gjacobs101 Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 Hello, I have what I hope is a simple question, but I haven't been able to find an answer. - Orange Pi Plus2e - Debian Jessie Linux is only booting to a console prompt. I can log in, browse around which is great but I would like to explore the GUI. As I understand there are some screen resolution issues, however I do see the Arbian spash screen which looks like rendered video. Also, I'm seeing that H2/H3 Allwinner part design is missing a lot of multimedia/video support eg. Mali drivers. I liked the fact the Orange pi had 2G memory and embedded flash, but OS support is lacking (not complaining, just observation). Are broadcom/amlogic SoCs supported better in the OS realm? Thank you in advance for any help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 What about trying it again with the appropriate OS image? On https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-plus-2e/ there's a box where 'Desktop' is written and if you click on it you can download a Ubuntu Xenial legacy OS image with full graphics stack running (including Mali everyone asks for without knowing what Mali does). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gjacobs101 Posted April 14, 2017 Author Share Posted April 14, 2017 The download links on Orange Pi don't work so I tried Armbian. I was a chip designer/architect at ATI for 10+ so I do know what a GPU does BTW. I guess I posted on the wrong forum... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 Yes, maybe you posted on the wrong forum. It will save you a couple of hours of your live if you use the appropriate OS image, that's THIS ONE: https://dl.armbian.com/orangepiplus2e/Ubuntu_xenial_default_desktop.7z It would maybe help @Igor who runs the download server if you explain to him why you weren't able to find the correct OS image (I've a theory but gave up long ago, IMO it would need an UI designer to look at this stuff) Wrt GPU an ARM devives this might explain a little (especially for people with a x86 background): http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/12/10/most-embedded-gpus-do-not-support-hardware-video-decoding-acceleration-the-vpu-does/ TL;DR: Retro gamers need Mali and no one else. But Armbian's desktop images for all H3 boards have working Mali drivers anyway. You just tried the wrong OS image (Server image is CLI only and Desktop image is hidden for whatever reasons) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zador.blood.stained Posted April 14, 2017 Share Posted April 14, 2017 11 minutes ago, gjacobs101 said: I was a chip designer/architect at ATI for 10+ so I do know what a GPU does BTW. Desktop GPU and embedded GPU are not the same thing. Mali is just a memory-to-memory 3D rendering engine, so unless you want to utilize OpenGL ES you don't need it, because Video Engine takes care of video decoding and Display Engine works with 2D layers, different display outputs, formats and resolutions. While you are technically correct that Mali driver relates to multimedia/video support, it's not the most significant part of the HW multimedia support in this hardware. Well, VE and DE support is also far from perfect, but it is a whole another story. 1 hour ago, gjacobs101 said: Are broadcom/amlogic SoCs supported better in the OS realm? First, not by Armbian. We have "official" images for Odroid C0/C1 (Amlogic S805) and Odroid C2 (Amlogic S905), and unofficial images for different multimedia players, and images for Odroid boards are mostly server oriented - there are no Mali drivers and HW video decoding support libraries. Official Hardkernel images have better support regarding Mali driver (newer driver version is provided compared to Allwinner), but video decoding is a different story - Allwinner has libraries with VDPAU interface while Amlogic has libraries that are hacked to work with Kodi and a simple CLI player. If by Broardcom you mean Raspberry Pi - I believe there is enough info for these boards. Multimedia support and overall software support may be much better than AW and Amlogic, but HW limitations will play a major role in the multimedia support status. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted April 15, 2017 Share Posted April 15, 2017 12 hours ago, tkaiser said: It would maybe help @Igor who runs the download server if you explain to him why you weren't able to find the correct OS image (I've a theory but gave up long ago, IMO it would need an UI designer to look at this stuff) Download pages are not perfect. Zador already helped make them better, but I guess, none of us is UX design pro. I think they should be as simple as possible, while important data should be close to / exposed at download buttons area. Well, perhaps staring into download page for few hours strait might bring up some ideas BTW. Yesterday I put together torrent server and all stable images can be download via torrent. We will have few dedicated seed spots around the globe, but at the moment, we seed them only at download server. This adds another item to the download page 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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