Video : Armbian for the Raspberry Pi 4 ! ! ! Preview ! ! !

[NicoD]

Hi all.
You might have already heard. Armbian is aiming to support the Raspberry Pi4. @rpardini already made well working images for it.
In this video I talk about why we would want Armbian for the RPi4, and I show you around in Armbian Jammy 5.13 for the RPi4.
 

 

We do need to find someone who wants to take the task on him/her to be maintainer for RaspberryPi4 at Armbian.
For this you need one spare board that can be used for testing when new release are made.
Here some info I gathered.

 

Raspberry Pi 4 cooled with big heatsink on SoC and fan on-top

Board                  | SBC-Bench              | Distro                             | Clockspeeds         | 7z all cores  | 7z small core   | 7z big core   | CPU-Miner   | NicoD-Blender      | Max temp      | C copy backwards      
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xnJ        Armbian Hirsute xfce4 5.13.12        1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz         7760            1267              1857            10.05         14m41s                 78C    ***    1782.9 MB/s
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xv3        Armbian Hirsute xfce4 5.13.12        1.5Ghz/2Ghz           8288            1348              2070            10.95         13m21s                        ***    1806.7 MB/s
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xs3        Armbian Hirsute cinnamon 5.13.12     1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz         7766            1267              1851            10            14m33s                 78C           1742.6 MB/s
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xt0        Armbian Hirsute budgie 5.13.12       1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz         7941            1272              1863            10.05         14m24s/14m18s          78C           1738.3 MB/s
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xtR        Armbian Buster xfce4 4.4.213         1.5Ghz/2Ghz           8383            1359              1982            10.8          14m17s                               1377.3 MB/s
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xuf        Armbian Buster xfce4 4.4.213         1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz         7879            1278              1807            10            15m20s                               1392.3 MB/s           
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xux        Armbian Focal xfce4 5.10.60          1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz         8028            1286              1859            10.27         13m29s                         ***   1765.3 MB/s
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3xuL        Armbian Focal xfce4 5.10.60          1.5Ghz/2Ghz           8427            1351              2076            11.2          12m53s                         ***   1759.9 MB/s
NanoPi M4 2GB            http://ix.io/3EDB        Ubuntu Xenial armhf 4.4 xfce4        1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz         7069            1140              1695                                                               1387.1 MB/s

Board                  | SBC-Bench              | Distro                             | Clockspeeds         | 7z all cores  | 7z small core   | 7z big core   | CPU-Miner   | NicoD-Blender         | Max temp
Odroid C4/HC4            http://ix.io/2LaP        Ubuntu Mate 4.9                      1.91Ghz               7000            1769                              7.2 kH/s                                           2087.5 MB/s
Odroid C4/HC4            http://ix.io/3F6z        Armbian Buster 5.9                   2.10Ghz               7971            2030                              7.9           23m02s                               2020.0 MB/s
Khadas VIM3                                       Armbian Hirsute cinnamon 5.13.12                                                                                           12m55s

Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3F6o        Armbian Jammy 5.13                   2Ghz                  8047                              2070             Didn't work  Blender doens't work                 2054.3 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3F6K        Armbian Jammy 5.13                   1.5Ghz                6239                              1572                                                               2556.8 MB/s      
Raspberry Pi4                                     Armbian Hirsute edge xfce4 5.11      1.5Ghz                5832                              1534                          18m11s                   60C
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3Euw        Armbian Hirsute edge xfce4 5.11      2Ghz                  7747                              2037             9.8          14m26s                   68C         2382.2 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3FbW        Armbian Hirsute 5.11 OC GPU+CPU      2.1Ghz                8168                              2147                          Blender crash                        2445.0 MB/s  
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3EU7        Armbian Impish edge headless 5.13    1.5Ghz                6251                              1584                          15m39s                               2618.0 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3Ewi        Armbian Impish edge headless 5.13    2Ghz                  8171                              2093                          12m41s                               2713.7 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3EPQ        Armbian Bullseye edge headless 5.13  1.5Ghz                6328                              1594             7.3          Blender doesn't work                 2680.5 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3EK9        Armbian Bullseye edge headless 5.13  2Ghz                  8242                              2096             9.7          Blender doesn't work                 2505.4 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3ECd        Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye 32-bit      1.5Ghz                7577                              1933                          21m09s                               2511.7 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3ECt        Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye 32-bit      2Ghz                  9746                              2533                          17m05s                               2263.0 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3EIe        Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye 64-bit      1.5Ghz                6174                              1567             7.2          17m01s                               2463.5 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3EJs        Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye 64-bit      2Ghz                  8026                              2053             9.65         Blender unstable at 2Ghz             2326.1 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3EGZ        Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish) 5.13 arm64     1.5Ghz                6160                              1563                          16m50s                               2421.2 MB/s
Raspberry Pi4            http://ix.io/3EHA        Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish) 5.13 arm64     2Ghz                  7965                              2038             Didn't work  Blender unstable at 2Ghz             2501.9 MB/s

Odroid N2+               http://ix.io/3EwQ        Armbian Impish xfce4 5.14            2Ghz/2.4Ghz           11714           1765              2517                           8m51s                               2053.0 MB/s

Raspberry Pi4 SD->USB3 with SandDisk Extreme                           89.7 MB/s read     
              SD with on-board sd-card reader Sandisk Extreme          45.4 MB/s read (rather slow compared to 70MB/s for M4)

RPi4 fastest memory, then N2+, then M4(lpddr3)

Armbian Impish                                 2.93.5
Raspberry Pi OS Bulsseye 32-bit/64-bit blender 2.83.5
Ubuntu 21.10 Blender                           2.93.3
Armbian Jammy Blender goesn't work / bug 

*** Ubuntu 21.10 unstable when installing ubuntu-mate-desktop, Unity very slow

Armbian on RPi4 pro's
+ Having the same platform for RPi and other Armbian supported boards
+ Reliability/ stable
+ ARM64 vs armhf of RaspberryPiOS/Ubuntu unstable at high clocks and a lot of bugs and hangs
+ Ubuntu and Debian images and all their versions
+ Great for server tasks
+ Customizable
+ You can build your own RPi4 images with whatever modules you need

Armbian on RPi4 con's
- Not great for desktop use (yet)
- No VPU drivers, video playback firefox ok up to 720p
- Audio glitchy, no audio on some images like Jammy 
 
*** For audio install pavucontrol
*** On-board wifi and dongles don't work with the Armbian Impish and Bullseye images. Dongles work on Hirsute. I guess kernel issue 5.13 -> 5.11
*** Armbian Bullseye 5.13 USB not always working

Install desktops
sudo apt install xfce4 (ubuntu-mate-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, lubuntu-desktop, ubuntu-desktop, ...)
sudo apt install lightdm
sudo apt install lightdm-gtk-greeter
sudo apt install pavucontrol
sudo apt install xinit

Power draw at 5.3V headless 
1.5Ghz with fan maxed out        0.95A 
2Ghz with fan maxed out          1.10A

To do 
- M4 Impish
- Gather the info I've got from other boards and my pc's

And for those who don't like watching a video, here a short text of what I talk about.

 

What is Armbian? What is the Armbian build framework which is one of the valued pro's compared to RPiOS?
Why Armbian for RPi4? For software compatibillity with other Armbian supported SBCs, Reliabillity, ARM64, Ubuntu and Debian and their versions, great for server tasks... 
Accentuate this is only a preview, not full release or supported
Show Armbian download page
Show the NanoPi M4 and Odroid N2+, talk about their specs(short)
Difference between other SBCs and RPi/ThreadX - Under Voltage problems/eMMC and NVMe possible on others(better I/O)
What doesn't work yet on Armbian for RPi4. Wifi, BT and HDMI sound
Show Armbian Impish, show htop, install desktops, 
Benchmarks between different OS's. Explain they aren't worth much since, different versions of software, different architecture armhf vs arm64, 7zip multicore doesn't play well on different sized clusters, and doesn't always give exact the same result...
!!!Test the performance of the software you use to know if this is the correct tool for you!!!
Show different desktop environments installed on Armbian - Not the Armbian default desktops - mate doesn't work great, xfce4 works ok, kde works but is slow(newer version should improve that soon)Change openGL2->OpenGL3, ...
Performance of I/O. Better to use a good but cheap usb3 sd-card reader than on-board sd-card reader. ssd/NVMe->USB3 even better.
???Would you like to become RPi4 Armbian maintainer??? Or for another board???
Conclusion. Good for RPi community to have even more choice. Good for Armbian community to be able to use the same software on their RPi devices as on their others. Good for Armbian to reach more people and have more awareness about other boards. Having a good build environment to build your own images/kernels/patches for the RPi4.

 

[guidol]

@NicoD
why only for the RPI4?
I commented out (like you said in the video) the 2GHz overclock out of the config.txt and booted the image on the RPI3b(+)

for a headless-server-only version (No Desktop)

 

Little problem was the /erc/rc.local where I mount my SAMBA from another pistyle-sbc, because the Network card is getting up very late.

So I had to add a "sleep 20" at the beginning of my /etc/rc.local

 

Armbian on my the RPi 3B v1.2 takes around 185MB for booting - so enough space to do something

 

Because onboard audio doesnt work I used a USB-Audio with a proper /etc/asound.conf

Spoiler

pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
    device 0
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
}

 

After a "dpkg-reconfigure console-setup" the RPi does copy many new/current modules again and seem to setup the system better.

 

To gain back some memory from the RPi3 I changed the GPU memory in the config.txt from 256MB to 32MB to get 950MB useable for the headless-server

 

armbianmonitor -u result at:

http://ix.io/3Fly

 

 

[NicoD]

@guidolI did think about it that it should work on RPi3 too. I should have one, but couldn't find it. My RPi2B can't do it for sure.
Thank you for the info.

[guidol]

1 hour ago, NicoD said:

My RPi2B can't do it for sure.

@NicoD iy you got the early 2B with Cortex-/ CPU then it wont work, but there is a 2B V1.2 with Cortex-A53 (BCM2837) at 900Mhz which could work  because it can handle 64bit