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Comment by lfam | Hacker News Reader

Allwinner's SOCs are popular as Raspberry Pi-ish single-board computers for hobbyist Linux users who want a dirt-cheap home server.

What are some alternatives that have better track records with the GPL?

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As far as I understand, until recently Allwinner has been doing kernel development with sole focus to get Android shipped as fast as possible. It is a fact that they did not work to get mainline Linux support for their SoCs.

Developing for mainline might be slower but in the long-run it's better and even cheaper. I think that they are seeing this now.

You can check the slides at https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/allwinner_upstream/ for the current level of support. This is about the community work for mainline support.

> It is a fact that they did not work to get mainline Linux support for their SoCs.

Though it is possible. I got mainline Linux running on an A10.

Yeah, because the sunxi community formed and did all the work.

Yeah, I didn't mean that as an endorsement of Allwinner. Just a potentially useful piece of information.

Allwinner boards are quite nice if you want to run mainline Linux on ARM. I've got an A20 based board for that myself.

I'd suggest looking at the ODROID boards from Hardkernel (http://www.hardkernel.com/).

Rather not: http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=9639 I bought one assuming the openness status was better, but https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ looks better, sadly.

Raspberry Pi.

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