Radxa Rock 2F - Initial Support available ?

[luckylinux]

I would really like to get the Radxa Rock 2F (with Rockchip RK3528A) board as a KVM Adapter because it's very cheap (~ 12 USD / EUR including Taxes).

 

I read that at least the RK3528 SOC is just getting Mainline Support for the Clock as in Kernel 6.15. No USB, Ethernet, PCIe or GPU support at all right now.

 

I don't know how similar the RK3528 and RK3528A are, I couldn't find much Information on the Internet.

 

At the very lead I would need MicroSD, Ethernet and USB (including USB OTG) working.

 

I saw there is a Repository with some Notes for the RK3528 SOC on Github, outlining the Status of getting Mainline Support:

https://github.com/ziyao233/rk3528-mainline

 

@Igor mentioned a few Months ago on Github that he planned on getting the Radxa Rock 2F Board soon, but no Timeline available yet:

https://github.com/armbian/build/issues/7836#issuecomment-2662772344

 

@Igor: did you have a Chance to play a bit around on the Radxa Rock 2F ? Is anything working right now ?

 

Thanks for the Help !

[Igor]

2 hours ago, luckylinux said:

Is anything working right now ?

 

We have vendor (v6.1.115) based kernel support here, where hw features usually works fine. I didn't do much of testings, only added board to the test farm. I never tried mainline here, perhaps someone else did.

 

Logs: https://paste.armbian.com/uhofaquguz

[luckylinux]

Actually I just discovered this PR right now: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/7820

 

Interesting, so basically Armbian will use the old Kernel that Radxa Originally shipped with their Images (I don't think they ever shipped anything newer than Bullseye which is very old now). So essentially we can run the recent Ubuntu Noble / Debian Bookworm Distributions, "just" with the old Kernel from Debian Bullseye ?

[Werner]

This kernel does not come from radxa but from Rockchip themselves as BSP. However we put lots of work on top of that:https://github.com/armbian/linux-rockchip

This will basically be a thing until mainline catches up. Though there will be a few years to go in that matter.

[luckylinux]

Still good to know that at least it's supported, even though it needs a custom (non-mainline) Kernel for now .

 

I'm a bit surprised they are still using 6.1 Branch, but fair enough, that is Longterm Support (as would be 6.6 and 6.12), but kinda weird they are using such an old Version.

 

The exact Version they seem to be using is 6.1.115, released 2024-11-01 (01-Nov-2024), as opposed to latest 6.1.140 released on 2025-05-22 (22-May-2025).

 

However the Build Log that Igor pointed me to was 6.1.99-vendor-rk35xx, so yet another Version. But maybe that isn't the latest Build or ?

 

Installed Packages in that Log point to 6.1.115

ii  linux-dtb-vendor-rk35xx        25.8.0-trunk.53                        arm64        Armbian Linux vendor DTBs in /boot/dtb-6.1.115-vendor-rk35xx
ii  linux-headers-vendor-rk35xx    25.8.0-trunk.53                        arm64        Armbian Linux vendor headers 6.1.115-vendor-rk35xx
ii  linux-image-vendor-rk35xx      25.8.0-trunk.53                        arm64        Armbian Linux vendor kernel image 6.1.115-vendor-rk35xx

 

[Werner]

3 hours ago, luckylinux said:

s 6.1.99-vendor-rk35xx

rk bsp branch has been bumped to .115 (or rkr5.1 as they call it) a few weeks or month ago, so fairly recent.

[Igor]

12 hours ago, luckylinux said:

However the Build Log that Igor pointed me to was 6.1.99-vendor-rk35xx, so yet another Version

That was installed on my test machine which wasn't upgraded to latest (.115) yet.