Wayland on ARM SBCs

[e97]

armbian has XFCE (hw accelerated where possible) desktop images - is there interest in getting Wayland running on as many SBCs as possible so we can have smooth, high quality desktop?

[Igor]

We (most work was done by Zador) just spent months to rework desktop that now have more features and its properly packed that can be installed on the top of CLI and upgrade, hopefully, works fine. We are releasing it within one week.

 

Armbian tends to focus on base problems, server / iot functionality, since most of those boards have problems in the ground level and it's irrelevant if we add on it's rotten base an "smooth, high quality desktop". This is what some board manufacturers might do to impress their potential buyers.

 

We are happy with current level of smoothness and quality of the desktop but project is open and we will support any initiative from outside.

[rodolfo]

Armbian tends to focus on base problems, server / iot functionality, since most of those boards have problems in the ground level and it's irrelevant if we add on it's rotten base an "smooth, high quality desktop". This is what some board manufacturers might do to impress their potential buyers.

 

Thank you for keeping Armbian clean and functional. The CLI version is all that is ever needed. For graphical ( mostly remote ) access I personally prefer lean and fast LXDE over XFCE. The modular approach of Armbian makes it easy to set up whatever one considers a "smooth, high quality desktop". 

 

A typical example of flashy useless "technology" is Wayland - no transparent networking means pretty useless for SBCs and embedded projects.

[zador.blood.stained]

AFAIK Wayland/Weston needs "true" GPU acceleration, on devices with Mali GPU this means you need special GLES/EGL libraries with Wayland support.

https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-mali/issues/10

[manuti]

Thank you for keeping Armbian clean and functional. The CLI version is all that is ever needed. For graphical ( mostly remote ) access I personally prefer lean and fast LXDE over XFCE. The modular approach of Armbian makes it easy to set up whatever one considers a "smooth, high quality desktop". 

 

A typical example of flashy useless "technology" is Wayland - no transparent networking means pretty useless for SBCs and embedded projects.

 

I use also X applications but without installing all the Xserver and going remotely exporting the X using SSH:

ssh -X user@armbian-ip

In this way you can use graphical file manager or develop small things using remotely geary. Here you can see an example on my Raspberry Pi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYhxqWmQqNE

Over a server version you only install the application desired and all the dependencies.

[rodolfo]

I use also X applications but without installing all the Xserver and going remotely exporting the X using SSH:

 

X over ssh is definitely the way to go. The turbo version of this is x2go. Have a look at http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1044-remote-desktop-fun-with-armbian/

[e97]

armbian's philosophy as a minimal server distro is the primary goal and I agree 100% with that. X over SSH is quite helpful when you need graphical output on an embedded system that's not easily accessible. A minimal server distro designed for embedded systems sounds like the perfect platform for a minimal graphics display environment on top.

 

 

 since most of those boards have problems in the ground level and it's irrelevant if we add on it's rotten base

 

What do you mean by this? Are you saying a lot of these SBCs have hardware problems? Can you give examples so I can avoid hardware like this.

 

If you are using the embedded system as a desktop replacement or a media player, then having a presentation pipeline be able to handle multiple video frame rates and the mismatch with the display refresh rate is crucial for a smooth experience.

 

Even my Dual SMP/GTX 960, Ubuntu 16.04 desktop x86_64 has tearing issues with video playback and heavy desktop usage (4K) which is quite remarkable given the level of progress of other OSes (Win 7, OS X) which run buttery smooth on the same hardware

[Igor]

What do you mean by this? Are you saying a lot of these SBCs have hardware problems? Can you give examples so I can avoid hardware like this.

 

No, no. I meant this as initial software support which comes with the chip. It usually came with some old for Android prepared kernel, with blobs for settings and wide range of bugs.

 

Nevertheless you can find hardware design flaws which software cant fix. An well known example is router Lamobo R1, some H3 based boards use cheap voltage control, some has heat dispansion problem and we could certainly find more.

 

Linux drivers are problematic in general, yap. Nvidia is a Linux unfriendly company and they just recently start to improve that. Or it's a problem related to patents and © bullshit. Hard to tell.

 

But that's another story.

[Salvador Liébana]

Hi, I am testing Panfrost on Rockpi4 with 5.2 kernel. The driver should run better on wayland, there is any way to run a wayland session?? 

[Salvador Liébana]

[hexdump]

is this on wayland or x11? i'm asking as i though panfrost is not running that well with x11 and your screenshot looks a bit like x11 ... would be nice if panfrost made that much progress, that something like this is possible now.

 

can you maybe summarize you experience with current panfrost - is it mostly working or mostly not working?

 

a lot of thanks in advance and best wishes - hexdump

[jock]

I queue for the details about panfrost + updated mesa + wayland (or X11) session. Some basic steps to get an usable setup would be wonderful

[e97]

Anyone seen any Wayland demos / guides for ARM SBCs ?