Firefly requesting further details regarding existing issues with the images

switch

Firefly has been notified of the issues and are requesting further details. They've been referred to this forum so here is our chance to detail the current issues so that they can be properly addressed, and it is also an opportunity for us to request any other important changes we would like to see in the official images.

The existing discussions are spread out in different threads so let's gather it in one place for them.

pdf

@switch That's good news. It's good to hear there's a willingness to incorporate changes into upstream.

Couple that come to mind;

1. Kernel config that includes support for running Docker. See my suggestion, including a link to my "working" kernel config. here
2. Kernel that incorporates the kernel's config in /proc/config.gz. Essentially, a kernel with CONFIG_IKCONFIG=y set
3. Kernel with iptables and vpn support. See #1 above, which includes these options

Freedman

No opengl subsystem in the newest images. However the video streaming was much, much more improved: this is regarding images from firefly's website. The loverpm mirror had some new Armbian images, I got one to boot, but it was buggy and crashed, the others refused to boot. The best image so far was the Ubuntu 0404 image. The video streaming was choppy but everything else worked well, I was even able to some video games working. Libreoffice was superfast and gimp as well. No matter what image, when hooked into a standard hdtv, flatscreen or whatever I have to lower the resolution to get decent video playback. "xrandr -s 4" is my best friend.

Freedman

Oh and stop enabling compositing with your newest images. Compositing always slows down the dri you guys got setup for this machine (aka xcompmgr, compton, or xfce compositor) just a suggestion to improve video performance.

Freedman

And given the embedded nature of this device xfce/lxde are okay but more lightweight options exist to help boost/bolster performance. Several come to mind, Joe's window manager, i3 window manager, and DWM from suckless.org. When I use these, the performance boost is about a 10-20% increase over xfce/lxde.

jeepthing

they should spend some time cleaning up their own forum,
mostly spam bots and unanswered posts

shades_aus

Ok So, here goes:

• Accelerated .h264/.h265 4k video support from new kernal please.
• Accelerated desktop requested that uses GPU and less CPU I assume.
• Accelerated browser/s please (Firefox and Chrome use 100% CPU when viewing content, especially video at the moment)
• BTRFS file system (EXT"x" is bad for flash RAM due to "journalling")
• IPTables support has been requested.
• Would like to see some assisted video encoding at some stage "if possible."
• Being able to "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" from actual repositories instead of re-flashing each image.
• Top USB port is not always working with keyboards, fine for mouse, bottom USB seems ok.
• Kernel config that includes support for running Docker. (See above posts)
• Kernel that incorporates the kernel's config in /proc/config.gz. (See above posts)

loverpi

Accelerated .h264/.h265 4k video support from new kernal please.

This is dependent on Rockchip.

Accelerated desktop requested that uses GPU and less CPU I assume.

Desktops are almost always rendered in software on ARM devices

Accelerated browser/s please (Firefox and Chrome use 100% CPU when viewing content, especially video at the moment)

This is not possible even on x86 Linux because Firefox/Chrome doesn't support Linux APIs for acceleration without off-tree-patches.

Would like to see some assisted video encoding at some stage "if possible."

This is dependent on Rockchip.

Being able to "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" from actual repositories instead of re-flashing each image.

This infrastructure is being worked on.

The general problem is a Linux, X11, and distro issue. Most armhf/arm64 ports are still configured for OpenGL instead of OpenGL ES supported by ARM based devices. X11 is as much of a mess as it was ten years ago and you can't mix 3D and video acceleration without slowing one or the other. You also have to rely on out of tree patches to xorg because ARM makes crappy Mali blobs. This will get better with Lima work but that is still in progress.

shades_aus

So, what you are saying in summary is,

• The repository for Linux is being worked on for easy updates.
• BTRFS may be considered to reduce flash wear on images.
• IPTables may be considered.
• USB port issue is known and being worked on.

However,

• Android is developed more than Linux for these devices. (Go complain to Rockchip?)
• Android has the only accelerated video decode available and if you want these features, you need to switch to the Android OS.
• Assisted encode, nope, use Android.
• No one knows when the Linux OS will have this accelerated video development, if at all, depending on Rockchip ? (Who clearly develop for Android)
• No one will fix the browsers due to, well, just being Linux, so use Android ?
• Desktops are not going to be developed with GPU assist, use Android.

Anyway, suggestions were asked, we gave them, I tried to put them into one post.
Not sure who deals with Rockchip however, mayby they could be given this feedback as well.
Someone needs to explain that their customer base is more interesated in Linux development.
It seems that they(Rockchip and devs) only want to use Android?