Hacker News Reader

Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Kind of a funny title. It was "mainline Linux", but he had to write and/or fix several kernel modules and use a couple of "hacky" workarounds. The post is really more about modifying Linux to work on the device.

Kudos to him though, it looks like it would be a popular device if it becomes easier to get Linux running well on it.

View on HN

I think the reason it's called "mainline" is due to the fact that it's based on vanilla Linux kernel even if you need to recompile the mainline kernel with the modified kernel modules. It is not based on something of different kernel branch or fork, for examples OpenWRT or Linux Switching Appliance (LISA) that it's not from the mainline [1].

If by any chance that Jonathan is reading this, mainline Linux kernel that can be run on the cheap Banana Pi router (BPI-R64 price USD$64) will be very handy and useful [2].

[1]http://lisa.mindbit.ro/

[2]http://www.banana-pi.org/r64.html

It's not as cheap, but you might have better luck with something based off the Espressobin platform, although I can't remember if the switch chip is completely closed source.

Armbian on Espressobin is a nice platform. I have three v5 Espressobins. Sadly, the v5 units have some quality issues. One of the three runs non-stop. The second reboots sporatically. The third freezes sporatically and has to be unplugged. I don't know if the cause is thermal or poor soldering or something else. I would buy many more if they were reliable.

That's a pity that the build quality is bad. Librecomputer might be worth a look - they spent years and significant amounts of money upstreaming the kernel for at least one of their boards, but I haven't used them enough to comment on the build quality.

I had some experience with Espressobin v5 and v7 devices. All the issues that I had with the devices were caused by terrible software support. Openwrt was unstable. The original kernel was too old.

The best results were using armbian kernel and userspace for this device. You should be able to build one in a less than an hour on modern pc.

I have a v7 device that I use with a sata drive. It has been stable so far.

Edit: forgot about needing a recent bootloader. This is also mentioned by armbian docs.

"It is not based on something of different kernel branch or fork, for examples OpenWRT or Linux Switching Appliance (LISA)..."

Ah, yes, that makes sense. He started with Debian. But did do a lot of work with modules, drivers, device trees, the boot loader, etc.

Mainline linux is often used in the embedded Linux community to describe a kernel downloaded from the official repository rather than an old, patched-to-death one provided by the SoC vendor.

Having prepared embedded devices myself, it is quite common to patch the kernel you are working with to work around quirks in your hardware. However, it is much more pleasant to do so on a mainline kernel than on something that was already patched and never maintained.

Also note that the author mentions that he is currently in the process of getting his patches merged in Linux, and that most of the work should be included in 5.9. So perhaps not mainline yet, but future mainline definitely.

That seems fairly mainline to me, as opposite to say μClinux.

μClinux was merged into mainline more than a decade ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com