General Observations so far

Hi,

So the VIM2 (I will soon have a cheaper VIM also) looks good.

Reading throught all the forum, it seems to me that development focus is a bit scattered. So my two cents are this:

Why focus on Android? Yes I understand the need to supply a firmware with Android. However for the price of a hamburger, I can buy one of 100’s android arm tv box. So why wasting your time on this when 2:

Your device is an excellent development and engineering excersise and tool for Linux/UEFI/ miniature formfactor computing etc.

I would focus heavily on opening up the dev work on making Kernel work. Make the detail readily available for one OS (looks like you have chosen Ubuntu so that is fine). I bet the community would run with it. If all the information was available to configure the dts/dtb, and necessary kernel modules (and drivers, but I understand amlogic are probably hard to deal with or licensing difficulties to post their drivers) then I bet before you knew it, you would have people releasing Debian/Redhat/Gentoo/etc etc

I guess that is what Ycto and armbian sort of try to achieve.

You probably already have a business model that means Android-TV. I just think its a waste of time competing with a market that is flooded.

VIM should be more like ODROID. VIM is more powerful that Pi, and to beat them you only need to make it infinitely easy to roll your own linux. (and you already have GPIO)

Android - TV would just be a bonus.

2 Likes

Good point.
I will get my vim2 soon (already shipped to me) and would like to see stable linux.

S.

I would also love to see a stronger upstreaming effort to both u-boot and the kernel itself. Giving us a binary distribution (ubuntu) is great and all, but having a patchset against above would greatly simplify a multitude of options. I for one am interested in openwrt/lede.

Your comment concurs with what I feel from everything I read here.

For linux - no one wants a generic bin-blob. Its linux, we will do it ourselves with the options we desire/need.

All the images supplied here do not do everything I want, I have to make my own. So just give us all the information/patches for those that can.

Sure, make a generic Linux and Android for those that cannot. But if you gave us all info, you would probably end up with lots of images posted available for specific tasks that people who cannot do their own can download anyway.

On another note bea11, I doubt that openwrt/and any type of firewall box would be too good on this hardware. I am yet to see the GB ethernet get to 1GB, and even if it does, the other addon ethernet ports (LAN/WAN/DMZ - so at least one more) would never cut it speed wise.

Openwrt as AP - maybe, but I can think of few options half the price! (and less waste of hardware power)

Khadas - Every single day that you delay giving us ALL the FOSS and patches that you use to release, You are shooting yourself in the business foot.

Every day that you do not have detailed howto’s for trickier processes, and better documentation (honestly, the docs here are rubbish. I feel sorry for non native English speakers, its a double translation whammy) people will be less inclined to take a chance with the hardware.

Another 2 cents from me (and it has been said in the forums before), the good thriving hardware out in the world started with excellent documentation. They did not waste time releasing image after image (and most of the releases here dont fix anything - or are only minor pointless releases).
The excellent products out there gave their users excellent documentation and examples/scripts/patches/etc right at the start.

Two prong approach - enthusiasts could do what they wanted/needed. The devs could get on without interruption, and had the enthusiasts work to help them along with.

Regardless of how good you and your engineers think you are, there is always someone better. Don’t offer them what you have available, then you only hurt yourself.

Khadas Team @Gouwa need Amlogic for Linux support. I would like to know if there is any talk from @Gouwa on this topic with Amlogic.

@kszaq wrote in his LibreELEC thread:

Amlogic has not released fbdev Mali libraries. This build uses libhybris and Android gralloc Mali driver to provide OpenGL for Kodi - because of this the builds will always be experimental until proper Linux libraries are released (if ever).

Hi all,

just to add my impressions. Received my vim2 max yesterday and out of the box all is working fine.
Connected my Samsung BT keyboard, air mouse (WiFi), gamepad (WiFi) and they just work lol.

Haven’t had much time to test video playing in kodi.
I think that heatsink is needed and should be included in package as option (not applied) as vim2 gets hot.

My first impression is WOW!

Now it is time for me to dive into a rom development and linux build.

Best regards,
S.

3 Likes

All the information and patches you demand (and more) are already in clfs and lfs : http://www.linuxfromscratch.org
So if you want to make your own, as you say, you can knock yourself out with that.