Linux Patches Work To Upstream Raspberry Pi's RP1 PCI Device Support

[alfcyber]

I think the pi is good, I have one from the first series myself, with the gpios it is useful for experiments but also because of the low power consumption it could be used as a mini home server 24hd(just like cubieboard or odroid). So more suitable for learning and experimenting...
but do you really need the latest kernel for a raspberry?

[fallingcats]

In the meantime, we are stuck with kernel 6.6 under RPi OS. So even if there are updates via the kernel, we do not benefit from them ;-(

It would be necessary that, like Arch Linux, they offer either to use the latest LTS kernel, or the very latest stable kernel from kernel.org (kernel debian testing). Same thing for Mesa we should be able to use the very latest version...

What's your use case for something even newer than the current (and supported) lts kernel on the RPi?

[Phil995511]

In the meantime, we are stuck with kernel 6.6 under RPi OS. So even if there are updates via the kernel, we do not benefit from them ;-(

It would be necessary that, like Arch Linux, they offer either to use the latest LTS kernel, or the very latest stable kernel from kernel.org (kernel debian testing). Same thing for Mesa we should be able to use the very latest version...

[Veto]

(except for nvidia and their tegra, which is outside the hobbyist reachability)

I don't know about the later Tegras, but my experience with the Tegras in the Ouya and Nexus tablet made me say "Never Nvidia again!"...

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Please Intel or AMD make a cheap single-board computer to compete with Raspberry Pi so we can have one with great out-of-the-box support with all of the hardware fully functional in the mainline kernel before the hardware hits the shelves.

Raspberry Pi Foundation sucks, they put the hardware on the shelves then years later the hardware support gets merged into mainline. All the Raspberry Pi hardware have been plagued by problems ranging from terrible Ethernet performance, unreliable power, heat problems, throttling, etc.

While not as tiny as a Pi, you have endless small well built business focused x86 PCs to choose from dirt cheap on the second hand market. E g. HP EliteDesk 705 G4 for <= $100 USD on eBay that gets you...

• 4 core / 8 thread Ryzen 5 Pro
• ~16GB RAM (user replaceable SODIMMs)
• ~256GB SSD (1x 2280 NVMe slot + 1x 7mm 2.5" SATA slot)
• A powerful (for the time) iGPU
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Dual DP
• A bunch of USB ports
• 35W TDP

People love Pis because of the software ecosystem and ready made projects. If you just want a cheap smallish x86 computer, there's a bazillion of them.

[Quackdoc]

Please Intel or AMD make a cheap single-board computer to compete with Raspberry Pi so we can have one with great out-of-the-box support with all of the hardware fully functional in the mainline kernel before the hardware hits the shelves.

Raspberry Pi Foundation sucks, they put the hardware on the shelves then years later the hardware support gets merged into mainline. All the Raspberry Pi hardware have been plagued by problems ranging from terrible Ethernet performance, unreliable power, heat problems, throttling, etc.

there are multiple single board x86 computers. you can find J series intel SBCs for around 60 usd the radxa x2l comes to mind. In the past we had UP Core too. not sure what the current state of things is, but "go out and look" note you'll not get as small as you can with arm, so keep expectations tame.

[HankB]

You should ask amd or intel how many years we had to wait for video encoding and decoding on linux.

Embedded world is not like x86, things are very different and we should consider lucky that we have opensource gpu drivers for raspberry pis backed by the foundation, because no other major embedded manufacturer provides any effort (except for nvidia and their tegra, which is outside the hobbyist reachability)

Mainlining things in the kernel is not an easy nor a fast task, it requires a lot of time and effort to get things squared.

First, Traditional Raspberry Pis are not embedded systems. The RP/Nano is.

We're not talking about AMD or Intel. Most AMD and Intel processors are running Windows so it is no surprise that Linux support is lagging. We're talking about Raspberry Pi who almost exclusively relies on Debian for their OS. They need to be providing something in return for the benefits they reap for using OS S/W.

[Ilmarix]

Please Intel or AMD make a cheap single-board computer to compete with Raspberry Pi so we can have one with great out-of-the-box support with all of the hardware fully functional in the mainline kernel before the hardware hits the shelves.

There was Intel Quark powered Intel Galileo boards, but like with many other things that aren't humongous or expensive, Intel's attention span was rather short.


For GPIO Intel went with an off the shelf Cypress port expander, connected to 100kHz i2c bus, end result being that the GPIO has an update frequency of around 230Hz, which for comparison is about 4000 times too slow to drive the popular neopixel lights, for example.

Raspberry pi 1 (!) does around 2800Hz with shell script (!), or 48MHz with optimized C code.

Galileo had better bus for ethernet. Storage 8G onboard, or microsd card.

Raspberry Pi Foundation sucks, they put the hardware on the shelves then years later the hardware support gets merged into mainline. All the Raspberry Pi hardware have been plagued by problems ranging from terrible Ethernet performance, unreliable power, heat problems, throttling, etc.

Sadly, compared to their peers, Raspberry pi software side is phenomenal. Others might dump a half working outdated kernel tarball once, and never ever update the kernel again, despite still selling the boards 15 years later.

[blackshard]

Please Intel or AMD make a cheap single-board computer to compete with Raspberry Pi so we can have one with great out-of-the-box support with all of the hardware fully functional in the mainline kernel before the hardware hits the shelves.

Raspberry Pi Foundation sucks, they put the hardware on the shelves then years later the hardware support gets merged into mainline. All the Raspberry Pi hardware have been plagued by problems ranging from terrible Ethernet performance, unreliable power, heat problems, throttling, etc.

You should ask amd or intel how many years we had to wait for video encoding and decoding on linux.

Embedded world is not like x86, things are very different and we should consider lucky that we have opensource gpu drivers for raspberry pis backed by the foundation, because no other major embedded manufacturer provides any effort (except for nvidia and their tegra, which is outside the hobbyist reachability)

Mainlining things in the kernel is not an easy nor a fast task, it requires a lot of time and effort to get things squared.

[DanaG]

I wish they had made it a proper PCIe multifunction device with different endpoints per function. It would've been fun to be able to put an RP1 on a PCIe card and install it in a regular PC.