Rasbperry Pi is a popular choice as a SoC / SBC Linux board. But you have to use their custom linux kernel. Are there Linux boards with decent mainline Linux kernel support?
Rasbperry Pi is a popular choice as a SoC / SBC Linux board. But you have to use their custom linux kernel. Are there Linux boards with decent mainline Linux kernel support?
You most likely do not want to run a mainline kernel / system. Run Armbian instead, it is Debian optimized for SBCs, it has a very good track record and sometimes is the only option after manufacturers stop creating images for their old boards.
Generic images / mainline kernel might underperform in your board, the GPIO and other low level components will, most likely, not work and you might burn your storage as logging and other I/O intensive operations aren’t tweaked for SD/eMMC. Armbian aims to fix all those issues and provides continuous system and kernel updates long after the manufacturer stops doing so.
Having a board which is supported by mainline doesn’t imply running a mainline kernel. Having mainline support is a huge advantage regardless of which kernel is run on a board.
Anything less than mainline support is ewaste imo. Look how terrible the pi graphics support used to be but now thanks to excellent upstream kernel/Mesa drivers it’s great and will continue to work/improve for the foreseeable future.
I sold my Odroid C2 or something, as there was no support anymore… didnt know much of Linux, I guess armbian woul have been fine?
Yes https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c2/ a friend has a couple of those all running Armbian just fine. With all SBCs the trick is to get something that is supported by Armbian.