NicoD

Yes, I use tvheadend with Jellyfin. So when I am watching a SD channel, which uses MPEG2-ts, it does transcoding.

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Wait, you mentioned h264. You are aware that h264 normally doesn't need transcoding, right? The server just feeds the stream to the client, so the limit is set by your network connection and/or your storage device. You can stream many h264 streams of any resolution at once, even 4k.
 
Transcoding is only needed when the file is in a format that the client cannot handle natively. So, for example, if you are using Chrome browser as client, it cannot handle HEVC, and therefore it needs transcoding. But, if your client is Kodi with Jellyfin plugin, then you won't need transcode either for HEVC, since Kodi can handle it.
 
Since almost all clients support h264, it will normally not be transcoded. And, if you want, you can convert all your videos to h264, and then you can use any SBC as server, even with a weak CPU.

There is something important I should add. I am sure big corporations can easily contribute money to meet the demand goal, however this is a community project and it is therefore imperative that we as individuals contribute to the project. 
 
If only big corporations contribute they will probably want to have a say in what direction the project develops which could lead to only a small fraction of devices being developed for or it could lead to a situation where they ask that only their devices are prioritised.
 
If you want that a wider range of devices are going to be worked on it is important that we also contribute, even if we just donate small amounts. At the end of the day there are a lot of us who have an interest in running armbian on our devices.
 
Essentially we have to be fast and donate faster than the companies who only have a commercial interest! 
 
If you are not able to donate there are also other ways to contribute towards the project. Writing documentation, translating documentation, programming and even fan artwork is important (desktop background images, forum banners, forum signatures and other artwork). 
 
Do you love armbian as much as I do? 
 
Don't wait and contribute to the project now by any means you wish! 
 
 

Unfortunately it is
 

Indeed
 
 
Also correct.
Some more info here: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/threadripper-3960x-3970x-3990x-and-ecc-ram-what-performance-hit-to-expect-vs-non-ecc-ram-which-is-available-at-higher-speeds.2578034/
They are stating the performance hit might be negligible for our goals. For gaming and trading faster ram seems preferable. We ain't doing that I guess  

 
 
That's what I do. So glad to have helped, I learned something too.

He said it all. 3600Mhz not stable on the ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T.
"Dualer Kanal, Vier-Kanal" https://www.jacob.de/produkte/g-skill-trident-z-f4-4000c18q-128gtrg-artnr-6795425.html

Maximum supported 8 x dual rank is 2667Mhz. 
Some motherboards can do higher as overclock. But the ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T can't be stable at 3600Mhz. 
So a more expensive motherboard would be needed to obtain a bit higher clock speeds.
Or you go for only 4 x 32GB to have more headroom. Or go for the 3600Mhz and run it a bit lower for stabillity.
For the goals Armbian needs it this doesn't seem worth the extra cost(IMHO).

Also must be handpicked to match for 8x.
2 x 4 buying would probably not match.

Indeed
 
 
Also correct.
Some more info here: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/threadripper-3960x-3970x-3990x-and-ecc-ram-what-performance-hit-to-expect-vs-non-ecc-ram-which-is-available-at-higher-speeds.2578034/
They are stating the performance hit might be negligible for our goals. For gaming and trading faster ram seems preferable. We ain't doing that I guess  

 
 
That's what I do. So glad to have helped, I learned something too.

If I understand this summary properly,  first RAM variant is fast enough / a bit too much but that's not a problem since we can choose clock manually. Price is also OK and it seems they are compatible.

Thank you for doing this research.

Done, thanks.

Woohoo. Joined the fundraiser club

Call to Action: Armbian donation round.
 
Dear members of the community, 
 
Do you love the armbian OS? 
Are you frustrated by bugs or problems within armbian? 
Do you wish that armbian was even better with more releases? 
 
If the answer is yes keep reading because there may be a solution. 
 
As you know the dedicated team of developers here code this project in their spare time to develop an incredible Linux OS for our ARM devices. They do this for the love of this hobby and we all benefit from it because it is an open source project.
 
One of the hurdles is the fast compiling of the armbian OS. To solve this issue the developers are looking to purchase or rent an 80 core ARM build server. This will improve compilation times and therefore the workflow of the developers. It will mean that they can develop at a much faster pace and more importantly diagnose problems, optimize code and iron out bugs a lot more effectively and efficiently.
 
The developers are currently considering the Ampere Altra. 
 
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15949/ampere-altra-1p-server-pictured-gigabytes-2u-with-80-arm-n1-cores-pcie-40-and-ccix
 
To make this a reality I, on behalf of the development team, am asking for everybody to chip in. If everybody donates just a little bit the developers will be able to get this server and develop the armbian software that we all love so much.
 
What are you waiting for? 
 
Hit subscribe in the menu of the forum. Every major payment method is accepted.

At least people that work on development can mitigate this frustration when catching the bug or fixing the problem.
 
 
We just got ARM64 server on our hand as a donation from:
 


https://www.worksonarm.com/
https://github.com/WorksOnArm/cluster
 
but it will only be available for limited time and before we can use it in production, we need to port our build system to support native building, test and then start using it in production. 
 
 
Fastest build server we will need to purchase - we still need a major CPU upgrade on cross compilation server. Something in range of Threadripper 3970x / 3990x + board + pci4 ssd in raid0 + 128GB memory which will costs us ∼6000 EUR.
 
Our current aging 5 years old Dual Xeon E5-2683 build/CI server was also purchased with help from community and I hope we will also receive help!

I did say the OPi's in plural.
Also because I read a lot more on the forum about the OPi's than about the PineH64. But that could be a good thing too. It used to be behind, good to know it made it up.
I don't use the H6 much. It had a lot of potential, but hasn't impressed me much yet. My love goes more to the OPi+. It's old but does such a good job for me.

I personally like the PineH64 more. The same SoC, but with 3GB(4GB on-board, 1GB unusable), lower temperatures. But it gets a little less love from developers than the OPi's. For most things it is the same, but I can't garantee all hardware features will work well.
Panfrost on H6 doesn't perform well. For that the RK3399's are a lot more powerful. So OPi4. 

Video: What is Armbian? Focal/Bionic/Bullseye/Buster? What's Legacy kernel VS mainline kernel?
 

Winter is coming, got my old spaceheaters running too Old pc's are only to be used for fun, not for productivity.


I would think the RockPiX should be able to do that since it's x86. AtomicPi is even cheaper. But not from EU.
I've never used anything like that.
I use plain Armbian Bionic legacy on rk3399 to watch all media, and my OPi+ fileserver also Bionic desktop with all my back-up/network storage.
Maybe I should look into plex and see what the fuss is all about.

Allwinner H3 for headless low-demanding tasks, excellent support/stability and surprisingly tough for a low end dirt-cheap soc.

It was a nice board... when it was new Hope that's not your daily driver.
As long as you state it as an opinion I'm ok with it. Don't try to convince anyone it's a fact. Already enough fake news around.
For some tasks an RPi4 can be good. I love it for gaming. But I wouldn't want to use it for desktop use. I much rather use 2 good SBCs with each a display than to use a RPi4 for that.
I can also share keyboard and mouse with Barrier to make it look and feel like I'm dual screening. But I'm also no typical user.
I do believe coming from ancient M1, the RPi4 must feel like a monster. Compared to RK3399 it's still a baby.

Hi all.
I've just finished a long video special where I talk about all my SBCs. In the order how I got them.
I show the specs of all of them. Say what I like, what's bad about them. What I use them for. What SBC is best for your goal.
Here's my video, I hope you enjoy it.

Greetings, NicoD.
 
 
P.S. : Pictures of anyone else their collection? Mine are not all on this pic, no room for them all. 

Amlogic has no real-world interest in Armbian or any other mainline tracking Linux distro so they are not going to fork over any $$$ for support. Their business is heavily focussed on Android and some other niche use-cases. Like most/all SoC manufacturers, their responsibilities are to their customers (integrators who buy their silicon chips) and their shareholders, not consumer end-users in the Linux community who want to reflash a $30 device with a $0 distro image that doesn't use any of their software (which is a good thing, the BSP sucks).
 
"Board" devices from any vendor are generally simple to support since the vendor ships u-boot and kernel sources with varying levels of contact and engagement with the community. "Box" devices are a completely different game, with a massively larger amount of guesswork required to get working and a huge issue with device cloning and hidden spec changes. For example; the current X96-Air (S905X3) model which is popular ships in three different configurations and has been witnesssed with 4x different SDIO WiFi/BT chips; which necessitate a different device-tree file to have the right drivers (which mostly don't exist in mainline) probed. These devices are great when they work, but mostly they don't, and they're a massive and frustrating time sink to support, and the percentage of self-entitled users who get whiny about them seems to be an order of magnitude greater than those using boards. So any sane distro maintainer will (and should) focus on supporting boards. Once in a while there will be box exceptions, but they will be infrequent.
 
Any attempt to cause deliberate harm to user installations via software is unethical and I would expect the Armbian forum moderators to take appropriate action to deny promotion or access to such images via this forum if that actually happened. I know that I would take swift action to delete posts/threads and perhaps temp-ban users if this happend in the LibreELEC forums. However I suspect some of the alarm is caused by GoogleTranslate more than Oleg .. it does seem to translate Russian > English with very firm (borderline aggressive) words. Once in a while I've made him post in his native language, which I can read/undertand to a moderate level, and the tone is different.
 
As a side note, I'm stunned to hear that Armbian running costs are 2,000-5,000 EUR per-day .. LibreELEC runs around $2,500 per year

My rational is that my "desktop machine" is *just* a (32 bits/4GB) Vivaldi-Browser-node in a network of arm (and now xtensa) fanless nodes. And with multi-head and support of usable multimedia tools I can simplify and improve my organization. (I was using 3 hosts, 3 screens with 1 kbd/mouse before).
 
I was able to use a BPI M1 for so long because it's just a node (and thanks to Igor's work).
 

BTW@NicoD can you send me some link about that small screen you show on the video?

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Cool one!

You really hate the Tinkerboard, haha. It was my first SBC, and my unit works quite well (stable at 2 GHz). So I kind of like it.

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I must add that I mostly use the rpi zero headless without a display.
 
It is too weak to use as a desktop replacement.
 
It is great when used together with a USB battery since the rpi zero has so little power draw.
 
If you're after raw power there are many different better options. 

Hi all.
I've just finished a long video special where I talk about all my SBCs. In the order how I got them.
I show the specs of all of them. Say what I like, what's bad about them. What I use them for. What SBC is best for your goal.
Here's my video, I hope you enjoy it.

Greetings, NicoD.
 
 
P.S. : Pictures of anyone else their collection? Mine are not all on this pic, no room for them all.