Rock Pi 4 SBC Runs GNOME & KDE Plasma using Panfrost Open Source GPU Driver & Wayland

RK3399 Panfrost GNOME

One of the highlights of Linux 5.2 release was support for two new Arm Mali GPU open-source drivers, namely Lima for Mali-4xx GPU, and Panfrost for the Midgard Mali-T6xx/7xx/8xx series, and the more recent Bifrost Mali-Gxx GPUs. Collabora worked on the release and was donated a few Rock Pi 4 boards from Radxa directly to work on the project. For those who are not familiar, Rock Pi 4 board is powered by a Rockchip RK3399 processor with a Mali-T860MP4 GPU that is supported by Panfrost open source GPU driver. The company managed to have Debian 10 Buster running on Rock Pi 4 using 3D graphics acceleration thanks to Panfrost drivers on both GNOME and KDE Plasma desktop environment, as well as Weston Wayland compositer. The good news is that you can build Rock Pi 4 images by yourself using Debos with the following commands:

Alternatively, you could directly download […]

BeagleBone Green Gateway SBC Adds Octavo OSD3358 SiP, Ethernet, and a DC Jack

BeagleBone Green Wireless was launched in 2016 as an alternative to the official BeagleBone Green with WiFi & Bluetooth connectivity, and some extra USB ports meaning the Ethernet port had to go. The Linux SBC was based on Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 processor and a 512 MB RAM chip. Seeed Studio has been working on an update of the board named BeagleBone Green Gateway that combines the processor, the RAM chip, and more components into one thanks to Octavo Systems OSD3358 SiP. The new board also adds Ethernet, a DC jack for power instead of just relying on micro USB, and an I2C RTC chip and battery. BeagleBone Green Gateway specifications with changes highlighted in bold:  SiP – Octavo Systems OSD3358 with Texas Instruments AM3358 Arm Cortex-A8 processor @ 1.0 GHz, 2×32-bit 200-MHz programmable real-time units (PRUs), 3D graphics accelerator, 512MB DDR3 SDRAM, 4KB EEPROM, and integrated power management Storage […]

Orange Pi Zero LTS SBC Launched for $8.49 and Up

Buy Orange Pi Zero LTS Allwinner H2 SBC

Orange Pi Zero LTS is an update to Orange Pi Zero Allwinner H2+ board with the same specifications, but tweaks to the hardware that Shenzhen Xunlong Software claims lower power consumption and reduce heat. The SBC supports Armbian’s Debian and Ubuntu images, and best suited for headless applications that require network connectivity via Ethernet and/or WiFi such as smart speakers. The board also features one USB port, and two I/O headers for expansion. The good news is that you can now buy Orange Pi Zero LTS for the same price as the original model, namely $8.49 for the 256MB RAM version, and $10.49 for the 512MB model$10.49 for the 512MB model, excluding shipping costs ($4.73 to my location). Here’s a reminder of Orange Pi Zero LTS (v1.5) specifications: SoC – Allwinner H2+ quad-core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU @ 600 MHz System Memory – 256 to […]

PineBook Pro Arm Linux Laptop now up for pre-order for $199.99

Pinebook Pro Laptop

Pine64 unveiled a Pinebook Pro laptop prototype at FOSDEM 2019 as an update to the original Allwinner A64 powered Pinebook laptop, but instead of just being a toy to play with, Pinebook Pro aimed to be used as a daily driver thanks to a relatively powerful Rockchip RK3399 processor combined with 4GB RAM, and 64/128GB storage, and equipped with a 14″ Full HD display all for a target price of $200. Last May, we noticed some good progress on the software development side with a demo showcasing Ubuntu & Debian with MATE desktop, 4K video playback, 3D graphics acceleration, and USB-C video output.  The good news is that Pinebook Pro has just launched and can be pre-ordered for $199.99 on Pine64 store. [Update: If you are an existing forum member, you may want to redeem your coupon here] Pinebook Pro laptop specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 big.LITTLE hexa-core Arm Cortex […]

Solectrix SX Mobile Device Kit Runs Linux or Android on NXP i.MX8M Mini Processor

Solectrix SX Mobile Device Kit

In the last two years or so, we’ve seen the development of Linux phones that are expected to launch in the next few months with products such as PinePhone, Purism Librem 5, or even Necunos NC_1. Solectrix SX Mobile Device Kit also targets Arm-based mobile devices, but it is somewhat different, as the i.MX8M Mini development kit aims to help with the design of Android or Linux mobile devices with software, hardware and housing available, but more geared towards specific business use cases, as it comes with optional Gigabit Ethernet and USB-to-UART ports, and no cellular connectivity. Solectrix SX Mobile Device Kit (MDK) specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX8M Mini single to quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at up to 2.0GHz, Arm Cortex-M4F @ 400MHz, and 2D / 3D GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0) System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash, microSD card slot Display – 4-lane MIPI DSI; capacitive […]

Beelink L55 Review – An Intel Core i3-5005U Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu 18.04

Beelink L55 Review

With the shortage of Gemini Lake processors, some manufacturers have taken to releasing new mini PCs using older CPUs. The Beelink L55 is one such example and uses Intel’s Broadwell I3-5005U CPU which is a dual-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz processor with Intel’s HD Graphics 5500. The L55 is a ‘NUC’ style mini PC and physically consists of a 128 x 126 x 46 mm (5.04 x 4.96 x 1.81 inches) box case with a front panel that includes the power button, a headphone jack and a couple of 3.0 USB ports and then on the rear, two more 3.0 USBs, two 2.1 USBs, HDMI (1.4), DP and two gigabit Ethernet ports. Note that there is no SD or micro SD card slot. The full specifications include: The L55 comes with either a 256GB or 512GB (as tested in this review) M.2 SSD with pre-installed Windows 10 Home version 1809 together […]

Inforce Introduces Snapdragon 660 & 845 Modules with On-Device AI

ACC-1C20 Carrier Board

Inforce Computing has just launched two new pin-compatible system-on-modules, namely Inforce 6502 and Inforce 6701, powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 & Snapdragon 845 SoC respectively. In their newsletter, the company claims those are their first modules with on-device AI capabilities with the Snapdragon 660 enabling “advanced visual computing, enhanced graphics and on-device machine learning capabilities”, while the more powerful Snapdragon 845 is better suited for “immersive multimedia experiences including optimized AI performance for a more responsive, power-efficient user- experience and capture of cinema-grade videos in UHD@60fps resolution. Inforce 6502 Snapdragon 660 SoM Specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 with 8-core Kryo 260 processor, Adreno 512 GPU, Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP with Hexagon Vector eXtensions (HVX) for Caffe2 and Tensorflow System Memory & Storage – 3GB LPDDR4, Dual-Channel + 32GB eMMC flash in single eMCP package Connectivity Bluetooth 5.0 + Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac 2×2 with MU-MIMO and Dual Band Simultaneous (DBS) […]

Debian 10 “Buster” Released

If you’re a recent owner of a Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, you should have had an early taste of Debian 10 “Buster”, since the Raspberry Pi Foundation decided to release their Raspbian “Buster” image before the actual release in order to lower software development costs. Debian developers have only just announced the release of Debian 10 “Buster”. The new version of Debian supports various desktop environments including Cinnamon 3.8, GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, LXDE .99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. Besides the official announcement Debian also posted tidbits on their Twitter feed, where we learn for example that “Debian 10 buster has 28,939 source packages with 11,610,055 source files”. Officially supported architectures for Debian 10 include i386 and amd64 for x86 targets, arm64, armel and armhf Arm architectures, as well as various other architectures including MIPS (mips64el, mipsel…), PowerPC (ppc64el), and IBM System z (s390x). One notable […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case