pine64 News - Page 11 of 15 - CNX Software

May 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

Pinebook Pro Arm Laptop Video Demo

Pine64 first revealed working on Pinebook Pro Arm Linux laptop at FOSDEM 2019 back at the end of January. The first Pinebook laptop had limited hardware resources, and as such was meant for simple tasks, but Pinebook Pro equipped with Rockchip RK3399 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB to 128GB flash, and a 14″ Full HD display is designed to be used as your main laptop. That means everything needs to work from 3D graphics acceleration, to hardware video decoding, and USB-C video output. Lukasz Erecinski very recently shot a demo of the laptop in action, and everything looks very good, meaning the laptop should be come available soon. You can watch the demo further below, but if you are in a rush here’s what has been tested and works: Ubuntu & Debian with MATE desktop 4K video playback 3D graphics acceleration for games (Quake demo) 3D graphics acceleration in Chromium web […]

April 9, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Batocera.Linux OS Combines Kodi & Retro Gaming for Raspberry Pi & ODROID Boards

There are already several ways to run retro games on development boards, with for example RetroPie, and derivatives like RetrOrangePi, Lakka and Recalbox. Batocera.Linux is another option that I had never heard about so far, and works on PCs, as well as Raspberry Pi and ODROID boards, with ODROID-N2 support having been added very recently. batocera.linux operating system can easily be run from a USB flash drive on your computer without altering your existing OS, while it will boot from a standard microSD card on Raspberry Pi and ODROID boards. Beside retro-gaming support, the OS also includes Kodi media center for playing videos, or listening to music. You may even play games in it since retro-gaming support was added in Kodi 18. The partial compatibility table above shows all platforms have a different level of support, and for Intel hardware support more emulators than Arm based boards. The Orange arrow […]

March 29, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

PINE64 Plans to Move their Website on a 24-node RockPro64 Cluster

Boards’ clusters are always fun to see, and PINE64 has shared pictures of two RockPro64 clusters with respectively 48 and 24 boards neatly packed into partially custom enclosures. The 48-node cluster will feature a total of 288 cores, including 96 Arm Cortex-A72 cores and 188 Cortex-A53 cores, as well as 192GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Low cost development boards may be seen as toys by some, so it’s interesting to learn that PINE64 plans to move their complete website infrastructure including the main website, a community website, forums, wiki, and possibly IRC on the 24-node cluster, while it seems the 48-node cluster may be used for their build environment. The company has just completed the assembly of the clusters, and did not disclose the full technical details just yet. However, a progress report may be written in due time. Once the migration is done, and everything works as it should, it […]

March 1, 2019March 1, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

PINE H64 Model B SBC Launched with Raspberry Pi Form Factor

Pine H64 development board was introduced about a year ago with an Allwinner H6 processor, 1 to 3GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, a USB 3.0 port, a PCIe socket, and more with the legacy Pine A64 form factor and price starting at $25.99 for the 1GB RAM version. However, Pine64 made a few announcements at FOSDEM 2019, and beside the upcoming Pinebook Pro Linux/*BSD laptop, the company also mentioned a new PINE H64 Model B, still based on Allwinner H6 processor, but instead following Raspberry Pi form factor also used by the company’s Rock64 SBC. The new board is still not available on the official Pine64 store, but Ameridroid is already taking orders for Pine H64 Model B for $38.95 (2GB RAM) and $48.95 (3GB RAM). Pine H64 Model B specifications: SoC – Allwinner H6 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.8GHz with Arm Mali T-722MP2 dual-core GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.1/3.0/2.0/1.1, […]

January 31, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

PineBook Pro Linux / BSD Rockchip RK3399 Laptop Coming Up for $200

Pine64 announced the Pinebook laptop in 2016. The ultra cheap ($89 and up) laptop was based on Allwinner A64 quad core Cortex A53 processor coupled with 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, and a 11.6″ or 14″ display. It was never meant to be a replacement for your current laptop due to the low end specifications, but you could still use it to tinker with Arm Linux or *BSD, as a lightweight portable terminal, etc… Pine64 made several announcements in a single blog post right before FOSDEM 2019 where they’ll showcase some of their upcoming products including the Pinephone development kit that’s use to develop software for the upcoming Pinephone open source phone, PineTab *BSD/Linux-only tablet with Allwinner A64 SoC, and an 11.6″ display like Pinebook laptop, a retro gaming case compatible with Rock64 and Rock64Pro boards, an open source IP camera based on Allwinner S3L processor, Pine H64 Model B (Allwinner […]

January 18, 2019January 18, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

postmarketOS Linux Mobile OS Supports Over 100 Devices

postmarketOS is a Linux operating system that was first unveiled in 2017, with the developers aiming to provide long term support in order to extend the life of existing phones. The operating system is based on Alpine Linux with touch-screen optimization, and the goal is to provide updates, including security updates, for at least 10 years just like you would get on a computer. The project was really getting started at the time, but now the community has provided an update for the first 600 days of development, and over 100 devices are now supported, mostly smartphones such as Google Pixel 3 XL or Motorola Droid 4, but also some SBCs, for instance, Pine A64-LTS and various Raspberry Pi boards. “Supported” means the 112 devices listed can boot postmarketOS, but the operating system is still considered to be alpha software, and for example, if you look at the features matrix […]

December 26, 2018December 28, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Linux 4.20 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

After Greg K-H handling Linux 4.19 release, Linus Torvalds is back at the helm, and released Linux 4.20 just before Christmas: Let’s face it, last week wasn’t quite as quiet as I would have hoped for, but there really doesn’t seem to be any point to delay 4.20 because everybody is already taking a break. And it’s not like there are any known issues, it’s just that the shortlog below is a bit longer than I would have wished for. Nothing screams “oh, that’s scary”, though. And as part of the “everybody is already taking a break”, I can happily report that I already have quite a few early pull requests in my inbox. I encouraged people to get it over and done with, so that people can just relax over the year-end holidays. In fact, I probably won’t start pulling for a couple of days, but otherwise let’s just […]

October 23, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 4.19 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

With Linus Torvalds taking a leave from the Linux kernel project, Greg Kroah-Hartman was the one to release Linux 4.19 last Sunday: Hi everyone! It’s been a long strange journey for this kernel release… While it was not the largest kernel release every by number of commits, it was larger than the last 3 releases, which is a non-trivial thing to do. After the original -rc1 bumps, things settled down on the code side and it looks like stuff came nicely together to make a solid kernel for everyone to use for a while. And given that this is going to be one of the “Long Term” kernels I end up maintaining for a few years, that’s good news for everyone. A small trickle of good bugfixes came in this week, showing that waiting an extra week was a wise choice. However odds are that linux-next is just bursting so […]