Re: ODROID-C2
Martin Michlmayr wrote:
* Phil Endecott <spam_from_debian_arm@chezphil.org> [2016-05-06 19:59]:
> Does anyone here have an ODROID-C2? Anyone running Debian on it?
Wouldn't it be great if I could tftp a debian installer from u-boot and
have it all just work :-(. Is this *ever* going to happen for ARM
systems?
This is already the case on a number of ARM devices, thanks to the work
of Karsten Merker, Vagrant Cascadian, Ian Campbell and others in
Debian and various upstream people.
We even provide SD card images for a number of devices which contain
u-boot (from upstream, built by Debian), Debian installer and the
DTB.
I don't see any support for the ODROID-C2 in Debian yet, though.
Ten years ago I bought what I decided would be my final x86 computer.
The next one would be ARM powered. That computer is now showing signs
of impending failure.
I've had a few abortive attempts at an ARM replacement, of which the
ODROID-C2 is just the latest. All I need is something that is not
significantly worse than a ten-year-old PC: 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB
RAM, 4 GB flash storage, no fan, 100 Mbit ethernet, USB 2, 1600x1200
DVI graphics. The ODROID-C2 seems to meet that objective - unlike
most of the other boards out there, which all manage to miss off
something important. The only question is whether I can get a
reliable OS installed, with updates going forward.
We all know the issues with support for ARM SoCs. They have been
well known for years. I don't know what the solution is. I was
optimistic when Linaro and 96boards launched with their aim of
mainlining support for ARM products, but neither has yet produced
a solution that really works for me.
My initial impressions with the ODROID-C2 are mixed. The hardware
is great. The software ("ODROBIAN") does seem to work reasonably
well, and most of it is just regular Debian packages from the Debian
repositories. So most package updates should just work. Graphics
is fucked due to the normal proprietary drivers issues (mali);
binary-blob fbdev OpenGL is available, and x11 OpenGL is due "by the
end of April". The main annoyance so far (in a real
bang-head-against-wall way) is that the screen dimensions are set
by poking magic numbers into the HDMI PHY, and the list of magic
numbers from the vendor does not include those for my 1600x1200
monitor. So I need to buy a new monitor with a supported resolution,
which more than doubles the total cost.
ODROBIAN has a choice of pure 64-bit or hybrid 32/64-bit systems.
The advantage of the latter seems to be to get support for packages
that aren't ported to or are buggy on aarch64 (e.g. chromium) -
but they seem to do it by defaulting to 32-bit for all packages,
except a handful where they use 64-bit for some reason. I'm curious
to hear what you thing of that, and how you would suggest setting up
a hybrid 32/64-bit Debian system today.
Thanks,
Phil.
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