No matter any given SBC's hardware platform's apparent attractiveness: Give me mainline Linux support for all included devices/features, or give me (this particular product's eventual) death.<p>Is there any info on how this make and model fares? The spec sheet speaks of "Debian / OpenWRT / Andriod" (sic!), but two misspellings in three names don't exactly inspire confidence... If I can only ever hope to install some manufacturer-bastardized spin of Ubuntu 14.04 with a heap of custom patches on top, I'll have to forever stick to Raspberry Pis instead, unfortunately.
Oh well better get out the old credit card.<p>So this isn't the same RISC-V CPU as from VisionFive2 and Pine64. It's an Alibaba core I believe[0].<p>Hopefully this doesn't cause worse fragmentation and slow much needed software and distro support.<p>My worries previously on HN[1].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/10/04/alibaba-t-head-th1520-risc-v-processor-to-power-the-roma-laptop/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/10/04/alibaba-t-head-th152...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105528#34106450" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105528#34106450</a>
I also want to mention the Lichee Pi Nano, though it is much smaller and targeting a different use case: <a href="https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/17/licheepi-nano-cheap-sd-card-sized-linux-board/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/17/licheepi-nano-cheap-...</a>. Made an embedded distro Buildroot config for that one some time ago (<a href="https://github.com/unframework/licheepi-nano-buildroot">https://github.com/unframework/licheepi-nano-buildroot</a>).
This board is based on Sipeed LM4A and it can support up to 16GB RAM and 64GB flash [1].<p>[1] Sipeed LM4A – T-Head TH1520 RISC-V module to power Raspberry Pi 4 competitor and cluster board:<p><a href="https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/12/14/sipeed-lm4a-t-head-th1520-risc-v-module-to-power-raspberry-pi-4-competitor-and-cluster-board/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/12/14/sipeed-lm4a-t-head-t...</a>
I was just reading an interview with Eben Upton about RISC-Vs potential, and his response was that there aren’t any competitive-to-Cortex-A7 chips out there, and the OS support isn’t there. I guess we gotta start somewhere. Looking at the product page through, it seems like the designers are positioning this as a networking peripheral (at least with the expansion board)