Tue Aug 21, 2018 1:55 pm
Hello. Finally I have my SBC, nice and shiny. Beautiful, so small, packed with all I needed. Thank you friendlyarmers, you deed a good hardware work.
I don't know what OS was installed in emmc, it just didn't work (I think it was Android, some android debugging message flipped once), so I had to install Android (image from frendlyarms googledrive). Well, it works, nothing special, no "Wow"s. Screen settings menu doesn't work, so I cant switch to 1080p resolution, have to watch at monitors default 1380x760. But running a mobile OS as "desktop" is not fun, even if you just playing games. Keyboard on half of 24' screen isn't fun to. and keyboard layout switching... no matter what language i set on onscreen keyboard, physical keyboard types only latin... Adblock browser hangs computer. No, running Android on desktop is a pain.
So I had to install Lubuntu (2018.08.14 build). Maaan, it's a nightmare. Wireless constantly reconnecting spitting errors in dmesg. Qt player doesn't play a demo provided on image. everything just hangs, so I have to reboot. Openbox works worse than on ancient thinclient with 256MB memory and Sis videochip on vesa driver. Terrible. But I have read, that X11 support on Arms is bad. Ok, will look for composite managers, or even Wayland stuff later. Minetest didn't run. It misses OpenGL. it was compiled without OpenGL ES in arm repository??? Why the hell it is in repo at all then? Ubuntu devs do not check is it working at all? or it is because of this custom built image and custom drivers? All packages are so old... 16.04... Why Arm SBC users must suffer so hard? Removed this outdated buggy ugly Lubuntu.
Ubuntu Core 18.04. First I checked how wifi is working. it's Ok. But it somehow works only in slow 2.4 regime, not in 5.0, but at least it is stable. Checked Qt demos mentioned on NanoPC's wiki, buggy. some works, some not. In fact only player and browser works. Upgraded everything, installed Weston to check how Wayland is working, Nice, smooth, but... there is no lightweight Wayland DE in repo? no modern Enlightenment, no Liri, no nothing, just Weston and monstruoso Gnome and KDEs Plasma sessions on Wayland are available. I installed plasma. it didn't work on Wayland, but at least worked on X11. And quite smooth, compared to Lxde on Lubuntu 16.04 (oh... this myth about Lxde's lightweightness and speed).
Ok, I've got KDE running on Arm, isn't it great? Yes! and... No. because it becomes boring just watching at desktop. I need to play videos, web with youtube and facebooks, I need to run Minetest, Extremetuxcart, and all that stuff!
First installed Smplayer with youtube addon. What can I say, I'm watching videos, smooth. VLC (with manualy set gles backend) works smooth to. I don't need no hacks, no special secret options, briliant, Bravo!
With browsers is not so fun. My thoughts was - if friendlyarm provides prebuilt patched version of Qt and gstreamer and KDE runs so smooth, then maybe I could use some Qt based browser? Installed Falkon (ex Qupzilla), by the way, KDE installed Konquerror, so I checked them both. Well, don't know about overall browsers acceleration, but video acceleration doesn't work here, even 360p is choppy on fullscreen. Worst on that, when I tried Qt-browser from friendlyarms precompiled examples - it switched my screen and died. I had to manually switch to right VT by Ctrl+Alt+Fsomething. Not good. Something in updated system and added packages that came with KDE broke this static(as I thought) build. Hm. and... why I can't use this prebuilt patched Qt systemwide? If your Qt would be properly packaged as system library package and all packages depending on Qt and gstreamer would be rebuilt in your local repository, or at least in PPA. Is it possible?
Games. First and main thing children always asking me is Minetest (not Minecraft, true opensourcers)
Installed it (with all dependencies, of course) and bumped to the same problem - it wants an OpenGL. You are serious? Anybody uses this package at all? A simple game! Do I ask to much? I didn't try other games, or graphic packages, because now I see. in Ubuntu nobody cares about working apps. (or your build is so bad?)
I know that it is mainly a devboard, and I will use it later as a devboard for my project with my children (but now I am affraid that I will bump into problems again), but hardware made such huge step forward, it is so powerful, but without a good software it's just a brick. My conclusion is - I bought myself a powerful, beautiful, 120€ brick with videos in it, not more. Desktop background wallpapers watcher. Had to put Android back for children for now, at least they can play Minetest, weird controls, but it works. at least...
As for a software and distribution you choose: Why Ubuntu? Why not making your own Arch repo, which contains only apps that this computer supports? You still had to build your own Qt library incompatible with the rest Ubuntus packages. I think Arch would be a good choise, because you can make a stable base with kernel and it's drivers and fresh, rolling software on top. And some kind of AUR repo so users could share their pkgbuilds. Why everyone sticks with Ubuntu? It's packaging is a nightmare! If I had a base Arch image with all tweaks, drivers and Qt recipies, that I can put into u-boot and emmc, it would be great, because I could write packages myself easily on top of it. pkgbuild is so simple. package and share pkgbuilds through AUR, isn't it great? and deb based distros are so outdated, so stuck in the 20 century.
Want an arch!
I don't know what OS was installed in emmc, it just didn't work (I think it was Android, some android debugging message flipped once), so I had to install Android (image from frendlyarms googledrive). Well, it works, nothing special, no "Wow"s. Screen settings menu doesn't work, so I cant switch to 1080p resolution, have to watch at monitors default 1380x760. But running a mobile OS as "desktop" is not fun, even if you just playing games. Keyboard on half of 24' screen isn't fun to. and keyboard layout switching... no matter what language i set on onscreen keyboard, physical keyboard types only latin... Adblock browser hangs computer. No, running Android on desktop is a pain.
So I had to install Lubuntu (2018.08.14 build). Maaan, it's a nightmare. Wireless constantly reconnecting spitting errors in dmesg. Qt player doesn't play a demo provided on image. everything just hangs, so I have to reboot. Openbox works worse than on ancient thinclient with 256MB memory and Sis videochip on vesa driver. Terrible. But I have read, that X11 support on Arms is bad. Ok, will look for composite managers, or even Wayland stuff later. Minetest didn't run. It misses OpenGL. it was compiled without OpenGL ES in arm repository??? Why the hell it is in repo at all then? Ubuntu devs do not check is it working at all? or it is because of this custom built image and custom drivers? All packages are so old... 16.04... Why Arm SBC users must suffer so hard? Removed this outdated buggy ugly Lubuntu.
Ubuntu Core 18.04. First I checked how wifi is working. it's Ok. But it somehow works only in slow 2.4 regime, not in 5.0, but at least it is stable. Checked Qt demos mentioned on NanoPC's wiki, buggy. some works, some not. In fact only player and browser works. Upgraded everything, installed Weston to check how Wayland is working, Nice, smooth, but... there is no lightweight Wayland DE in repo? no modern Enlightenment, no Liri, no nothing, just Weston and monstruoso Gnome and KDEs Plasma sessions on Wayland are available. I installed plasma. it didn't work on Wayland, but at least worked on X11. And quite smooth, compared to Lxde on Lubuntu 16.04 (oh... this myth about Lxde's lightweightness and speed).
Ok, I've got KDE running on Arm, isn't it great? Yes! and... No. because it becomes boring just watching at desktop. I need to play videos, web with youtube and facebooks, I need to run Minetest, Extremetuxcart, and all that stuff!
First installed Smplayer with youtube addon. What can I say, I'm watching videos, smooth. VLC (with manualy set gles backend) works smooth to. I don't need no hacks, no special secret options, briliant, Bravo!
With browsers is not so fun. My thoughts was - if friendlyarm provides prebuilt patched version of Qt and gstreamer and KDE runs so smooth, then maybe I could use some Qt based browser? Installed Falkon (ex Qupzilla), by the way, KDE installed Konquerror, so I checked them both. Well, don't know about overall browsers acceleration, but video acceleration doesn't work here, even 360p is choppy on fullscreen. Worst on that, when I tried Qt-browser from friendlyarms precompiled examples - it switched my screen and died. I had to manually switch to right VT by Ctrl+Alt+Fsomething. Not good. Something in updated system and added packages that came with KDE broke this static(as I thought) build. Hm. and... why I can't use this prebuilt patched Qt systemwide? If your Qt would be properly packaged as system library package and all packages depending on Qt and gstreamer would be rebuilt in your local repository, or at least in PPA. Is it possible?
Games. First and main thing children always asking me is Minetest (not Minecraft, true opensourcers)
Installed it (with all dependencies, of course) and bumped to the same problem - it wants an OpenGL. You are serious? Anybody uses this package at all? A simple game! Do I ask to much? I didn't try other games, or graphic packages, because now I see. in Ubuntu nobody cares about working apps. (or your build is so bad?)I know that it is mainly a devboard, and I will use it later as a devboard for my project with my children (but now I am affraid that I will bump into problems again), but hardware made such huge step forward, it is so powerful, but without a good software it's just a brick. My conclusion is - I bought myself a powerful, beautiful, 120€ brick with videos in it, not more. Desktop background wallpapers watcher. Had to put Android back for children for now, at least they can play Minetest, weird controls, but it works. at least...
As for a software and distribution you choose: Why Ubuntu? Why not making your own Arch repo, which contains only apps that this computer supports? You still had to build your own Qt library incompatible with the rest Ubuntus packages. I think Arch would be a good choise, because you can make a stable base with kernel and it's drivers and fresh, rolling software on top. And some kind of AUR repo so users could share their pkgbuilds. Why everyone sticks with Ubuntu? It's packaging is a nightmare! If I had a base Arch image with all tweaks, drivers and Qt recipies, that I can put into u-boot and emmc, it would be great, because I could write packages myself easily on top of it. pkgbuild is so simple. package and share pkgbuilds through AUR, isn't it great? and deb based distros are so outdated, so stuck in the 20 century.
Want an arch!