[Arm-netbook] Current status

[David Niklas]

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On Monday, July 20, 2020, George Sokolsky <sokolgeo at posteo.net> wrote:
>  How people are moving forward with their computing needs?

I'm not receiving an EOMA68, rather I'm building my own laptop from a
firefly RK3399 SBC. It's more powerful then the EOMA68, but it's lack of
FLOSS SW support is problematic. For example, the firmware flashing
didn't flash firmware and did mess up my kernel enough to require a
reboot. Grrr!
I'm working on and off on the SW and HW.

The RK3399 is a real winner of a processor, being sold on a lot of SBCs
for as little as $50. It's getting better and better SW support as devs
reverse engineer it's internal mali GPU and associated interconnect and
power controls.
AMDs laptop offerings are also very temping and I'm recommending them to
normal people who want to purchase a laptop. Linux support is in great
shape for the 4000 series AFAIK[1]. Supposedly, AMD is coming out with an
APU even more amazing before the end of the year.

Again, personally, I'll bang my head against this SBC until it does what
I want! No PSP[2] for me!

>  What's the 'next best thing' to invest here?  

Off the top of my head since the inception of the EOMA68...

Correct me mercilessly if I'm wrong, luke.
@ @
 V

The RISC-V folks are being unkind to luke and other devs (they
will not let them participate), so that's out of the question.
The Epiphany processor was looking like it's silicon form would really be
a powerful CPU, but then the guys in charge said that there were not
enough people who wanted one to manufacture them on silicon.
MIPS was looking promising until you read it's "open source" license.
Currently, the folks of the POWER arch are releasing version 9 as
open-source (still hacking out the terms AFAIK).

So, if you're looking for Linux kernel rate OSHW releases you're
bound to be disappointed. Otherwise I'd wait for OpenPOWER and invest in
products from that endeavor -- assuming it doesn't go South too.

Other then that, you can look at OSHW crowdsourced projects and continue
to invest your money to what you can use there.

Sincerely,
David




[1]:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-7-4700U-Daily-Driver
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=141-benchmarks-laptops&num=1

[2]: Platform Security Processor. Less scary then Intel's ME (Management
Engine) but still noteworthy. Talks on all three:
https://youtu.be/bKH5nGLgi08
https://youtu.be/0o8Co1ekemU
https://youtu.be/3CQUNd3oKBM
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