Plans for RISC-V boards like BeagleV, Nezha RISC-V SBC and Allwinner D1 SBC?

[Superkoning]

Now that affordable RISC-V SBC's are appearing, are there plans to investigate and possibly support them from Armbian?

 

• BeagleV: Beta version has been delivered to developers. Now runs Fedora. Price: 150 USD.
• Nezha RISC-V SBC: Seems available, see https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/05/20/nezha-risc-v-linux-sbc/ . 99 USD. OS: "Tina, a fork of OpenWrt, officially supported by Allwinner, " ...
• D1 Linux RISC-V SBC: promised for May, but we have to wait and see. https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/04/13/allwinner-d1-linux-risc-v-sbc-processor/

 

If it helps, I'm willing to do a small donation.

 

 

[Werner]

There are no plans, probably due to equal lack of funds, manpower and boards for testing in the lab.

Last but not least because they are a different architecture (not armhf/arm64)

[Superkoning]

OK, pity. Thanks for replying.

[lanefu]

Also riscVian doesn't sound as good

 

🤠

[tparys]

Unless I've hallucinated it, Igor seemed open in the past to supporting other architectures in Armbian, provided there was someone to maintain new toolchains in the build system.

 

But as I've seen elsewhere, the "missing ingredient is time", and such efforts would take time away from other development efforts.

 

Though, it's not the first time ARM was relabeled to be something else ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers

[Werner]

Which is true but barely anyone wants to step in and provide long-term maintenance....

[Igor]

Development is fun and usually people are happy doing that, while it is hard and near to impossible to find people that would stay and deal with equally hard but boring non-glorious maintenance tasks  which could already represent several full time positions. That's why "no" is a default answer to any "Feature request", especially when requests adds to our bill and because there are tasks and projects for years to come.

 

On 5/22/2021 at 8:14 AM, Superkoning said:

If it helps, I'm willing to do a small donation.

 

I rather give you a donation if you start doing something we pointed out we need to get done.

 

Even if you finance everything, let's say two developers / full time / few years - which is needed to get somewhere, chances are very little. Its not just two paychecks ... and it is very hard to assemble a good team that would proceed on such projects even the money is not a problem. 

 

Donations are here for things you already have. For example - when you download software we assemble and maintain it for you for free of charge, you don't need to watch dirty commercials and your personal data is not sold to 3rd party to pay the bill. We pay the bill for you.

[Superkoning]

31 minutes ago, Igor said:

Donations are here for things you already have. For example - when you download software we assemble and maintain it for you for free of charge, you don't need to watch dirty commercials and your personal data is not sold to 3rd party to pay the bill. We pay the bill for you.

 

FWIW: I'm an Armbian user, and, yes, I've done a few donations in the past.

[lanefu]

5 hours ago, Superkoning said:

FWIW: I'm an Armbian user, and, yes, I've done a few donations in the past.

 

FYI your donation IS greatly appreciated. 

 

 I don't want the context of this conversation to convey the contrary. 

[Igor]

Moving to board bring up section. IMO it suits there better.

[balbes150]

22.05.2021 в 16:27, lanefu сказал:

Also riscVian doesn't sound as good

 

Many do not know, but the correct interpretation of the designation "Armbian" does not come from ARM, but sounds like this. An automated workplace based on ubuntu\debian.

 

 

For those who want to take part in the development of this direction, there is some progress (but this does not mean that it will necessarily be included in the official part of the build system) ....

 

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/21465-armbian-image-and-build-support-for-risc-v/?do=findComment&comment=141582

[KREYREN]

On 5/22/2021 at 9:33 AM, Werner said:

There are no plans, probably due to equal lack of funds, manpower and boards for testing in the lab.

 

I felt summoned sooo...

BeagleV-Ahead support was submitted in https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/5712 along-side the LicheePi4A https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/5689 and OpenSBI https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/5714 

 

If you have the other boards then you can send them to Base48 Hackerspace and leave a note that they are for me to turn into drones and stuff

-OR-

volunteer to test my contributions :p

Donations also help to keep the tea brewing: https://github.com/Kreyren/Kreyren#donate

Edited September 16, 2023 by KREYREN

[Werner]

You must be either poor or selfish (or both) to abuse open source projects that are living from donations themselves to beg for money. I have never seen such a behaviour before...