Pretty much that is where most of these SBCs fall off my list. Without an active OS development its only 1/2 of the puzzle.
And this is an unfortunate state of the general purpose ARM64 computing. This board, with 16 GB of RAM and M.2 slot, would make the perfect Linux desktop machine. However, you only receive one or two major distribution updates from the hardware vendor, and then you're stuck with it.
I like your optimism. Some boards literally get no updates.
Massive shout out to Raspberry Pi team - Raspberry Pi 1 launched 12 years ago with Debian 7, and currently can run Debian 12.
A lot of these vendors are overseas, do not share my values around open source, and may well look at my computing activity as a potential data mine to be sold.
Maybe I have trust issues. But if I can't install some community OS out of the box without relying on vendor binary blobs, I don't buy the SBC.
I can get arch/slack to work on weird hardware, what I can't do is get the promised hardware performance without specific (usually semi-closed) hardware drivers.
If you're relying on , say, rockchip features -- then you're boned without their support -- this is already a big enough heartach without the malware/data-mine angle (which is likely just as valid.)
> Sadly, but this was almost expected, there does not seem to be any kind of GPU support in the version that I have chosen. A quick check with glxgears confirms that there is just a software pipe for rendering.
Stuff like this is why people keep picking Raspberry Pi. There's tons and tons of alternative SBCs that have better price to performance on paper, but the software support is always awful. You're always limited to a few distro images released by the SBC vendor, and there's no effort spent by them on getting everything working. This product came out in December 2024, and they STILL don't have images with working GPU acceleration.
And it is kind of funny, when hardware manufacturers will release a board and will then go great lengths of bending whole distros for the board, instead of just using UBoot which already has UEFI and ACPI layers, loading it permanently on the board into some SPI flash and then let it boot as a normal PC...
For a quick bring-up and implementation, take a look at this repo: https://github.com/Pelochus/ezrknpu
I have a Radxa Rock 5C (on Armbian) and it runs various models rather well. Trying to convert models is kind of a pain, though, so watch out.
Also: recent Geekbench should have NN tests: have you found dedicated comparison pages, and is which processor (C/G/NPU) is used clear?
This may be slightly out of date, but these patches allow HDMI out on uefi for the Max, and can probably be easily modified this for the Ultra. If there is interest I can look into this later on tonight and test on an Ultra. The HDMI device tree isn't too bad, you can kinda guess the address offsets, but you will need to dive into the 3588 refernece manual. There are some design flaws in these boards around using SPI for the wifi and bluetooth and haven't had these work yet. Vulkan hardware support is alright, and can run Chromium and Niri without issues. Ghostty doesn't as it is OpenGL only.
I use these baords for aarch64 linux builds and a basic desktop environment, and it's been pretty rock solid with EDK2. Take a gander ya'll.
I don't have to worry about getting even my freakin' 12-yo Raspberry Pi 1 going with newer software than it was originally built to handle. But the Chinese Gooseberry Pi that seemed like such a bargain on AliExpress, esp. considering the price-performance ratio, is a complete crapshoot.
It's pretty amazing what the Raspberry Pi Foundation has achieved in terms of software support and platform longevity in a world seemingly dedicated to bedroom experiments that are bound to eventually end up in a drawer or landfill. I'm old enough to remember the Gumstix and SheevaPlug, and those had these problems too.
Ecco•4mo ago
By the way, the OrangePi 5 is a pretty good SBC. Much better bang/bucks than RPi, and the mainline kernel support is pretty good and getting better with every release thanks to the folks at Collabora.
https://gitlab.collabora.com/hardware-enablement/rockchip-35...
amluto•4mo ago
phoronixrly•4mo ago
rjsw•4mo ago
rjsw•4mo ago
RK3588S -> RK3588, LPDDR4 -> LPDDR5
Havoc•4mo ago
Ecco•4mo ago
timw4mail•4mo ago
Ecco•4mo ago
As a matter of fact I’m currently running an OrangePi 5 as a server using an unmodified Debian Trixie and hardware support is nearly perfect.
rixed•4mo ago
packetlost•4mo ago
mrbluecoat•4mo ago
If power draw isn't critical, an N95/N100/N150 x86 wins out every time on OS support and price point. Especially when you factor in an SSD, thermal handling, case, power supply...