🚀 go-pugleaf

On 08/03/2012 13:21, Nico Coesel wrote:
> 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 had to choose between keeping the out-of-date Linux kernel provided with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 What is the problem with an 'out of date' kernel?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.
>

And when it doesn't support newer hardware, it doesn't support newer 
hardware.  Bug fixes, and in particular newer features and drivers, can 
/not/ be backported without a lot of effort.

In our particular case, we wanted support for a particular wireless 
interface.  I wasn't directly involved, so I don't know the details, but 
we were faced with the choice of decent graphics or wireless connection, 
but not both without a great deal of time and effort.

>>   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.

No, the same does not apply to PC video cards for two reasons.  One is 
that the third-party work commissioned by Freescale was badly done, and 
very tightly tied to the kernel version (so much so that it raises 
immediate suspicions of gpl violations).  Secondly, Freescale dropped 
all efforts to support and update these drivers as soon as they had 
started promoting the next version of the iMX device.

In the world of PC video cards, there is a better (though far from 
perfect) separation between the closed-source drivers and the kernel, 
the manufacturers make drivers to support a range of video cards and 
usually keep support for older cards in their newer drivers, and they 
try to keep reasonably up-to-date with kernel changes.

>
>> 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.
>

Yes indeed, this could well occur, and it is a risk with the way 
Broadcom is doing the drivers for the graphics unit (rather than 
providing documentation for an open-source effort).  We can only hope 
that the Pi will help put pressure onto Broadcom to release its drivers 
as open source, or to provide the required documentation to let others 
write drivers.  It has happened with some of Broadcom's WiFi drivers, 
and may happen here too.