NicoD

I love the XU4. I used it for a long time. Good GPU drivers, no VPU drivers but great CPU. It also was a hell to work with. The thing overheats very quickly, it isn't very stable. And many boards have passed it in every way. But not one all at once.
It was by far the top for a long time. But it's getting old.
The most versatile board in my eyes is the NanoPi M4. It can do everything. But it isn't the most powerful.  
If you want good cpu perfomance the Odroid N2 is by far a better bet. But that's got its issues. And little I/O options. Only 1 USB3 controller for all 4 ports, and they perform bad. Things you don't have with the RK3399's.  But biggest advantage for N2 is you'll never need a fan to cool it. 
Also the Khadas VIM3 is an awesome machine. It's got the most powerful CPU there is. The Odroid N2 + 4 x 400Mhz more on A73. Tho more expensive, and only the pro is advisable. I've got the 2GB/16GB version. SD card reader is mighty slow. eMCC too small to do something. Only 1 USB3 port for an ssd.  Works ok, but it's not perfect at all.
For that the N2 has a better option with eMMC modules up to 128GB. 
The NanoPi M4V2 now is my main machine. Don't use any pc(except the atomic pi) anymore. I just need a second desk to put all my boards and more displays. Instead of one power hungry machine, I use many very power efficient ones for my different tasks. But the XU4 has been down for a long time. With the above reasons. (and I've got too many other boards as well)

I bought it to play around with. Nothing of imprortance. It was the cheapest I ever found. 18.70euro for 2GB 16GB eMMC delivered at home. 
I can made a video on what is possibe with it. I bought the X96Air and loved it. But gave it away as new years gift for my nephew. So I could use another Anrdoid box. 
Its got Mali450, so it might work with Lima in Armbian. 
There are no nice new SBCs I want, so I've got to find something to play with. Didn't get a PineBookPro or OPi4. I'd rather have played around with those.
I only see the RockPiX of importance that's coming. It's gonna be a long wait for higher performing ARM SoCs than S922X. Maybe a half year or more.
 

I bought it to have an Android device to learn how others use android. I truly hate working with it, but so many others are only interested in Android. To grow my following I can try going that way too. It is good for gaming and media. 
Having Armbian on it is not needed for me, but would be nice to do my benchmarks. I've got way better boards for Armbian. 

I'd rather also buy a S922X TV-Box with 4GB ram and 64GB eMMC. Found some good choices, but couldn't decide. If you know of a good cheap model. Its to do video editing and rendering. The N2 lacks in its cpu performance vs the VIM 3 while vim3 has too litle ram with 2GB. So anything with the CPU of vim3 and 4GB ram would be just perfect for me.

"Congratulations," you threw the money in the trash. Here for $ 20 is a full-fledged model with a wired network and tested for working with Armbian (without WiFi).
 
Here's a link to a model with a much better chip that your model doesn't even remotely compare to.
s905w with a full LAN port and SD card support, it's easy to buy for$20
and   If desired, you can even find the s905x3 (which is an order of magnitude better than the s905w) for the same $ 20-22. The S905x3 has a USB 3.0 SD LAN ......
 
 
 

I'm all for the @chwe approach. Do what you are familiar with, and don't do too much. 
I do adjust titles with wrong spelling (arabian vs armbian yesterday for example), and make sure a title is easy to find with search keywords. Also sometimes translate for people who post in different languages, tho others will remove these posts.
We are here to help people, not to police them. I try to create as little commotion as possible. A good moderator does his tasks almost invisibly. 

I've been away for a week last week. First time I opened the forum I saw tons of notifications, and the thread of Igor to ask for more help. So it must have been a very busy week. Sometimes it's very calm, some weeks are busy. Certainly when new kernels and images go online there can be a lot traffic. 

I mostly focus on RK3399 and TV-Boxes. And sometimes H6, but that seems very well under control. Mostly advanced users there. 
I use my SBC's differently than most other users (desktop use/gaming/video editing and 3d rendering). So many/most of the questions I have no idea about. So I just accept those and don't answer. If someone else feels he's got grip on the topic then they can answer.

If/when something of importance is found by a user it can be good to make sure a dev knows about it. But this doesn't happen that much since the devs also follow what happens on the forum.
I had to do that a few days ago for my XU4. I knew the answer  Tho I must admit I had forgotten about it too, it was Meveric on the Odroid forum who reminded me about it. 
 

A full time hobby then... 

A full time hobby then... 

A full time hobby then... 

At the weekend, I tested the 64GB eMMC module and here are the results, just for the records
64GB eMMC module read : 180 MB/s write : 165 MB/s ... and also a Samsung 970 Evo Plus (500GB) with an amazing write speed of 730 MB/s
500GB 970 Evo Plus read : 736 MB/s write : 730 MB/s

Please do a search yourself next time. Google is easy to use, the search box in the forum too.
 

Granted! Thank you.
 

Great!
 
Forum is our common problem and it should be moderated according to that. We created some https://forum.armbian.com/terms and https://forum.armbian.com/guidelines. Read and use them, change if needed and keep in mind that people usually don't read them ... remember when you read the small print last time?
 
I have no intention to lead forum moderation - tell you what to do, but I will tell you if you went to far ... I expect the same treatment - I am just a forum user. (even I do have the same power and more as you do). There are topics which need to be sorted out - merge or move - and there are important topics which are floating in the see of banal - I work on this when I find some time which is less and less. Important stuff should be pinned and some, that are there are not relevant anymore, unpinned. If you can not decide on a specific case, but its important, speak up here, publicly. Only if there is a special need for privacy, in private. Administrator rights - for changing more critical things on the forum - contact @lanefu and me. We are both quite busy, so perhaps we shell also expand this role later on if you will come up with lots of ideas for changes.
 
Can't believe how quick we sorted this out.  And as a side effect, perhaps an IRC channel might get live soon. Thank you!

Good news for RockPI 4B owners. This is an image with Armbian Bionic that includes support for running from USB. I checked this image with eMMC and SD card, running direct system startup from USB.
RockPI 4B does not have a very convenient placement of eMMC and SD connectors (if the NVMe module is connected on top, the loop from it overlaps the SD connector) so it is very difficult to test different systems. This image solves this problem. You can write any system to SD or eMMC and add a u-boot version that supports USB startup to the media (second link). Install the eMMC module or SD card and start the main system from them. When you need to quickly check or just start another system with USB, you simply connect the USB drive with the new system and it starts automatically when you turn on the power, turn off the USB and return to the normal system. If Radxa added one small patch to the source code for SPI, you can get a unique u-boot that supports direct launch from USB.
 
I recorded an Armbian image on eMMC and installed it on the Board, and now it is very convenient for me to quickly launch Libreelec from USB, I can use a universal image that does not depend on the availability of the necessary u-boot for the SD card, just configure the DTB correctly and voila, the system works completely with USB, without any additional steps. I connected the USB-I have LE, disabled USB and can immediately start Armbian.
 
Armbian Biomic
https://yadi.sk/d/M1hzFvNq7SpfmA
 
u-boot
https://yadi.sk/d/Se637oJkw54tfA

I welcome you to the forum and to the moderators team!

First task is perhaps to get this thread in order - remove not needed posts?  
 
Edit: In case someone doesn't have rights - logout - login might help.

Did you build the kernel yourself?
I have committed a fix (https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/8c93385a84e2c8847ad5cf03684bee9c58596bf7) to the build system a few days ago. It should fix issues with the most common MTU of 1500.
It will be build into some future kernel / image build.

Thank you! For this and for your help in the past.
 
 
I don't know if we are generally there yet, but forum ( and me) is getting out of control from time to time. That's my observation, which could be wrong. 
 
 
We need reinforcements, otherwise it will remain as is not so good. Hopefully more people will step up since it will be easier for everyone and the only way to keep forum readable, conduct some minimal policy and trying to improve forums on a long run. We want as flat structure as possible - being a moderator should be technical not a political function to limit our power games. Armbian is a technical forum - we don't delete content, but merge, move, reorganise. We ban bots that breaks automated spam machine, we don't ban people unless idiot level is obvious, but warn users when derived from https://forum.armbian.com/terms and https://forum.armbian.com/guidelines
 
Mistakes will be done on both sides. Which is normal and expected.

People that have moderators rights and are relatively active are: @NicoD @JMCC @chwe @TonyMac32 @balbes150 @lanefu 
 
Any objections, otherwise welcome!
 
Inactive: @pfeerick @Xalius @StuxNet (and will be removed shortly if no response)

Hi. I use the NanoPi M4V2 as main desktop. Works great with the default kernel and the media script from jmcc.
Video playback for youtube is 1080p 30fps or 720p60fps. While video files up to 4k can be watched. 

In mainline we're working on getting good video playback. Now that only works in default kernel, but GPU drivers now work in mainline.

I've got many other sbc's. None that is this powerful, has such good software, and great I/O with the PCIe gpio's.
Greetings.

That's supported too. You need to change the files extlinux.conf and uenv.ini to make them point to the correct .dtb file(look into dtb folder) for the vim3 with a311d. Works great. I'm running it on an ssd. Greetings.

Thanks for the instructions @NicoD!
 
I modified the mesa build options to enable egl:
meson -D egl=true -D gles1=true -D gles2=true -D shared-glapi=true -Ddri-drivers= -Dvulkan-drivers= -Dgallium-drivers=panfrost,kmsro -Dlibunwind=false -Dprefix=/usr build/  
With egl one can compile and run git version of supertuxkart.

Panfrost instructions Armbian
 
!!!! I made a script that does all this, check a few posts later for the script !!!!!  
This tutorial explains how to build an Armbian image with panfrost. And what else you need to make it work.
These are early drivers. Many things don't work yet. Only OpenGL 2.1 works now.
 
You need to build an image with kernel 5.2 or later.
For this you need an x86 pc with Ubuntu 18.04 or a virtual Ubuntu 18.04 x86 image.

First install git, then clone the build folder from Armbian, and enter the build directory.
 
apt-get -y -qq install git git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/armbian/build cd build Now run the script with EXPERT=yes so you can choose to build a dev image.
sudo ./compile EXPERT=yes Choose "Full OS image for flashing" Then "Show a kernel configuration menu before compilation" Choose your board. If it's not in the regular list, look in "Show SCS/WIP/EOS/TVB". Choose Development version kernel configuration -> device drivers -> graphic drivers -> panfrost  
Let it run until it's finished. The image will be in the /build/output/images
Burn it to an SD-card/eMMC/...
 
Now we need to install all the needed software
sudo apt install flex bison python3-mako libwayland-egl-backend-dev libxcb-dri3-dev libxcb-dri2-0-dev libxcb-glx0-dev libx11-xcb-dev libxcb-present-dev libxcb-sync-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxshmfence-dev libxrandr-dev libwayland-dev libxdamage-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev x11proto-dri2-dev x11proto-dri3-dev x11proto-present-dev x11proto-gl-dev x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev libexpat1-dev libudev-dev gettext glmark2 glmark2-es2 mesa-utils xutils-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev ninja-build bc python-pip flex bison cmake git valgrind llvm llvm-8-dev python3-pip pkg-config zlib1g-dev wayland-protocols Download and install meson
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/m/meson/meson_0.55.3-1_all.deb sudo dpkg -i meson_0.55.3-1_all.deb Download and install mesa DRM
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/mesa/drm cd drm meson build --prefix=/usr ninja -C build sudo -E ninja -C build install cd .. Download and install mesa graphics
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa cd mesa meson -Ddri-drivers= -Dvulkan-drivers= -Dgallium-drivers=panfrost,kmsro -Dlibunwind=false -Dprefix=/usr build/ ninja -C build/ sudo ninja -C build/ install REBOOT
 
Optionally, update sdl (recommended)
git clone https://github.com/SDL-mirror/SDL.git cd SDL mkdir build cd build cmake ../ make -j6 sudo make install REBOOT
 
Only thing that works ok with it is supertuxkart, to install it.
sudo apt install supertuxkart
 
Panfrost - Linux games working from repo
SuperTuxKart - Works well
ExtremeTuxRacer - lots of glitches
AssaultCube - lots of glitches
 
Instructions by Salvador Liébana & NicoD

Hi. I use the NanoPi M4V2 as main desktop. Works great with the default kernel and the media script from jmcc.
Video playback for youtube is 1080p 30fps or 720p60fps. While video files up to 4k can be watched. 

In mainline we're working on getting good video playback. Now that only works in default kernel, but GPU drivers now work in mainline.

I've got many other sbc's. None that is this powerful, has such good software, and great I/O with the PCIe gpio's.
Greetings.

Most probably NetworkManager issue again and again ... Try to disable it and do "old school" /etc/network/interface config, I bet it will work ...

Magicsee N6 Max rk3399
Armbian_19.11.4_Arm-64_bionic_dev_5.5.0-rc2_desktop_20191228 with rk3399-rock-pi-4.dtb tweaked to cpuspeed 1.70 & 2.01 GHz
Boots to desktop , usable with some artifacts - will test again upon kernel update
 
Thanks balbes & NicoD

Starting from version 19.11.4, armbian TV supports Tanix TX6 with Allwinner H6 processor, 3Gb RAM, USB 3.0, LAN 100Mb, mali T720.
Given that Panfrost has added support for the mali T720 (which is used in this model), it is a promising enough model to use.
There are already Libreelec and Armbian for this TV box model.  
 
+ Eachlink H6 (Allwinner H6)   Hurry up to buy these models before the sellers learned about this possibility and raised the price ....    
 
 
 

A workaround/fix for this is to edit the dts and set USB3_0 to 'host' instead of 'otg'.
 
Found here.
 

The answer to @NicoD question. The latest universal images include all the necessary files to enable color correction on g12. Additionally, I downloaded the patch files to run from the SD card and from USB media.
 
https://yadi.sk/d/34zrTk5iEsfqhg