Armbian 22.02 has been released [LWN.net]

Armbian 22.02 has been released

Posted Mar 1, 2022 3:33 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
Parent article: Armbian 22.02 has been released

Is there anyone working on solving the problem that Armbian exists as a workaround for? i.e. is anyone looking at vendor BSPs and rewriting/mainlining everything they add support for?

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Armbian 22.02 has been released

Posted Mar 1, 2022 13:57 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (4 responses)

Probably not. These boards and chips are 'meant' to have a 1-2 year 'production lifetime' so by the time the chip is in the 'real-world' it is already EOL at its design firm and replaced by whatever chip is meant to be put out in the next 2 year timeframe. So you generally end up with 1-2 developers interested in 'this one particular board with this one particular firmware' because they have it and 1-2 developers interested in what they think is the same board but finding quickly that it was 'reved' and isn't close to what the other one is.

The only way to play the game is either make the opening move (make sure the code is open before it leaves the design shop) or not play it all (aka WarGames).

Armbian 22.02 has been released

Posted Mar 1, 2022 14:17 UTC (Tue) by TRSx80 (guest, #157171) [Link] (3 responses)

Your general thrust is not wrong, however there is wide disparity between manufacturers and boards in this regard.

For example, on the 'worst' end of the spectrum, Armbian do not officially support[0] any kind of 'TV box' because of exactly the sort of problems you describe (random hardware, often without even a change in revision!).

Then in the middle you have most of what Armbian decides to 'support' which are things with reliable, known hardware revisions. Which is one of the criteria for considering support in the first place (along with resources, interested developer, etc.).

And then on the other end, there are actually a few boards which have been explicitly declared as Long Term Supply (LTS), with a usually reliable guarantee of availability for 5 or more years.

That's the thing about Armbian, we support so many boards (over 100) there really are a lot of differences between all of them.

[0] But there are an amazing group of guys who relish a challenge and we give them their own sub-forum to do so: https://forum.armbian.com/forum/24-tv-boxes/

Armbian 22.02 has been released

Posted Mar 2, 2022 16:00 UTC (Wed) by ber (subscriber, #2142) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks for your explanations!

How can someone find out about the good boards and vendors (except by looking for the offerings of the sponsors)?

I've consulted the webpages, the FAQ and a search engine and did not find an easy answer.

Armbian 22.02 has been released

Posted Mar 2, 2022 23:25 UTC (Wed) by TRSx80 (guest, #157171) [Link] (1 responses)

Unfortunately, there is no single place to point to which summarizes the information. I used to point people to the Downloads page for Supported devices[0] which made a pretty good 'short list' (and still does) but it is more nuanced than that.

We have historically used the term 'Supported' to sort of cover a lot of the criteria mentioned above, but to me that's too vague and covers too many things and has it's own problems (people think we are a 'support' forum for manufacturer, lol).

So I have proposed instead we present some small number if indices, say 1-5 stars or something equally easy to comprehend at a glance, which we would feature prominently on the board pages. The indices could be things like freedom/blobs, vendor support, mainline support, lifetime, etc. and have some corresponding documentation explaining what how many stars means exactly for each criteria. Or something like that.

In the meantime the best thing to do is probably stop by the forums[1] and make a thread about what you might be looking for and hopefully get some feedback tailored to your needs.

[0] https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported
[1] https://forum.armbian.com/

Armbian 22.02 has been released

Posted Mar 8, 2022 17:23 UTC (Tue) by xav (guest, #18536) [Link]

How about a badge system ? You could have some badges for:
- vendor supported
- all devices have drivers
- no binary blobs
- mainlined

etc.

Armbian 22.02 has been released

Posted Mar 1, 2022 14:05 UTC (Tue) by TRSx80 (guest, #157171) [Link]

Well what you describe is non-trivial, and thus is essentially the /raison d'être/ for Armbian in the first place. Most vendors just want to sell hardware, doing the absolute minimum software development possible, because that costs money.

Perhaps more accurately, individuals (and some companies) here and there (i.e., "the community") have been doing this mainlining work slowly but steadily for years to improve the situation. Armbian does some of it, too.

So, things have slowly improved over the 9 years Armbian have been in action. Mainline is becoming more expected, we even worked with some vendors to implement it for a few boards. So, increasing end user awareness and pressure on vendors I think is helping in this regard.

A few vendors lately are beginning to go to the trouble to use UEFI instead of u-boot for example, but that requires more work on their part to implement, which is why you see less of it. But that's why we are starting to support that.