ODROID-C2 ARM SBC Offers Great Performance For $40

[Dukenukemx]

I have a RPI 3 running Ubuntu Mate and I can't get YouTube to playback smoothly. Anyone have any suggestions without me having to load Raspbian?

[SleepModezZ]

I have a RPI 3 running Ubuntu Mate and I can't get YouTube to playback smoothly. Anyone have any suggestions without me having to load Raspbian?

Does Ubuntu have omxplayer functioning like it does on Raspbian (hardware accelerated)? If it does, there is a Chromium extension, RPi-youtube, that can open Youtube videos in it: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/v...?f=63&t=140985

[oleid]

Michael : Do you have any recent x86 based hardware available with similar power requirements? I'm thinking of Intel Celeron N3150 or N3700. There are boards out there with 6W TPD. Also, those Cortex A53 devices provide hardware AES.

Anybody out there with a ODroid C2, who would run "cryptsetup benchmark"? I'd be curious how they perform. I'm wondering if they'd be suitable for a NAS device when connecting the hard drives via USB3.

[hajj_3]

Michael, you should consider getting the Mini M8S TV Box: http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_334005.html

It costs ~$40 delivered, uses the same SoC, has a case, remote control and 8GB of storage, comes with android 5.1, not sure which kernel version. If this can be rooted then you could run ubuntu on it. The only disadvantage other than running android is that it only has 100mbit not gigabit.

[wizard69]

Keep in mind when considering these toys that arduino or mbed board might fine to your project embedded project and they are easier to program than linux. I have not seen any reasonable use of these devices, you can buy a second hand laptop or tablepc ( a real computer with display, power unit, keyboard everything) with 40 usd. I did sold old PIII 800mhz 10 inch tabletpc for 40 eur to a rasperry pi owner, who bought it for boating. You can buy also new cheap android tvboxes, they have case, power unit and a remote controller.

It is still a brand new quad core computer for $40. As for uses for these little boards that is up to the owner. One point though, you won't find $40 used PC's with the power versus performance levels of these boards.

[wizard69]

This board sounds great, but will hold off on buying one until the mainline kernel of at least one Linux distro and at least one BSD works on it. It would have a short working life if it stays stuck with Linux 3.14 forever.

This is being worked on and in fact the ARM world has little choice as support for the old kernels will soon end. This isn't a unique problem for this board, few ARM boards have a modern kernel and fewer are operating as 64 bit machines. It will likely take awhile but eventually we will see more suitable distributions for these machines.

[chithanh]

This is being worked on

ODROID-C1 is stuck at kernel 3.10 since release. Linux-Meson is progressing very slowly, much slower than e.g. sunxi. Will they ever catch up? I'll believe it when I see it.

few ARM boards have a modern kernel and fewer are operating as 64 bit machines.

That is wrong. The 32 bit Allwinner boards are mostly supported by modern kernels. I have an Orange Pi PC (Allwinner H3), kernel 4.5 works fine with minor patching for HDMI output (not needed for headless systems). Allwinner 64 bit support is not there yet though.
The boards based on Qualcomm SoCs also work with modern kernels.

With a broad choice of boards working with modern kernels, there is hardly a reason to put up with such crap.

[jacob]

3.14 is the ODROID-C2 kernel, which is what Ubuntu has to use as there is no mainline support nor newer kernels available for the SoC.

This is the same eternal problem with all these boards that look so cool on paper. I for one would never buy a machine that doesn't have mainline kernel support (or at least is virtually guaranteed to get it soon). The RPi3 may be clocked at 1.2GHz only, but at least it's a real linux box.

[Shimon]

Michael, you should consider getting the Mini M8S TV Box: http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_334005.html

That TV box looks like a great deal. If it could be made to run Linux it would be superior to C2. I'm positively surprised with free shipping and the number of accessories. Almost too good to be true - where's the catch?

[riklaunim]

It is still a brand new quad core computer for $40. As for uses for these little boards that is up to the owner. One point though, you won't find $40 used PC's with the power versus performance levels of these boards.

Until you will want to run Windows or OpenGL application. And those SoCs aren't that much powerful too, octa-core Allwinner A83T barely wins against AMD E-350 in some benchmarks.

Michael : Do you have any recent x86 based hardware available with similar power requirements? I'm thinking of Intel Celeron N3150 or N3700. There are boards out there with 6W TPD. Also, those Cortex A53 devices provide hardware AES.

I don't have A53 at the moment, but older generation in the form of that Allwinner A83T with 8 cores can't win with Intel J1900 quad core Bay Trail which is around twice as good. Crypto: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...KH-1404302SO34 / CPU: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...KH-1404270PL59 / vs AMD E-350: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1...KH-1404306SO45

That TV box looks like a great deal. If it could be made to run Linux it would be superior to C2. I'm positively surprised with free shipping and the number of accessories. Almost too good to be true - where's the catch?

Those dongles are mass made so they are cheap. As for desktop Linux - it's all third-party unofficial support in many cases, and you still may end up without some kernel drivers for exotic WiFi chip and so on. I did hacked Rockchip based dongle some time ago and it did run desktop Linux, but it wasn't spectacular.