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Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

bret.dk

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Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#31

Post by tclancy »

avhception wrote: post #13

I want to be able to buy ARM boards like I'm buying ITX PC boards. I don't want a special build of Linux from the SBC OEM, I don't want weird bootloaders, firmware and other embedded-like stuff. I just want an ARM-based PC board for my desktop and server closet (so Ampere stuff is out of the picture unfortunately).

I bought a Radxa Cubie A7A over the weekend because my homelab machine of 5 months threw an SSD and I wanted something to limp along with while I wait for a replacement. I was a bit nervous about the special builds, driver issues, etc but didn't really run into any significant issues (or if I did, Claude took them in stride). And it was a very good test of the Ansible Playbook I'd thrown together over time to rebuild the system from scratch. Was missing a number of small things, but it should be rock solid by the time (if) the other company gets a new drive to me.

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#32

Post by bahador »

avhception wrote: post #13

I want to be able to buy ARM boards like I'm buying ITX PC boards. I don't want a special build of Linux from the SBC OEM, I don't want weird bootloaders, firmware and other embedded-like stuff. I just want an ARM-based PC board for my desktop and server closet (so Ampere stuff is out of the picture unfortunately).

asrockrack has some ampere boards, in CEB and MicroATX iirc

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#33

Post by preisschild »

fragmede wrote: post #23
preisschild wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I want edk2 uefi and mainline linux support at least for most functions (dont care about npu for example)

Why would you ask for a pony and then only want half? Let's get mainline support for all functions, like the NPU.

Having a (somewhat) usable mainline linux sbc would already be a big improvement over the status quo

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#34

Post by preisschild »

adrian_b wrote: post #27
preisschild wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how well a usb 10gbit ethernet adapter would work then But I really apprecate your reply! I'll definitely buy one for testing when they become available for reasonable prices <500EUR for 16gig memory

10 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces work fine on 10 Gb/s USB. Both interfaces have almost the same raw bit rate (in both cases "10 Gb/s" is only an approximation, but the differences between the true bit rates and 10 Gb/s are negligible, unlike for "5 Gb/s" USB, where the data bit rate is only 4 Gb/s). The USB protocol has a slightly higher overhead than the Ethernet protocol, so the throughput of an Ethernet 10 Gb/s interfa…

RTL8159 10GbE usb adapters seem to require USB3.2 Gen2 x2 and this seems to only have gen2

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#35

Post by rcarmo »

__patchbit__ wrote: post #2

What would it cost to fund swe and design professionals to write a 9front port with a haiku skinjob to hit milestones at 9, 18, 27 month intervals? the incubation period for Macintosh, NeXTSTEP, BeOS, HarmonyOS Next would have estimates.

As someone trying to port 9front onto a similar board, I can tell you firsthand that it is not trivial (I actually did that because it was “simpler” than porting Haiku, but then the Haiku folk point blank refused to have anything to do with the precursor build scripts because the README had emoji and I do use Codex, and… it’s a very long story… I decided to not waste tokens on Luddites)

But I will get 9front going, it’s already loading the kernel.

(Ironically, I came here to comment that the review is completely unreadable with the amount of ad inserts - almost one per paragraph!)

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#36

Post by kotaKat »

modeless wrote: post #7

I hope Linux support for these chips matures quickly. Qualcomm's laptop chips are the only serious competitor to Apple's M-series in single core performance and power efficiency. Intel and AMD are both far behind.

8cx Gen 3? That's the same SOC in the Thinkpad 13s we've had in a bit, so pretty promising.

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#37

Post by jrmg »

avhception wrote: post #13

I want to be able to buy ARM boards like I'm buying ITX PC boards. I don't want a special build of Linux from the SBC OEM, I don't want weird bootloaders, firmware and other embedded-like stuff. I just want an ARM-based PC board for my desktop and server closet (so Ampere stuff is out of the picture unfortunately).

I’m baffled by the current state of Linux for ARM where every board needs a special .dtb/.dts to describe its hardware and, often, peripherals, rather than there being some kind of self-describing plug-and-play-ish system like has been standard on other mainstream architectures since the ’90s.

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#39

Post by AlotOfReading »

jrmg wrote: post #37
avhception wrote: post #13

I want to be able to buy ARM boards like I'm buying ITX PC boards. I don't want a special build of Linux from the SBC OEM, I don't want weird bootloaders, firmware and other embedded-like stuff. I just want an ARM-based PC board for my desktop and server closet (so Ampere stuff is out of the picture unfortunately).

I’m baffled by the current state of Linux for ARM where every board needs a special .dtb/.dts to describe its hardware and, often, peripherals, rather than there being some kind of self-describing plug-and-play-ish system like has been standard on other mainstream architectures since the ’90s.

That's what the Arm SystemReady certification is for. Blame manufacturers for ignoring it. Let's be honest, fixing device trees is usually lot easier than patching an ACPI table. Though, one manufacturer I know ships a DT with nearly 500k lines of if-def'd nodes.

Re: Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

#40

Post by pta2002 »

bahador wrote: post #32
avhception wrote: post #13

I want to be able to buy ARM boards like I'm buying ITX PC boards. I don't want a special build of Linux from the SBC OEM, I don't want weird bootloaders, firmware and other embedded-like stuff. I just want an ARM-based PC board for my desktop and server closet (so Ampere stuff is out of the picture unfortunately).

asrockrack has some ampere boards, in CEB and MicroATX iirc

Well, just the motherboard seems to be over 1200€ so it’s not really in the same league… https://smicro.eu/asrock-altrad8ud-1l2t-1?srsltid=AfmBOoqWFe...
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