Linux 5.6 Can Boot The Original Amazon Echo, But It's Not Really Practical

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.6 Can Boot The Original Amazon Echo, But It's Not Really Practical

As first to write about yesterday, Linux 5.6 Arm platform changes now support the original Amazon Echo. While this allows the first-generation Amazon Echo to run with a mainline Linux kernel and is exciting for hobbyists, it's not really practical at this stage or even in the long-run...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.6-Amazon-Echo

[tildearrow]

Alexa, install Linux on yourself.

[polarathene]

Alexa, install Linux on yourself.

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Ardje]

I would go for any alternative with eMMC. It's bad that they yet again forfeited to have eMMC or UFS on the Pi4.

[Imroy]

Maybe look at Seeed's ReSpeaker boards instead? I haven't used them myself, I just know they're out there for anyone wanting to work on "smart speakers".

[timofonic]

Are you saying Alexa is robust? Are you joking? Alexa sucks a lot, I removed it because it's useless.

[skeevy420]

I guess that's cool. Google and Android has made me paranoid about technology to the point that I do not trust any device like that.

[danmcgrew]

I would go for any alternative with eMMC. It's bad that they yet again forfeited to have eMMC or UFS on the Pi4.

"I would go for any alternative with eMMC..."

That means that you'd go with ANY other currently-available SBC rather than the RPi.
The RPi has been a joke for a very long time-- a toy, compared to what's been available, for a very long time, from the competition with its / their on-board mass storage; true gigabit Ethernet; NO heat problems; real engineering DESIGN going into the product BEFORE ever being released; pathetic excuses from Eben Upton ("What? Oh, right...I GUESS we'll have that fixed--maybe--in the next board release. Or two..."); 64-bit operating systems for a long, long time. Upton has admitted, in print, that the reason they went with a 64-bit processor was to get additional processor speed, and NOT for 64-bit capability ("We are sticking with 32-bit--and not even offering 64-bit for those who could use it--for the sake of backward compatibility and all those poor little 8-year-olds who would be absolutely devastated by the lack of backward-compatibility...").
An extremely valuable, and prescient, indicator of the entire future of how problems, any problems, in the design and implementation of the RPi would be handled was given by Eben Upton himself who absolutely refused to fix one of the biggest problems with the original RPi form its very inception, many years ago, has caused nothing but continuing problems for everyone by damaging the VERY elegant, ONLY mass storage device--the SD card--and which is designed into ANY electronic project by the most wet-behind-the-ears electronics-design neophyte: AN ON-OFF SWITCH FOR THE DEVICE. You never heard, from Upton, any reference to the amount of grief this single, glaring omission has caused to legions of those "...poor little eight-year-olds...", have you? To this very day, Eben Upton (once you make it past all the circumlocution and dissembling) defends the lack of a rational shut-down procedure for the RPi.

The Raspberry Pi does provide a truly valuable contribution to the electronics community: entertainment, via all those thoroughly laughable "TECH" articles on using the RPi to build a true, usable laptop or desktop computer ("I Replaced My Desktop With The Raspberry Pi and Had Amazing Success"). For some strange reason, there are never any follow-on articles detailing how the authors' successes were so great that they threw away their old desktops and laptops.

Eben Upton and wife need to stick to doing the one--and only--thing they now know how to do now without screwing up too badly: being in the magazine business.

[caligula]

That means that you'd go with ANY other currently-available SBC rather than the RPi.

RPi has excellent community support: GPIO switching using dynamic Python 2 code, ported Arduino libraries, Scratch, Web browser and ES6 powered computing,Node RED, lightweight home automation (OpenHAB). Plenty of NAS designs. Plenty of web server / router / firewall applications. Venerable ARMv6 binaries run on all boards from RPi 1 to 4B. DDR2 is also more battle-tested, compared to more recent LPDDR3/4/5 designs.

[Michael_S]

danmcgrew,
You're angry at a fundamental feature of market economics: people that are good at marketing and business win, not the best product. This VHS beat Betamax, Microsoft Windows conquered the desktop market, personal vehicles are way more popular than public transit (at least in the US), and the Raspberry Pi is the king of SBCs. This is also why planned obsolescence dominates the tech and automotive industries.

Eben Upton's real answer for why the Pi doesn't innovate nearly as much as competitors is, "People keep buying them by the millions with the features we have now. I earn more profits by innovating slowly."

And really, I don't hate him. A lot of other tech giants are far worse about abusing their customers and the community.