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

[Superkoning 6]

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 409]

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 6]

OK, pity. Thanks for replying.

[lanefu 346]

Also riscVian doesn't sound as good

 

🤠

[tparys 40]

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 409]

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

[Igor 2301]

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 6]

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 346]

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 2301]

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