ROC-RK3328-CC: A Raspberry Pi Competitor With Gigabit Ethernet, USB3, DDR4

[pal666]

mesa is optional and often unnecessary when it's not peripheral hardware (as is the case for them).

lol, by that definition nvidia is very good at mainlining

Intel has a few driver stacks without mesa support.

intel was stupid enough to release atoms with powervr video. intel can't mainline them and nobody sane should use them

Not on always and not on release. Many Atoms weren't supported and a few i7s couldn't even boot in the first 3 month since release the last couple of years. AMD's mobile cores' drivers are still wip and many Ryzen laptops don't have linux support yet.

at least both intel and amd are actively working on mainlining them. where is public rockchip wip mesa branch? wait a minute, so rockchip does not work at all on their drivers? well, that's mirror of intel's powervr situation and just as in that situation, nobody sane should use them

The whole situation around them not releasing microcode for meltdown for dozens of cpus from the last couple of years could also be put under this umbrella.

no, it shouldn't. while i'm not a fan of intel or meltdown, its a hardware bug and microcode is not a driver, we are discussing drivers, not how good is rockchip at releasing fixes for hardware bugs

[danmcgrew]

I'm not trying to make a case for any hardware; just some observations and a question--

One fact which appears in all the data collected here is that the Odroid C2 handily beats the Raspberry Pi 3B+ in every test; in most cases by 50% or better, and sometimes twice as good. What good is "Non-Gigabit Ethernet" (i.e. 300 MHz "Gigabit Ethernet"--a Raspberry-Pi-Trading-Group-generated piece of puffery), and the lack of true mass storage capability--even if one chooses not to use it--in the face of these type performance disparities (and. please: no fluff about the 'wonderful' backup one gets from the 'community' by purchasing a Pi)?

Whatever happened to the Odroid XU-4, whose specs are much better than the Odroid C2, at not that much a premium ($59 vs. $40)? Why is it not in these tests?

[ldesnogu]

Now, I understand that Libre is a bit of a buzzword at the moment but how can the machine be Libre whilst also having an ARM processor? I imagine a lot of the other supporting hardware is proprietary too.

How is an ARM processor less "libre" than an Intel or AMD one? The issue is not the processor it's the software that runs on it.

I am assuming they are saying it is libre because we can "boot our own operating systems" on it. This is a dangerous use of the word because it is losing the original meaning. The fact that we cannot yet (in 2018) achieve the original meaning of Libre, doesn't mean we should give up on it and using it for lesser things :/

The use of the word open is probably a better option. As in, Open like the IBM PS/2 Compatible was. Not closed down, locked tight and useless like Windows RT or iPhones.

I might just be being pedantic but one day we will incorrectly start to use the word Open / Libre for simply being able to sideload software rather than being locked into an app-store

But then by your own definition no current hardware is "open / libre", right?