In the ARM world, there is a lot of pressure on the graphical part but none of the IP vendors (ARM MALI, ImgTech for PowerVR, …) understood the open-source strategy at all, and the price of these devices are so low they cannot generate enough money to put enough people to develop open source drivers and frameworks.
The situation on Amlogic is half bad, for the headless, Mainline linux will work like a charm on the VIM and VIM2, but if you need Video HW Acceleration and very good OpenGL ES support, this has a price !
Amlogic took years to develop their custom solution, but they went in the wrong direction by ignoring the standard Linux interfaces, and they missed the V4L2/OpenMAX road…
Anyway, there is still plans to add these missing pieces, and Amlogic recently published a Wayland compatible libMali that will work on the VIM.
But yes, it’s very frustrating to wait, but time is money and money is missing here.
@narmstrong
I am very thankful for all work you and others did for Amlogic SoC.
But headless Server for me is something which works 100% reliable over Ethernet. And this is not the case currently with mainline kernel. As reported here in mailinglist and also and here in forum. Hope soon to have solution to this weird probem.
I think Khadas really need to have a focus, maybe go for LibreELEC is a good idea. Make it a very good LibreELEC box, get supports from the community (VIM already has at least two members providing builds), keep it regularly updated.
For me, I don’t really like the Android on the box because It’s not the TV version. Even if it’s a TV version, it won’t have Chromecast function, also Kodi refresh rate would be a problem.
Then I really see these possibilities:
A best looking LibreELEC box
A decent Linux desktop
A over powerful Linux headless server
For LibreELEC, the community can help. Please make everyone’s life easier by allowing multi-boot without UART cable.
For Linux desktop, maybe you could still focus on Ubuntu.
For headless server, I personally will just go for Armbian.
The VIM2 should not have any net issues since it will use an external PHY already used by numerous boards, but for VIM1, I have honestly no idea why it suddenly fails.
Most of our S905X board works like a charm, and we cannot reproduce the issue in a constant manner. And looking at the amlogic kernel, they did not add anything specific out of the PHY for the S905X support.
Anyway, you can try to look at what changed amlogic did on their 4.9 kernel and try to forwardport them to mainline, one by one, it’s painful but it’s how we added mainline support for all the other stuff !
Just to make sure you understand I do not include Khadas in the list of companies trying to make a quick buck. I bought the device after looking into the forum history, seeing how you guys were answering to queries, fixing bugs etc. You have been doing a very good job, and my comments were about my wishes to see the VIM1 fully supported in future releases, and you have answered my concerns, thank you. I will probably get a VIM2 basic (I’m a cheap b****d!)
Even the prices you listed are crazy for a S912 device. You want to compete with devices like the R-TV Box S10 that has the same hardware @ just over 60$?
according to khadas products positioning, their offer includes higher end software and dev support. Is that RTv brand offering also support like you can find in this forum?
@Tommy21
Maybe they have bigger community but not better support. They still don’t have everything in mainline kernel, and everything done in mainline kernel is done by @narmstrong (BayLibre) and others devs not directly from hardkernel.
Biggest issue here from my point of view ist Amlogic not pushing their stuff directly to mainline kernel and then also Khadas team with their custom stuff like internal PHY not pushing it to mainline kernel (see that confirmed ethernet problem).
I don’t know they have something new based on C2 product so I can’t comment on price.