ODROID-M1S review – Part 2: Ubuntu 20.04 benchmarks and features testing

ODROID M1S Review Ubuntu 20.04

Over one month has passed since our unboxing and quick Ubuntu 20.04 testing of the ODROID-M1S SBC and we’ve now had time to test more features and run benchmarks using the official Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS release from Hardkernel. One user mentioned Ubuntu 22.04 is supported, but that’s supported by a third party and we used the official image for testing.

Our test results will show the performance and supported features of the Rockchip RK3566-powered ODROID-M1S SBC when running Ubuntu 20.04. Read on to find out how well the board works.

ODROID-M1S benchmarks

Let’s start benchmarking the ODROID-M1S with Thomas Kaiser’s sbc-bench.sh script:

Raspberry Pi 5 review – Part 2: Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, benchmarks, power consumption, and more

Raspberry Pi 5 Review Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm

A few days ago I finally went through the Raspberry Pi 5 kit I received last September going through all the items and booting it with Raspberry Pi OS bookworm. I’ve now had time to perform more tests to check out the performance with benchmarks and test various features on the Raspberry Pi 5. So I’ll report my experience in the second part of the review and compare the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC to the Raspberry Pi 4 and some other Arm Linux SBCs.

System information in Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm

Last time around, I installed the Raspberry Pi 5 in its official case, but for most of the testing, I decided to go back to the bare board fitted with its active cooler since it’s the best cooling option as we’ll see further in the review.

Flow Browser, a Raspberry Pi optimized web browser for HMI

Flow Browser Raspberry Pi Optimized web browser

Most people will use Chromium on Raspberry Pi boards simply because it’s now the default browser in Raspberry Pi OS. But the performance may not be optimal, and UK-based Ekioh has developed the Flow Browser optimized for performance on Raspberry Pi with multi-thread support and 3D accelerated graphics. There’s a caveat though, as the Flow Browser has been developed from the ground up, i.e. not based on Webkit or Mozilla Engine, with human-machine interfaces (HMI) in mind, rather than individuals browsing the web, and that means that while performance will be better, site compatibility does suffer at this point in time. Key features in Flow Browser Before going into benchmarks and other tests, let’s check some of the key features listed for Flow Browser: HTML & CSS3CSS – Animations and Transitions, CSS Transforms (2D and 3D), CSS Flexbox, Bi-directional text layout Graphics – Web Fonts – Canvas, SVG & WebGL […]

Puffin Cloud Learning Renders Web Pages Up to 14 Times Faster on Raspberry Pi

Puffin Cloud Learning Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a great little Arm Linux board designed for STEM education. But with many children now have to learn remotely, the board would be useful as a computer replacement, but users may find web browsing on the Raspberry Pi to be rather sluggish. Puffin Cloud Learning is designed just for that use case and promises to make the Raspberry Pi SBC much faster for web browsing, and they tested several websites, and for instance, CNN website loads almost 14 times faster with the Puffin Internet Terminal compared to using Chromium only. How is that possible? Simple: the Raspberry Pi is simply used as a thin client with complex web rendering performed on the company’s encrypted cloud servers where a JavaScript engine is used to pre-process and compress web pages sent to the Raspberry Pi. The company also claims Puffin Internet Terminal is 1200% faster than Chromium using […]

Checking Out Raspberry Pi OS 64-Bit on Raspberry Pi 4 8GB RAM

Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit on Raspberry Pi 4 8GB

The Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB RAM launched a couple of weeks ago together with the beta version of Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit. Note that you should currently use the 32-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS (previously known as Raspbian) as the 64-bit still has bugs and missing features, but I want to find out the current progress, so I installed raspios_arm64-2020-05-28/2020-05-27-raspios-buster-arm64.zip and had no problem to boot the board. Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit System Information After going through the setup wizard in the desktop environment to configure the language, time, networking, etc…, and make sure the OS is updated, I checkout some information:

I do have a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4 with 8GB Memory (revision: d03114), the image comes with a 64-bit Linux kernel:

and we do get a 64-bit rootfs.

All good. Known issues Before starting the review, let’s make ourselves aware […]

RockPro64 RK3399 Board Linux Review with Ubuntu 18.04 + LXDE

RockPro64 Heatsink Ports

Let’s do one more RK3399 Linux review using Pine64 RockPro64 development board. After shortly checking out the hardware, I’ll test Ubuntu 18.04 “Bionic” LXDE on the board, test 3D graphics acceleration, video playback, USB storage and network performance among other things on the board. RockPro64 Board Unboxing The board came in a cardboard package, and the sticker made it clear I had received the 2GB LPDDR4 version. Even after FriendlyELEC NanoPi M4 announcement, Rockchip ROCKPro64 is still the cheapest RK3399 development board around, so it should come as no surprise that the board does not come with any accessories by default. Another way to keep the price low was not to include any built-in storage apart from SPI flash, so instead most people will either boot from micro SD card or an eMMC flash module both of which need to be purchase separately. Another cost-saving is the lack of built-in […]

AIO-3399J Development Board Review with Ubuntu 16.04

AIO-3399J WiFi, Heatsink, USB Firmware Update

Regular readers will know that Firefly team sent  me several of their Rockchip boards for evaluation, and I started with a review of ROC-RK3328-CC development board powered by Rockchip RK3328 processor. This time, I went with the high-end AIO-3399J board comprised of a features-packed baseboard and a Rockchip RK3399 system-on-module. Just like with the previous review, I’ve decided to focus on Linux support, in this case Xunbuntu 16.04, and I’ll do an Android review on the company releases Android 8.1 for Firefly-RK3399 board. First Boot with AIO-3399J Board Before booting the board, I inserted the heatsink, and connected the provided WiFi antennas. I also connected some devices and cables, including a mouse,  the male to male USB cable to the top USB 3.0 (OTG) port for firmware update, a HDMI cable to my TV, and Ethernet cable, as well as the serial debug board. The final step was to connect […]

FOSDEM 2018 Open Source Developers Meeting Schedule

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) occurs every year on the first week-end of February, where developers meet for two days discussing about open source software projects. FOSDEM 2018 will take place on February 3-4 this year with  652 speakers, 684 events, and 57 tracks, an increase over  last year 608 speakers, 653 events, and 54 tracks. There will be 8 main tracks namely: Community, History, Miscellaneous, Performance, Python, Security and Encryption, Space, and Global Diversity CFP Day. There will also be 33 developer rooms, and since the full schedule is now available, I’ll make a virtual schedule mostly based on sessions from the Embedded, mobile, and automotive, Hardware Enablement, and Internet of Things devrooms. Saturday 3, 2018 09:50 – 10:15 – Turning On the Lights with Home Assistant and MQTT by Leon Anavi In this presentation you will learn the exact steps for using MQTT JSON […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case