Image for hardware acceleration in Browser / Video update / timeframe?
Hi Everyone,
Ubuntu 18.04 has been released.
I was looking for an update on video acceleration.
I have a 4GB model and want to start using it as my preferred computer however, for daily use in browsing / video, it's too slow, which is insane for it's specifications. I therfore assume, the drivers are not implemented fully.
Is there any timeframe at all?
If not, is there another Image I can download somewhere that I can use that's better than Ubuntu for software daily use?
Comments
I do not know what timframes are. Answer for your second question: No
Tried http://forum.loverpi.com/discussion/134/debian#latest , browsing and video is faster then Ubuntu image, gui is slower. My expirence with all this SoC Boards is that there will never be a linux image for daily use (odroid included). Daily use with Android only.
I have tried the android image. While it doesn't do what I need, it does implement hardware accelerated decoding. It isn't clear to me if it implements hardware accelerated encoding.
http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/rockchip-based-tv-players/rk3328-devices
So, get a Raspberry Pi instead?
I understand they have hardware acceleration for daily use.
https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/04/04/arm-releases-android-linux-vulkan-user-space-drivers-for-mali-gpus-hikey-960-firefly-rk3288-boards/
Maybe there is hope yet?
Raspberry Pi has good software and slow hardware.
This page was last modified on 23 April 2018, at 11:41.
http://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Status_Matrix
@shades_aus
Odroid xu4 is now getting interesting, there is a new linux ubuntu 18 image which works very good.
Ubuntu 18.4 is available for the s905x board now , so just a matter of time before
it's out for this board too,
thanks to bholland
https://roc-rk3328-cc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/linux_build_rootfilesystem.html#building-ubuntu-root-filesystem
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/6850-document-about-compiling-a-kernel-and-rootfs-for-the-firefly-boards/
Hey ces,
So, this above build process replaces the Ubuntu core with a Debian core?
Is there a known advantage over the current Ubuntu image at all?
No, but it shows how to make your own rootfs (like ubuntu 18 core) and image with the core you want because the sources are known now which are used from firefly.
Here the only image for now which works:
the_rig
April 29
The ubuntu image provided by Libre/Firefly is crap, it misses a lot of kernel modules. I use Armbian now, they more-or-less support the ROK-RK3328-CC.
You can try the Armbian build I made, it's prepared for ipsec. https://www.dropbox.com/s/a2pqliuc2oyc7p3/Armbian_5.41_Roc-rk3328-cc_Ubuntu_xenial_default_4.4.120.img?dl=0
Wow. They should host this image on the server then!
Have you tried submitting it at all?
I'm going to try this. Thanks! :-)
Hi CES,
For your Armbian build above, any chance you can release the root PW or change it for the image to a default one, also, is the GUI just a startx command?
Ok, for anyone else trying the above build, Login as below
Username : root
Password : 1234
It will ask you to change it from there.
There is no desktop installed as default so, do
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
After that, I ran the below for Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
I wanted the Ubuntu workspace however, if you want something light-weight, use
sudo apt-get install lxde or whatever you prefer.
I have not had enough use using this image yet to see if it's any faster than the FirFly Ubuntu 16.04 image however, i'll post my reviews once I have some propper daily use with it.
That's all there is until FireFly or someone else release 18.04 with propper supported display drivers or, you get something better supported I guess.
Ok, so, after installing a GUI, everything crawled so, I have switched back. Thanks for trying through!
I also tried the debian image, it's faster but can't play anything over 720p
Honestly, the LibreComputer image of Ubuntu is much snappier, the video is un-usable in FireFox over 320p However Chromium will do 720p like Debian at 98 CPU on all 4 cores so, a lot needs work here, same for the Debian build.
So far, the best every day usage image is Ubuntu 16.04 using Chrome.
http://share.loverpi.com/board/libre-computer-project/libre-computer-board-roc-rk3328-cc/image/ubuntu/ROC-RK3328-CC_Ubuntu16.04_Arch64_20180404.tgz
Hopefully GPU support will arrive shortly!.
@shades_aus
it is not build by me (@the_rig). startx is part of package xinit.
@shades_aus for video you may want to try firefly's android 7.1.2 20180411 build,
it plays 4K/60 video and runs Kodi well, using apkmirror for apps I installed ES file manager and ES task manager , root explorer will turn on in file manager and let task manager uninstall system apps etc
Ok, so, after installing a GUI, everything crawled so, I have switched back to Ubuntu. For non-gui it seems really quick and the top USB-2 port works properly which was nice however, anything GUI was really slow.
I also tried the Debian image, it's a little faster but can't play anything over 720p and has colour/palette issues on the desktop.
Honestly, I find the LibreComputer image of Ubuntu is much snappier, the video is un-usable in FireFox over 320p however, Chromium will also do 720p like Debian at 98 CPU on all 4 cores so, a lot needs work here, same for the Debian build.
So far, the best every day usage image is Ubuntu 16.04 using Chrome.
http://share.loverpi.com/board/libre-computer-project/libre-computer-board-roc-rk3328-cc/image/ubuntu/ROC-RK3328-CC_Ubuntu16.04_Arch64_20180404.tgz
Hopefully full GPU support will arrive shortly because this computer should be able to kill the competition.
Oh. Sorry for my double post! My browser obviously cached my post from yesterday on another computer . . I can't seem to delete it.
I will try Android next!.
Is there some strange reason why Android has a better driver than Linux? I thought Android wasn't as open as Linux?
Ok, here's my Android experience.
GUI Interface = Terrible.
Honestly, it's meant for a phone, not for every day use.
The file manager inteface is about as basic as you can expect, you would be better off with a shell, if you can find one.
Downloading anything is a nightmare, once you work out that right-click closes instead of giving you options, you can work around it.
Chrome is so baked-in to the file management that it's impossible to avoid.
Browser = Average
Browser is fast. Yes, it's really fast however, the resolution looks scaled down to a low-res screen. Video has frequent banding and jagged edges even on HD videos. It looks like it has anti-alising that just doesn't work. however, it is fast. It will show 4k although it looks nothing like 4k quality.
Video = Amazing
Ok, once I actually worked out how to downolad some 4k content and extract it, it was brilliant. Wow
I was so impressed by this, my mouth was open. This little computer was playing FULL 4k HDR video without missing a beat with full audio and it looked amazing.
I tried various formats .x264 .x265 HDR 4k and containers .mp4 and .mkv no issues at all.
I even did a 1080p monitor for 4k display so it had to scale the image as well and still, no lag, delay, skipping or audio loss.
Daily use = Terrible
Nope. Just no. You can't. It's too locked down and limited and doesn't work like a personal computer is expected to. You will struggle with every step till you understand the many rules it enforces on you.
I hate it. More than all the other images I have used so far, it is by far the worst.
I understand how it is meant for a phone but still, it's useless for any normal daily task other than touch screen type use.
Overall verdict? = No. Unless you want a media player only.
Now I know what this computer is able to do, I can understand why Android may be required but hell, the drivers need to be ported. Android is not for daily use. It is more of a wrapper for some sort of embedded on/off line video player.
If you look at it like that, it's breathtaking video performance will leave your mouth open.
That being said, if you need to do anything else, you're going to hate this.
Now, granted, I have only played with Android for about an hour however, I've had enough already. It's not going to be ok to use. I need to go back to Linux.
As Android is based on Linux, I wonder how hard it would be to get the drivers ported because, I must say, the Video playback from 4k files, wow. I just can't say enough how impressive the hardware can be. Get that in to Linux and, well you have a computer that's worth something. It's that good.
I would really appreciate a firefly or roc dev commenting on this. There are two main problems. The first is the xorg build, which requires hardware acceleration. The roc-firefly ubuntu build uses their xorg modified build that includes hardware acceleration but I don't know how they got it to work. None of the git repos posted seemed to work and compiling the libdrm from git was not working. Once they get the libdrm working, they have to get the libmali working for this board. When I first got it, they said they were working on it but it would be a few months.
The posters are right though. It has hardware enabled x264 and x265 decoding with 4 cores at 1.5ghz and 4gb of ddr4 ram. The specs on this board should be more than sufficient to pump out 4k.
I was able to get a decoding stream that didn't take up 100% of the cpu using ffplay or the ffmpeg stream. The git repo for their provided media player does not seem to have updates yet, but I haven't checked for about a month. Their media player gstreamer-rockchip simply doesn't work, even linked to their compiled libmali and libdrm.
So far, I cannot recommend this board for video as their driver support simply isn't there yet. It probably will be in a few months. I also have to say, rock has to hit a really high bar. omxplayer is one of the best media players I have used, is headless, and will accept commands over ssh. I just hope that the firefly team is able to spend some time making their libraries and drivers work for a really kick ass board.
Meanwhile:
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/shenzhen-silicon-valley-hardware/
This is awaiting Rockchip. There's some GBM work still to be completed for mainline. After that, there's a lot of work for Wayland and V4L2 and Chromium to support V4L2 that has to be completed. Expect this to be completed at year end at the earliest.
Meh, forget Wayland. Ubuntu have, for now anyway.
Who else uses it anyway? Whatever speeds up the process I say.
Heck Android have it, can nothing be ported over?
Shades-aus the reason android works for video is it uses a old kernel, so have to hope
that when the support for 16.4 or 18.4 is worked out it should be better than android
So, Android have removed support for the chipset in newer kernels?
Why would you remove working code. That's insane.
Well, I guess we are all waiting then.
This is all I get out of this however, is there a rough estimation on when or, is there a progress blog we can subscibe to?
If not, I will keep my eyes parked here an hope for updated information :-)
Thanks for your feedback though. Some news is always better than no news and if it's coming, that's really fantastic because this can be a great little computer from what I have experienced. :-)
@shades_aus
http://www.phoenixos.com/en_US/download_arm
Try to mount the image and hope little changes are needed (Phoenix-Firefly-RK3288-1.0.5-Beta.zip). Do not download from firefly.com, this image does not work properly, tested on my Ubox Beelink R89 RK3288. Use Firefox instead of the onboard browser. All benefits of android (4K) and desktop (all settings for features missing at first view are available.)
@ces RK3288 and RK3328 are completely different devices. Any software made for RK3288 will not be compatible with RK3328.
firefly posted another android img 180518 build not sure what is different from the 180411 build, firefly dos not usaly post anything about the img's like libre do,
As I understand the HW accel docs are available for the chipset, I'm just not sure what sort of work it would be to integrate this into Linux. I've never worked with a driver and I'm not sure how stable or compatible the device interface is for that. I simply don't have enough spare hours to sit down and write this amount of code.
I hope someone else does as it would make the platform so much more useable.
While I hope for the best here, I feel like the Raspberry Pi 4 will have hardware to do USB3 and will therefore surpass the advantages of this project.