Looking for a friendly place to get some support

[Toluene]

I have a need for a low-cost machine for my daughter. I could buy a Raspberry pi and run Ubuntu on it, but

I have a few Amlogic boards at hand, and for the most part they work perfectly with Armbian (OK I know
they are not a supported board, and I don't run an official build).

 

My concern, though, is that lack of hardware support (audio, video decoding) which makes low-profile

hardware quite sluggish to use in the daily life.

 

My point is that I am tired of seeing perfectly usable (in theory) electronic products to to landfill (and create

an environmental disaster) just because software is falling short. Not even software in fact, but rather the

configuration of it. This is very frustrating because everything I'm talking about is supposed to be mainlined

and I believe I'm not attempting something unreasonable.

 

I need to learn more about those subjects, and reading this forum helps, but there are hundreds of messages

out there, most of them obsolete. So I don't know who to turn to, if you know a good place, please let me

know. The user that goes by the name of Balbes in this forum has done a fantastic job of putting out new

images as releases appear in the Linux tree, and elsewhere. I would like to sincerely thank that person. I

wish I has a tenth of their knowledge.

 

I have seen many related discussions in the LibreElec forum, but then my intention is not to run kodi. I am

not aware of any Amlogic-specific mailing list.

 

This post will quite likely be seen as a troll,  which it isn't, really, and brutally closed,  but at least it gives

me an opportunity to speak my mind.

 

Anyone knows a good place to start ?

[JMCC]

Well, it depends on what Amlogic device you are using. If it is some TV box, then there is a specific sub-forum for them. If it is an Odroid or FriendlyElec board, then you should post in the Amlogic sub-forum.

Enviado desde mi moto g(6) plus mediante Tapatalk

[lanefu]

10 hours ago, Toluene said:

Anyone knows a good place to start ?

 

Your  question is clearly sincere.  Thank you for being thoughtful in your post.

 

I recommend reading the sunxi wiki from head to toe.   Even if you're not interested in allwinner they do a good job of covering a lot of the theory.

 

https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page

[jeanrhum]

One of the coming issue is also that Balbes stops supporting amlogic socs for his next builds, so don't expect new robust builds.

If you have tv boxes, then it depends of the soc(s) you have.

On my side, I was able to use the rockpi4 armbian image with a rk3399 board (edge-v) and changing after in armbianEnv.txt to the right dtb. I have a working up-to-date environment that I installed in emmc but I may have problems if the next kernel/uboot upgrades breaks things.

I also tried to do that with another box I have with a s912 soc, but there is no official armbian build with this soc. I was able to start a lepotato (s905x) image, but usb and network devices were not detected correctly.

 

The best place to discuss that is tv box sub-forum as said JMCC. I think that several amlogic users are frustrated of the current situation and may want to make something from Balbes work (his github repo is available).

 

Edit: you can also have a look at the linux meson wiki: http://linux-meson.com/doku.php

[DevShanky]

This is related to Raspberry Pi but might be helpful to get the concepts. Thought you may find it interesting.

 

https://github.com/s-matyukevich/raspberry-pi-os

 

-R

 

 

[TRS-80]

On 11/4/2020 at 11:38 AM, Toluene said:

I need to learn more about those subjects, and reading this forum helps, but there are hundreds of messages

out there, most of them obsolete. So I don't know who to turn to, if you know a good place, please let me

know.

 

Somehow I only found this post just now.

 

As far as specifics, besides what has been mentioned already, I would add the official Documentation as well as GitHub repos.

 

I did want to make a more general point, and offer some words that are hopefully encouraging, or at least will put things into perspective.

 

The important thing here is that you have an interest.  Everything else will come in time (assuming the effort is put in).

 

It may take you a long time though, so be prepared for that and don't be discouraged.  I made my first post in 2017 and lurked for a long time before that.  Only in the last year or so maybe I finally know enough to actually help anyone, and even then it's only some of the time.  Recently I started contributing to tidying up the docs a bit.

 

I believe in the whole 10,000 hours to competency thing, and I am not the only one[0].  "Modern," popular, and perhaps especially business culture seem to me overly focused on short term results but I feel very strongly that this is pure fantasy, not reality.  But maybe you know all this already.

 

Also, maybe you are smarter than me.   

 

Stick with it mate, as long as you are making an earnest effort (and I agree with lanefu here, it's clear to me you are), you are amongst friends.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and all that...

 

The vitriol you some times see on technical fora are generally directed towards those who have made no effort, want things done for them, etc.[1]

 

Cheers! 

 

[0] The article is about programming, but hopefully you take the point.

[1] The obligatory, canonical reference here would of course be How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.