Allwiner H3 / Orange PI PC

[alexellis]

Has anyone tried to install Arch Linux on the Allwiner H3 / Orange PI PC? It was recently released for 15 USD and has similar specs to the Raspberry PI Model B 2 (I am not implying compatible architecture/chipsets in any way)

I use Arch on all my PIs so it would be a shame to have to install Bananian or whatever they supply as stock.

[guisacouto]

A compatible release for this board would be really awesome. Definitely the best power/price ration on the market! 1.6Ghz quad core.. that almost doubles the rpi2! And for less than half the price.

[lyoko]

It has mali400 gpu, not sure if it's possible to get it working with alarm easily. and I'm skeptical about it's x265 abilities.

[sehraf]

Just ordered a orange pi pc! I'll try to get ALARM running when it's delivered.

Though i see one major problem: the kernel
They use 3.4 which is too old for systemd. Their U-Boot (from 2011) should be able to boot a more recent kernel but you still need to build one. The CPU itself is supported since 4.2 [1] but there is currently no device tree file for any H3 board (also i have no idea if there are drivers for the rest of the SOC/board)

There is hope though since (at least) one major dev has a H3 board


[1] http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining ... d_into_4.2

[lyoko]

Getting even more interested. But you still won't get any mali-400 support, no kernel module is shipped with linux. maybe it does with android.

from what I understand, the mali gpu kernel module exists only in 'linux-sunxi'.
https://github.com/linux-sunxi/linux-sunxi
which is the 3.4 you mentioned probably.

[alexellis]

In so far as a headless image is concerned do we need to take the 'Mali' chip into consideration?

I have two Orange PIs now with the H3 chip and they do run the Ubuntu Vivid image which contains systemd. The Kernel I think was version 3.4.39

If a base image is downloaded for arm - other than copying in the kernel and the uboot bin files.. what else is required?

[sehraf]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('alexellis', 'w')hat else is required?

[WarheadsSE]

ALARM stopped supporting anything but mainline once this started to happen. Why? Because maintaining and patching 13 Allwinner kernels was a damned nightmare.

[alexellis]

# systemd --version
systemd 219
+PAM +AUDIT +SELINUX +IMA +APPARMOR +SMACK +SYSVINIT +UTMP +LIBCRYPTSETUP +GCRYP
T -GNUTLS +ACL +XZ -LZ4 -SECCOMP +BLKID -ELFUTILS +KMOD -IDN

# uname -a
Linux ubuntuarm 3.4.39 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Aug 30 14:14:50 CEST 2015 armv7l armv7
l armv7l GNU/Linux

Does this help?

[lyoko]

well, I managed to get the current Alarm with linux-sunxi working.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '[root@alarm alarm]# systemctl --version
systemd 226
[root@alarm alarm]# uname -r
3.4.90+')
I can provide an sdcard image (A10).

Stopping the sunxi kernel support was a good idea, since mainline kernel is getting close.

these mali chips are terrible, can't hear their name already. I think we are doomed to use android for Display purposes.
fbturbo isn't good enough and so on with the cedarx issues.
At least on my case (random A10 Device), es2gears_x11 gives me 130 fps, glxgears is 30, mplayer with vdpau-sunxi runs at 5fps. all running from fbturbo with no errors.

my guess is that it will be identical with the Orange pi. forget 4k for any linux distribution.
If anyone wants 4k hevc, maybe raspberry pi 3 will have it. as long as it won't have mali onboard.