🚀 go-pugleaf

David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:

>On 08/03/2012 11:46, Nico Coesel wrote:
>> David Brown<david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> On 07/03/2012 23:00, Don McKenzie wrote:
>>>> OLinuXino, a serious Rasberry Pi competitor?
>>>>
>>>> After talks at the recent Embedded conference in Germany (2012), Olimex
>>>> decided to go ahead with the production of two new boards that were very
>>>> similar to the Rasberry Pi. The first one they should have prototypes in
>>>> the coming weeks.
>>>>
>>>> The second will be 3 to 6 months before production boards will be seen,
>>>> so I won't cover it in this report, however the CPU specs on this second
>>>> board, are almost identical to the RPi microcontroller chip, and board.
>>>>
>>>> Olimex describes this board as a bridge to the linux development
>>>> community and the Duinomite/Arduino/Maple/Pinguino world of developers.
>>>>
>>>> This will be completely Open Hardware / Open Source Project, all CAD
>>>> files will be available so everyone can download modify, and use them.
>>>> Same with the software.
>>>>
>>>> More Info:
>>>> http://www.duinomite.com/olinuxino-a-serious-rasberry-pi-competitor/
>>>>
>>>> Cheers Don...
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It's a nice idea and initiative, but I don't see it going anywhere.
>>> These boards need community support - there are lots of groups who have
>>> ported different Linux distributions and software for the Pi.  Part of
>>
>> The (community) support is already there. Freescale has all the
>> software (Linux and Win CE BSPs) and documentation on their website
>> and offers several fora to users.
>>
>
>Support from Freescale is something totally different from community 
>support.  It's a good start, but it is not the same.  It just means that 
>iMX evaluation card.  It came with a Linux build and BSP.  But the chip 
>had a graphics accelerator, and the driver for that was partially closed 
>source, and developed by a third-party (paid for by Freescale).  So we 
>had to choose between keeping the out-of-date Linux kernel provided with 
>the BSP, or compiling a new kernel but losing the accelerated graphics. 

What is the problem with an 'out of date' kernel? If it works, it
works. Bug fixes can often be backported without much problems.

>  Freescale would not pay the third-party to update the graphics drivers 
>- they were already promoting the next iMX chip instead.  I don't know 
>if Freescale has done it better this time, but that's a danger you face 
>when support is by manufacturer only.

The same goes for any PC videocard.

>The Pi has /real/ community support - there are already half a dozen 
>well-known Linux distributions that support it, as well as major 
>software packages like xmbc.

I see the same problem with the RP if Broadcom doesn't provide a new
graphics driver.

-- 
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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