It works, it boots, the documentation is weak, but it’s a start.
There's information in the forums about how. I personally run Arch on mine.
Feel like because both the VF2 and Star64 boards have been out already out for quite a while now, with probably some of their teething issues sorted out, this is pretty much an inexcusable product launch for Milk-V. Even more so since the VisionFive2 copied the RPi format almost exactly.
And yes, a lot of repositories for these boards are very fresh, forcing you to compile stuff and will break your board if you update. There's some stuff like device trees and patches being upstreamed, but there's also a whole bunch more that's not being upstreamed, like GPU drivers.
Refers to the official test image, which is just a snapshot of Debian from before it had RISC-V as supported architecture.
The real way to "update" is to install something else than the official test image.
I have been using arch since February, on the VisionFive 2 which uses the same SoC.
Sorry... I'm kinda RISC-V fanboy, but this is no way to launch a product. To put it bluntly: Milk-V, this CM as-is is useless.
Get the docs, OS images, default configurations, quick start guides, user forum etc sorted out. Then launch product.
>(..) this is no way to launch a product.
I disagree. This is a Compute Module, not a SBC.
If you can't even connect an UART to get it up and running, then you're not the target audience. Hell, if you expect HDMI output from a CM out of factory, you definitely are not the target audience.
Get a SBC next time.
>Get the docs, OS images, default configurations, quick start guides, user forum etc sorted out. Then launch product.
Agree. Minus the user forum part, as trying to capture the community into a forum that you control is entirely optional.
(and any effort used maintaining a forum could be put elsewhere, such as customer support or improving documentation)
With many non-Pi boards, bringup via UART is typical, but the vast majority of SBC users wouldn't know what to do if you tossed them a USB to UART adapter.
I understand these use same software throughout, and they make both the Pi and the CM board version, so you'd get the same results.
Conversely, both Mars CM and Mars seem to be under the same china-style "we shipped it but it barely boots" confusion :/
But it shouldn't take long to sort out. VisionFive 2 uses the same SoC after all, and the experience got to a pretty good point on that SBC (I own one).
>the vast majority of SBC users wouldn't know what to do if you tossed them a USB to UART adapter.
Pi specifically. Other ARM SBCs use u-boot. There documentation helps. VisionFive 2 has such documentation in place.
Rpi is unique in that it uses a bespoke boot process that doesn't even present an UART prompt on its bootloader. So the only way to get anywhere is with a ready-to-use sd image (AFAIK they now do USB too).
It can fortunately be brought back into sanity by setting up an alternative (and less supported, although definitely better and less bespoke) u-boot or uefi boot flow. OpenBSD (which I use) requires it.
If Raspberry Pi had any sense, they'd adopted UEFI for Raspberry Pi 5 (and made it compliant with ARM server platform specs), and maybe they have. I don't own one nor have I looked into it on detail; it's still using legacy ISA (i.e. ARM, IMHO a dead end), making it very uninteresting to me.