 

Alpha version of Armbian for Khades EDGE 2 (rk3588s).
Launch. Download, unpack, burn to USB media (you can use an SD card if there is an additional module with a card reader for an SD card). Connect to any USB port on EDGE 2 and turn on the power. The system starts automatically. It would be interesting to run tests on this version. I pay attention - there is no 3D acceleration yet, general performance tests for the Armbian image are interesting. Wi-Fi is not working yet,  need to use USB-LAN, this will be fixed in future versions.
 
https://disk.yandex.ru/d/QMgdvGqF3jpgJw

You don't have to justify yourself @NicoD, it was just in case this was possible for you. 🤷‍♂️
Maybe I'll bump into someone else involved in Armbian, you never know who one could meet when in FOSDEM. 😉
 

I'd like to go but finances ain't there. Have to save for a cycling trip in a few months, and investing in computer gear for kids.
Tho just going one afternoon is possible. But I've got to sit 2 hours on the train to get in Brussels, and then go from station to the expo, and 2 hours back. So would be a very boring day. And for just being there a few hours I don't feel it's worth it.
If I would go I'd rather stay the night in Brussels on Saturday and leave Sunday evening. And have my recording gear with me to make video's. Next year I can plan it if others promise to go. Enjoy your time in Brussels. I hope the weather will be good.

1. Checking the progress of Armbian-next
 
Video:
https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/vq04OFykxpw7nGp8wJxKME7w8uNf1kMrwHRLldQLTCLJCT-zsZY8KP76aCknhBfN.JyvzRmfR9qulexM2
 
Slides:
https://github.com/rpardini/armbian-build/blob/extensions/README.armbian-next.slides.md#update-feb-1st-armbian-next---general-changes

Armbian Next Jira:
https://armbian.atlassian.net/browse/AR-1451
 
2. Moving development related topics to GitHub

Summed here:
https://armbian.atlassian.net/browse/AR-1529
 
3. Questions around upcoming release
 
Today is the code freeze. Actions:
 
notify maintainers and prepare them to be ready on testings in two weeks from now notify developers: their code gets into release log only if exists in Jira. Minimum requirement is Jira issue or Jira story with Name, short description and field "Fix versions" set to 23.02 that code freeze is a milestone when we change our focus into code stabilisation and fixing bugs. It is not expected to drop existing work in progress at once but gradually close it. in the code freeze period, there is additional restriction on code merge: pull requests approval from 1 person to 2 persons  
@Contributor/Maintainer

After two years of taking place exclusively online, FOSDEM 2023 is back in Brussels, Belgium with thousands expected to attend the 2023 version of the “Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting” both onsite and online. FOSDEM 2023 will take place on February 4-5 with 776 speakers, 762 events, and 63 tracks. As usual, I’ve made my own little virtual schedule below mostly with sessions from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive devroom, but also other devrooms including “Open Media”, “FOSS Educational Programming Languages devroom”, “RISC-V”, and others. FOSDEM Day 1 – Saturday February 4, 2023 10:30 – 10:55 – GStreamer State of the Union 2023 by Olivier Crête GStreamer is a popular multimedia framework making it possible to create a large variety of applications dealing with audio and video. Since the last FOSDEM, it has received a lot of new features: its RTP & WebRTC stack has greatly improved, Rust [...]
The post FOSDEM 2023 schedule – Open-source Embedded, Mobile, IoT, Arm, RISC-V, etc… projects appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.
View the full article

That was very infomative.
Can't add much to the discussion. I agree that forum used to be a lot better and more important. Because of the use of Discord, irc, Jira... there is more fragmentation.

We used to use the forum also to chat between devs/users/mederators. Now that is done on discord, irc or github. So the fun is out of the forum.
Nothing of what is said on discord is of value in the future. While what is said on the forum keeps its value and is easy to find.

Github is good for bugreports and discussion on how to go ahead. But it is a developers tool and not for regular users.
Discord is good to chat. It added features we didn't have on the forum like being able to do voice chats or video chat. But it takes away the focus from the forum for many.

I don't check the forum as much as I used to. Only see if there is anything interesting in the notifications. But I miss a lot because I'm not present as much. And what happens on the forum isn't communicated much about on discord.

Maybe a discord/irc room where forum posts can be seen. Just the titles would be enough to sparkle curiosity.

For me there is too much to have to keep up with. I've got my YT channel, reddit, facebook groups, forum, discord, twitter, ...
Quality decreases when too much is going on. Nobody can keep up with it maybe except Igor. (he seems to see it al )

Watched at 1.25x.

I originally posted this on reddit after seeing a lot of posts trying to use a SATA M.2 SSD and saying it wouldn't boot with replies telling them to go buy a NVME M.2 SSD which isn't necessary when the board does support SATA M.2 with flashing the correct bootloader. This guide has 3 different sections, 1 being booting with Orange pi OS and 2 being with Armbian OS
 
Orange Pi OS Instructions
Download Orange Pi OS Ubuntu or Debian from their website http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/service-and-support/Orange-pi-5.html unzip the 7z file to get the .img file and flash it to your sd card with your preferred flasher i.e balenaetcher. Once flashed put it into orange pi 5 and boot from sd card first
once booted, the rest will be done in a terminal. go ahead and do your usual update
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
3. then make sure to wipe your SPI of any previous bootloader (give it time to complete, you'll know it's done when you get your cursor back in terminal)
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mtdblock0 bs=1M count=1
4. Write sata bootloader to SPI
sudo dd if=/usr/share/orangepi5/rkspi_loader_sata.img of=/dev/mtdblock0 && sudo sync
5. Edit boot file on sd card to recognize sata by adding overlays line to the bottom, save then reboot
sudo nano /boot/orangepiEnv.txt
overlays=ssd-sata
sudo reboot
6. On reboot you will still boot into SD card but now you should see "sda" (your sata SSD) show up on your list of devices when typing:
lsblk
7. Put the same Orange Pi OS image you used in step 1 in any directory on your orange pi making sure it is unzipped and is in .img format. I just used the web browser in orange pi os to redownload from the website which for me put it in directory /home/orangepi/Downloads
8. Flash your downloaded .img to your sata ssd with this command (substitute with your directory to .img)
sudo dd bs=1M if=/path/your/orangepi.img of=/dev/sda status=progress && sudo sync
9. Mount your ssd so you can edit the ssd’s boot file to support sata and reboot
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/
sudo nano /mnt/boot/orangepiEnv.txt
overlays=ssd-sata
sudo umount /mnt/ && sudo sync
sudo poweroff
10. Remove SDcard, turn on orange pi and it should boot orange pi OS from your M.2 sata ssd now
 
Armbian OS Instructions
Relatively same instructions with different file names
write armbian .img file to your sd card with balenaetcher, I chose to use the more up to date imags from their github here https://github.com/armbian/build/releases/ make sure to unzip
boot armbian from sd card, wipe spi
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mtdblock0 bs=1M count=1
3 Download sata spi bootloader from orange github, place it on your sd card (mine is in downloads directory) and write to spi
https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/orangepi-build/blob/next/external/packages/bsp/rk3588/usr/share/orangepi5/rkspi_loader_sata.img
sudo dd if=/home/pi/Downloads/rkspi_loader_sata.img of=/dev/mtdblock0 status=progress && sudo sync
4. Edit boot file to recognize sata then reboot
sudo nano /boot/armbianEnv.txt
overlays=opi5-sata
sudo reboot
5. Once rebooted you can check sda shows up with command:
lsblk
6. download the same armbian.img you used for step 1 to your orange pi making sure it's unzipped in .img format, then flash it to your ssd
sudo dd bs=1M if=/path/your/armbian.img of=/dev/sda status=progress && sudo sync
7. Mount /boot/ of ssd so you can edit the ssd’s boot file to support sata and reboot
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/
sudo nano /mnt/boot/armbianEnv.txt
overlays=opi5-sata
sudo umount /mnt/ && sudo sync
sudo poweroff
8. Remove SDcard and start SBC, resize filesystem to use all available space
sudo systemctl enable armbian-resize-filesystem

Thank you for the instructions. I done it on Rock5B with Jammy.
I had tried before but wasn't able to make it work. Must have had one of the steps missing. It plays 4K files great and with HDMI audio.
Thanks to all involved. Not sure if I can make a video about it, I'll just refer to this thread in the next RK3588 review. Thanks.

Kodi on Orange Pi 5 with GPU Hardware Acceleration and HDMI Audio
 
Huge thanks to user @roykon the Armbian forums for the directions on this in their various forum posts and Armbian forum user @amazingfate for maintaining the PPAs and software builds required for GPU acceleration. I have simply listed below, for the reference of others, the minimum Steps used to get Kodi running with GPU hardware acceleration (for x264/x265 decode) plus HDR auto switching and with HDMI Audio output*. (I am using the Orange Pi 5 with a Samsung 4K TV)
 
*No instructions added yet for enabling HDMI passthrough.
** No instructions added yet for enabling HDMI CEC.
 
Step 1 (SD card image creation)
Download the image below, uncompress it and write it to an SD card.
https://github.com/armbian/build/releases/download/23.02.0-trunk.0173/Armbian_23.02.0-trunk.0173_Orangepi5_jammy_legacy_5.10.110_xfce_desktop.img.xz#orangepi5 
 
Step 2 (First boot)
Boot the SD card image and complete the on-screen prompts for user & password creation.
Note down the IP address of the Orange Pi 5, you will need it in step 3.
 
Step 3 (SSH into the Orange Pi 5)
SSH to the IP address of your Orange Pi 5 and login using the user account and password you set up in Step 2.
 
Step 4 (Enable PPAs and install other elements required for GPU hardware acceleration)
At the command line, enter the following commands (highlighted in Blue):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/panfork-mesa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/rockchip-multimedia
sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop kodi
When prompted on-screen if you wish to use gdm or lightdm, select gdm. 
 
Step 5 (Configuration file additions & changes)
At the command line, enter the following commands (highlighted in Blue):
sudo mv /usr/share/xsessions/kodi.desktop /usr/share/wayland-sessions/kodi-wayland.desktop
sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/11-rockchip-multimedia.rules
KERNEL=="mpp_service", MODE="0660", GROUP="video" KERNEL=="rga", MODE="0660", GROUP="video" KERNEL=="system-dma32", MODE="0666", GROUP="video" KERNEL=="system-uncached-dma32", MODE="0666", GROUP="video" RUN+="/usr/bin/chmod a+rw /dev/dma_heap"  
sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
Add the line below and save the file.
WaylandEnable=true  
sudo nano /usr/share/alsa/cards/HDMI-OUT.conf
Add all of the content below and save the file.
# configuration for HDMI connection which just expose the # audio out device <confdir:pcm/hdmi.conf> HDMI-OUT.pcm.hdmi.0 {         @args [ CARD DEVICE CTLINDEX AES0 AES1 AES2 AES3 ]         @args.CARD {                 type string         }         @args.DEVICE {                 type integer         }         @args.CTLINDEX {                 type integer         }         @args.AES0 {                 type integer         }         @args.AES1 {                 type integer         }         @args.AES2 {                 type integer         }         @args.AES3 {                 type integer         }         type hw card $CARD  }  
sudo nano /usr/share/alsa/cards/aliases.conf
Add the line below and save the file.
rockchip-hdmi0 cards.HDMI-OUT
 
Step 6 (Reboot and Start Kodi)
At the command line, enter the following commands (highlighted in Blue):
sudo reboot
At the login screen, select “kodi” in the bottom right hand corner menu.
Now login using your username and password. Kodi should now load.
 
Step 7 (Adjust Kodi settings)
From within Kodi goto Settings -> Player -> Videos goto the bottom left corner of the screen and change it from Standard to Expert. From within Kodi goto Settings -> Player -> Videos, Playback, and change Adjust display refresh rate to “On start/stop” From within Kodi goto Settings -> Player -> Videos, Processing, enable "Allow using DRM PRIME decoder" and "Allow hardware acceleration with DRM PRIME". And set "PRIME Render Method" to "Direct To Plane" From within Kodi goto Settings -> System -> Display, and change the resolution to 1920x1080p From within Kodi goto Settings -> System -> Audio, and change the Audio output device to “Built in Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI),HDMI / DisplayPort (PULSEAUDIO)”  
Step 8 (Test video playback and check that GPU acceleration & HDMI Audio are working)
During video playback, press ‘o’ on the keyboard, and it should show Video decoder: ff-hevc_rkmpp-drm_prime (HW) During video playback, if you have a Samsung TV, press the “Info” button on your Samsung TV remote to show the current playback resolution, frame rate and whether or not HDR is in use. (Depending on the video content being played)
 
Thank you again to Armbian forum users @royk and @amazingfate 








 

Event -> Video (with transcripts and comments)
 
1. Merging NEXT (Jira tickets)
 
- many small fixes
- windows build support (WSL2)
- small machine support (smarter dependency handling)
- better patch logging and logs in general
- people contributing
 
Focus on:

- CI, aggregation, rootfs cache ( @Igor @rpardini)
- testing, testing, testing (anyone)
 
2. Providing stable builds for main TV box image?
 
We generally support this idea and builds can be enabled @SteeMan https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/config/targets.conf
 
3. None this week.

Comments on all topics are welcome!
 
@Contributor/Maintainer