NicoD

I also don't get this. Isn't their goal to sell more chips? Then wouldn't they sell a lot more with good/better software/support?
Seems like they don't want people to use Linux on them. 
 
They do make the most powerful SoC's on cheaper SBC's. I use Amlogic SoC's for video editing. For that you only need a good cpu(multicore+single core), and gpu/vpu is of lesser importance. In power per watt the A311D/S922X are just the best. 
But I'd like to be able to do a lot more than just video editing on them. I loved the Odroid C2 with S905. Was more versatile. But then again they claimed 2Ghz clockspeed.  

I can't wait for the RK3358 to show up on a board. That should be able to outmatch the Amlogic SoC's. It is to see what consumption and how much heat it'll produce.
Rockchip used to be worse than amlogic in their support. But they did make that up. Allwinner is no match in performance. But they are very usable boards for lighter tasks. OPi+ is my MP3 player and NAS with a sata hd and 1.5TB USB2 external HD. No other board does that better.

The RK3399's are my most used SBC's for light desktop tasks/surfing/watching video. But no match for video editing. RK3399 can edit/render 1080p videos well. But A311D does 1440p. The C2 used to do 720p. So it did improve quickly last years.

I'm very happy you make these images. Me with a lot of other people. It makes many boards a lot more useful where otherwise they'd be paperweights. I love your efforts in making more compatible images. One of my next videos will be about that. Nobody else ever came so close to universal images as you have. I take my hat off for that.

I just bought the X96 Air since it's S905X3. Made me nostalgic to my Odroid C2 and it was dirt cheap. If only I had the SMD soldering skills, then I could take the 32GB eMMC and 4GB ram from X96 and solder them onto my 2GB+16GB Khadas VIM3. For the 30euro I payed, the 32gb eMMC and 4GB ram are worth it. I just don't want to risk the VIM3.
Cheers.
 

https://youtu.be/2Yu8Rj7o9lk?t=468
And for every SBC there's a seperate video too.

Wouldn't it be better to integrate it in armbian-config? 
Then people can still choose to install it or not. It does break some functionality of some programs. For example Kdenlive doesn't work with the script installed(no video playback).  I'll again try to find a fix for it.  But I've put a lot of time into it in the past and couldn't find a solution.  
Do you know how it is possible to make VPU acc work in mainline? With that we'd have a perfect image with panfrost + VPU. I'm looking into it, but my knowledge is very limited about this. 

Thanks to
 
 
@Neil Armstrong we already have full blown Armbian for C4. Images are ofc only for testing at this stage.
 
K5.4 and K5.6 in Focal and other variants
https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c4/

so
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/m/meson/meson_0.54.0-1_all.deb sudo dpkg -i meson_0.54.0-1_all.deb Or just use my script I wrote that does all that and has the correct file included.
https://forum.armbian.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=5683

Or use the graphics repo repo
 
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common -y sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade Or Werner his method,
apt build-dep mesa Grab sources Compile like described here: https://panfrost.freedesktop.org/building-panfrost-mesa.html Restart X

These are 4 different ways to do the same. The first way is how it was done at the start. you don't have to make it that hard. My way is only good if you want to try different versions of MESA.
When using the 3th method with graphics repo (fastest) you do not need to install anything more. I'd go for Werner his example.

Be sure the kernel module for panfrost is activated and you use the latest 5.x kernel. Best to build the image yourself to be sure o have latest kernel. Good luck, I've still not found time to look into it for the H6.

Bit off topic, that's what the topic is for
So I've been using the NanoPi M4/V2 for over a half year as main desktop and left my pc off most of the times. That today gave me a nice advantage in my electrical bill.
While the price of electricity goes up, I consumed 8.8% less only by using SBC's instead of my pc. And that not for a full year even. I can still improve with LED lights. And keep using my SBCs.

This does give an example why using ARM can be very benificial. I even made a quick video about it. Not really Armbian related. I don't think I need to convince any of you of the advantages of using arm.
But it is a good thing to think about where we can save money/energy in replacing x86 machines with arm boards.

Arm also has disadvantages off course. Less user friendly, do it yourself... I also talk about that. So you don't need to see the video any more actually, bit if you do, please enjoy.
Greetings, NicoD
 

Most of the boards just got one freshly build test image - check bottom of download pages.
 
- minimal image only
- mainly kernel 5.6.y
- Ubuntu Focal 20.04 based
- u-boot 2020.04
- xz compressed
- no end-user support

Here my video where I show how to download and install everything. And some gameplay.
Again thank you to @balbes150 for the images.
 

Bit off topic, that's what the topic is for
So I've been using the NanoPi M4/V2 for over a half year as main desktop and left my pc off most of the times. That today gave me a nice advantage in my electrical bill.
While the price of electricity goes up, I consumed 8.8% less only by using SBC's instead of my pc. And that not for a full year even. I can still improve with LED lights. And keep using my SBCs.

This does give an example why using ARM can be very benificial. I even made a quick video about it. Not really Armbian related. I don't think I need to convince any of you of the advantages of using arm.
But it is a good thing to think about where we can save money/energy in replacing x86 machines with arm boards.

Arm also has disadvantages off course. Less user friendly, do it yourself... I also talk about that. So you don't need to see the video any more actually, bit if you do, please enjoy.
Greetings, NicoD
 

Yeah sure if I can piece togeher what I have done.
Base was a current  (Edit: actually was dev but installed current kernel/headers/dtb over it since I gave up on dev) image with Focal. Built mesa from sources:https://panfrost.freedesktop.org/building-panfrost-mesa.html
Use devfreq to set the gpu governour to userspace and fix the gpu frequency either to highest if you have GOOD cooling or something lower.  @Igor thinks DVFS is not stable enough yet.
 
Proper cooling seems necessary as it may not like thermal trottling.

Sure thing.
 
 

Holy shit. It is running!

Don't forget the 'grey' cost. I do not replace my "old-power-saving-bulbs" because of the grey energy needed.  Same thing as driving an old car until it breaks or buy a new more efficent car.
 

 
PinePhone UBports Community Edition Pre-Orders Now Open
  https://www.pine64.org/2020/04/02/pinephone-ubports-community-edition-pre-orders-now-open/
 

Bit off topic, that's what the topic is for
So I've been using the NanoPi M4/V2 for over a half year as main desktop and left my pc off most of the times. That today gave me a nice advantage in my electrical bill.
While the price of electricity goes up, I consumed 8.8% less only by using SBC's instead of my pc. And that not for a full year even. I can still improve with LED lights. And keep using my SBCs.

This does give an example why using ARM can be very benificial. I even made a quick video about it. Not really Armbian related. I don't think I need to convince any of you of the advantages of using arm.
But it is a good thing to think about where we can save money/energy in replacing x86 machines with arm boards.

Arm also has disadvantages off course. Less user friendly, do it yourself... I also talk about that. So you don't need to see the video any more actually, bit if you do, please enjoy.
Greetings, NicoD
 

Try bigger files. This test does files of 64k. Try files of 100MB 100times.
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=100MB count=100 conv=fdatasync I use the gnome-disks utility to benchmark. It shows the performance with big files, but also the latency what is important for small files. That way you get numbers that can be understood.

just shared in another post on this forum my NVME iozone results for my Nanopi M4v1 with 1TB XPG SX8200 Pro.
800000+kBytes/sec both read and write.
specially for @NicoD some pictures. I power with 4a adapter. Self designed and 3d printed cabrio case, that does not fit well now with nvme board.

I never stop testing.
 

Xupdate: includes updated mesa libraries for mali GPUs.
 
how to use:
add below to you source.list
 
 
gpg key can be found at:
 
 
after that, run `sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade`
 
before reboot, please update your xorg.conf, follow below webpage:
 
 
 
 

this is ONLY for debian buster, if you are ubuntu user please go to graphics-drivers PPA, no duplicated work.
and this repo is located in Shanghai China, maybe slow oversea.

attached dtb with working config for panfrost and hdmi, just paste on /boot/dtb/allwinner and test.
I've followed panfrost instalation guide and is working fine, changed gpu supply fixes the one color system hang and change hdmi supply fixes dvi no dtc hdmi output making sound works.
 
PS: just a fix, not a solution but at least is working like librelec.
PS2: I have OPI lite 2, for OPI3 just copy the changes to OPI3 dtb
sun50i-h6-orangepi-lite2.dtb

Do I need to convert it back to dts too, or do I leave the armbian kernel dts? Do the modifications come from other patches?

Yes, use DTC tool
Like I said it just a quick fix while it is not merged, I've built Armbian from source and the hdmi still is not working with default DTB so using Libreelec source( works but buggy) I've changed some options on the DTB( I'm not expert). It appears that the hang is beeing caused by the GPU clock table and the dummy clock driver from Panfrost and the HDMI missing sound and resolutions is due to some bug on voltage source option.

I examined @AndreBotelho's DTB and it's not really much different from the DTB I'm already using, so I don't think it would change anything. However, patches like this could help, I think I should wait first for the Armbian patches to be adapted for 5.6 kernel and then continue testing. Forget it, it's already been merged, but I still have my doubts over the posted DTB.

Ok, now I understand better how hardware is defined in DTS files. I realized the Orange Pi Lite 2 DTS is really barebones compared to the Orange Pi 3. I can wait for kernel 5.7 to test more.
 
The question I have is: How does it work in LibreELEC if the same DTS is used? (Is it only needed for X11 acceleration?)
 
EDIT: I answered my own question. The LibreELEC pull request for Orange Pi Lite 2 (which I merged on my local repository) adds the GPU and Display Engine entries in the DTS. So Armbian would need to merge that in the first place, @Igor can you take a look at the commits from this pull request (if you have the time of course)?, it has both the GPU and DE added to the DTS unlike Armbian's one. I would do it myself but I fear I would break the working patch since I have to learn more about git and diff. EDIT: I enabled the gpu myself but I found the system to be unstable after doing that, I will try to debug it with UART (SSH crashes too) and report back.
Thanks, I completely forgot about that Linux naming convention inside the kernel.
 
As always, thanks for the useful advice and answers.

No, they are disabled because nobody took time to properly enable them in board DTS until now (it will be in 5.7).
No, sun4i-drm is for all Allwinner SoCs, it supports Display Engine 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. It's just named by Linux tradition where it takes name of first (oldest) supported platform.