Live data from Hacker News

The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

jeffgeerling.com

11–20 of 232 posts

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#11
I think the main issues with all of these rasbi alternatives is the software. As ... quirky ... as the rasbi is, the software support and optimisation is excellent. There are several speed comparisons on youtube where the rasbi beats a lot of the competition through sheer software optimisation. Honestly, without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is really useful.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#12
post #8

There are plenty of boards that are much more powerful than the RPi and have comparable price (ODROID-C2 comes to mind). But the devil is in wether or not they run the mainline Linux kernel. I have several ODROID-C2 that I have replaced with RPis because of the poor hardware support (Amlogic kernel was way late at the time, may still is). Stick to mainline.

I got my odroid c2 running with the rc kernel for a while now. There were some problems at first, but it now runs my home automation and DHCP server without a hitch. I'm running archlinuxarm btw but I will soon try voidlinux as well on it

(I tried kodi as well and it kinda could play h256 in software, but I now stick to my raspberry pi as a media center)

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#13

Their website is confusing on this part, does this support Windows IoT Core as the OS?

I don't see any mention of Win10Iot on Asus' site, and I don't see any mention of the Tinker Board on Microsoft's Win10Iot site (although they do say that the listed hardware isn't an exhaustive list).

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own an ODROID-XU3. Haven’t used it for a while now but back when I did — including using it as desktop computer for several months — I did not have any data corruption issues with the eMMC module. Meanwhile with Raspberry Pi I’ve had several instances of data corruption with different SD cards.

The eMMC for me is worth the price. Too many corrupt SD cards.

I've only ever had corruption issues on Raspi's, versus with the OrangePi's we have in production at customers sites, I have yet to see any mSD card issues. We do screen our Evo+ mSD cards pretty aggressively for issues though!

One nice thing about Allwinner based SBCs is the strong development community that mainlines support for their chips in short order. Few other chip vendors have mainline support, which makes their boards abandonware in short order.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#15
post #11

I think the main issues with all of these rasbi alternatives is the software. As ... quirky ... as the rasbi is, the software support and optimisation is excellent. There are several speed comparisons on youtube where the rasbi beats a lot of the competition through sheer software optimisation. Honestly, without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is reall…

Software can be fixed by a large enough number of developers and users. Where the Raspberry Pi wins is community. I've got so many other boards but none of them work quite as well as the Pi.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#16
I've been looking at the new Rockchip RK3399 based devboards. Of note is the $99 Rock960[1]. The major draws for me are the DisplayPort support, so I can use it with my iPad 3/4 display controller board, M.2 PCIe 4-lane, eMMC, 802.11ac. Firefly makes a similar one as well. [2]

1. https://www.96boards.org/product/rock960/

2. http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=45

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#17

Their website is confusing on this part, does this support Windows IoT Core as the OS?

> 22. What OS does the tinker board support?

> Currently Debian is the only available OS for tinker board. [0]

[0] Tinkerboard FAQ (PDF): http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/Linux/Tinker_Board_2GB/F...

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#18
Whether or not ever more powerful Raspberry Pi computers is a good thing depends on why you are using them.

If you're wanting to put it to some practical application then probably more power is better.

If, like me, it's a hobby, and you enjoy the idea of tiny machines, and the challenge of pushing a computer to do things a resource constrained environment, then tiny and powerful machines like RPi that can run full Linux distros are no more interesting than any other computer. There's nothing particularly interesting about loading and running Linux.

So for the hobbyist wanting to be challenged, tiny machines/CPUs like the esp8266 and esp32 are where the fun is really at.

It's a strange inversion because for 40 years I've always found that the most interesting computer is one that is more powerful than anything else - not so now when pursuing that old school feel.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#19
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own an ODROID-XU3. Haven’t used it for a while now but back when I did — including using it as desktop computer for several months — I did not have any data corruption issues with the eMMC module. Meanwhile with Raspberry Pi I’ve had several instances of data corruption with different SD cards.

The eMMC for me is worth the price. Too many corrupt SD cards.

I can't imagine how I'm so lucky. I've used RPis since the very first version and in all these years, dozens of PIs and thousands of hours, I've never had a single corrupt SD card.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#20
post #11

I think the main issues with all of these rasbi alternatives is the software. As ... quirky ... as the rasbi is, the software support and optimisation is excellent. There are several speed comparisons on youtube where the rasbi beats a lot of the competition through sheer software optimisation. Honestly, without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is reall…

Allwinner based boards have mainline kernel support for most features, they're one of a handful of vendors that has mainline support (primarily due to community efforts). I personally like the OrangePi boards due to price & reliability, easy to set and forget without worrying about mSD corruption.

http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page is pretty useful for a list of boards and info.

Post reply on HN