Comment by CameronNemo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CameronNemo | Hacker News Reader

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This has not been my experience with rk3399 SBCs. The boot process is not only documented, but entirely blob free (from uboot to tf-a to the kernel).

Recently I even got suspend to ram working on my rk3399 powered pinebook pro, which was one of the few items I had not been able to get working with a mainline stack.

Hardware video decoding does require a recent kernel and gstreamer, but again it is fairly well documented and entirely mainline.

Don't the RPI boards require blobs to boot the GPU, which boots the rest of the board? And hardware video decoding requires paying extra and using a proprietary blob?

That said, this device (and the RPi 400) seem really wacky to me and I doubt I would ever buy one. I would not want to tell my grandparents "sorry printer does not work because arm" and the keyboard is way too sucky for me. Also no track point? That would be great for this form factor.

> Don't the RPI boards require blobs to boot the GPU, which boots the rest of the board? And hardware video decoding requires paying extra and using a proprietary blob?

Yes, Raspberry Pi hardware is stunningly awful and succeeds only through sheer ecosystem size, community dedication, and a company that's willing to ship something that works and try to make the thing reasonable in spite of having built it on completely unreasonable Hardware.

In other words: support. I think it's fairly well known around these parts that the primary appeal of the Raspberry Pi is support and brand recognition. Both are qualities that people are willing to pay for, may that be in dollars or lacking specifications.

Do you have suspend to ram with working audio when it comes back? That's my final hurdle.

Hmm thanks for the challenge. I tested it and on resume, audio did not play. I had to restart pipewire and then it worked again.

It is possible to use libre boot firmware for the RPi:

https://github.com/librerpi/

It supports a small fraction of the hardware capabilities.

Sure, same as any project doing reverse engineering of proprietary blobs. Eventually everything will be done though, especially if more people contribute or fund the work.

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