Is Linux not portable enough ?

[md_zoran]

Hello everyone. This is my first post here. My background is software development but not very experienced in the Linux SBC world.

So, I have 2x Radxa Zero 3W (not listed on Armbian) with a Rockchip 3566 MCU. And here the questions start...
- why don't the Orange Pi 3B or Quartz 64B Armbian images, with the same MCU, don't work on the Radxa Zero 3W ? Aka, shouldn't an OS be portable ? I'm not expecting such of Windows, but I did expect it from Linux

- what do the loaders contain exactly ? I have this situation where an older loader seems to boot with Armbian (and then shuts down) but a newer one doesn't... yet the older one doesn't work with the OS from Radxa but the newer one does. If we are talking memory address to chain-boot from, aren't these somewhat standard ?

- the last time I installed some Linuxes on a PC was when socket 939 was a new thing, over 15 years ago. An installation was pretty slim, yet now a Debian image decompresses on an SD card to about 12 GB ?!

- are these images actually an "in between" an official release kit and a working Linux image ?

Thank you in advance for your patience !

Edited March 19 by md_zoran

[Werner]

Welcome

 

1 hour ago, md_zoran said:

why don't the Orange Pi 3B or Quartz 64B Armbian images, with the same MCU, don't work on the Radxa Zero 3W ?

Those boards usually don't come with a standardized interface like UEFI which makes universal/generic images possible. So customization is necessary for each and every board. This is especially the case for so called tvboxes which makes deal with such devices a huge pain.

Refer https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/#why-i-cannot-simply-shove-a-random-image-into-my-board-to-work-like-on-my-pc

and https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/#why-does-armbian-not-support-tv-boxes-in-general-the-market-is-huge

 

1 hour ago, md_zoran said:

- the last time I installed some Linuxes on a PC was when socket 939 was a new thing, over 15 years ago. An installation was pretty slim, yet now a Debian image decompresses on an SD card to about 12 GB ?!

Well I guess there is a reason why everything gets faster and bigger since there is a demand. Or maybe people more and more unlearn skills to optimize stuff.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

1 hour ago, md_zoran said:

official release kit

What's that?

 

Cannot answer the other questions in detail. Not my department

 

Cheers

[md_zoran]

Hi Werner and thank you !

Sorry I missed the FAQ here, I went over a lot of text that my eyballs were rolling. Radxa's own forums point to the fact that Armbian (& Forum) is a better place to be in general, so here I am

 

On 3/19/2024 at 4:19 PM, Werner said:

What's that?

You know, the old type of kits with a "setup" or an "installer" program. I remember doing that with a SuSE Linux quite a long time ago.

For example I would try to boot up a Debian from SD card and then install a smaller Linux from within Debian on the EMMC (8GB). I have a loader that boots from EMMC, but unfortunately the Radxa provided image is too large to fit in 8 GB. I noticed Armbian images are much slimer and I would investigate trying to use one on my SBC, it time allows me.

I went through the FAQ and I think I got the answers I was looking for but I'm still reading it and I'll get back if I have more questions.

 

[ag123]

Quote

- why don't the Orange Pi 3B or Quartz 64B Armbian images, with the same MCU, don't work on the Radxa Zero 3W ? Aka, shouldn't an OS be portable ? I'm not expecting such of Windows, but I did expect it from Linux

 

SBC and embedded world is an absolute jungle, take for instance Orange Pi Zero 3 (just as an example) , it has an on board flash chip which can store a boot rom. the kernel bootloader u boot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_U-Boot

can either: 

• boot from a normal sd card (and this depends on the vendor's boot rom, which loads the first few sectors on the sd card (which is u-boot itself) and jumps to u-boot which in turns boots linux (no uefi)
• u-boot can be installed in that boot rom become the BIOS ! itself, and u-boot can boot linux *directly*
• u-boot can practically emulate any kind of booting scheme (including the vendor's original, uefi etc) but that requires u boot to replace the vendor's boot rom (deemed a risky activity, it may brick the board)
• and that every different board can have different hardware configuration (a LED on a different pin or configuration (e.g. pull up or pull down) make a different board (with everything else being the same) !)

 

the above already constitute M different boot configurations and N different boards, with just 8 pins for LEDs you can make a combination of 8! 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 permutations x 2 configurations (pull up or pull down) ~ 80640 different boards for the same board. so for sanity and practicality, a device tree overlay is made for a *fixed* board. e.g. Orange Pi Zero 3

 

and that this project is practically supporting M socs x N boards x X configurations x Y distributions (debian / ubuntu to name just 2, wrong not just 2 within that 2 there are different *releases* ) x Z kernels  (legacy / stable / bleeding edge) and that is not just 3 versions, oh and just UEFI alone has another N different versions https://uefi.org/specifications 😛

 

btw u-boot practically achieved the *holy grail* (look ma no BIOS)

http://www.haifux.org/hebrew/lectures/111/img0.html

it is as hard core and bare metal as one can be.

 

it isn't about OS being 'portable' per se, than it is about what you see in each figment (i.e. a particular board with a particular config) is just one single very narrow endpoint in the sea of infinite permutations.

[md_zoran]

Crazy !

So... even simpler components like RAM have an SPD chip... I thought that SBC surely have their base HW config stored somewhere, but it's more and more clear that Iwe're in the 80's and 90's of the PC era.

I've been playing these days with a SIM7600G-H module... works fine with SIM from one carrier, doesn't work with SIM from another one. I mean, it "kind" of works, but only receives SMS, can't send. So far the flags and diagnostic messages seem the same except network info, type... signal ok, status ok.

So yeah... it seems that my initial expectations of everything being plug and play ans somewhat the peak of all tech and strategies we learnt from PCs is wrong.