Which board to support?

[bmarkus]

Please tell, which board and processor architecture would be supported in your opinion?

[bmarkus]

Good to see that no demand for other boards. More free time 

[wxop]

First Thank you and congratulation for the absolutely wonderfull TinyCoreLinux : because of its Read-only concept, this is THE perfect Linux for embedded IOT. 

I would like to suggest all OrangePi hardware, mainly because :
- they are one of the most popular/serious competitor of RaspberryPi
- compared to Raspberry Pi , they are way cheaper
- There is a lot of different hardware versions, perfect for IOT
- This chinese company seems to have understood that playing WITH the OpenSource community can be mutually beneficial.

Development should not be that hard for gurus like you knowing that :
- One forum member has already succeeded to port TinyCoreLinux to some OrangePi model (see here), and some others members seems to be interested....
- Armbian already supports it fine
- various OrangePi sources can be found on GitHub
- If I remember correctly, I've read somewhere (maybe here) that the latest Linux kernel natively supports H3 processors

Best regards,

[M-H]

Hi Béla,

I just started an other thread to discuss the pros and cons of getting tinycore on the new Asus Tinker Board.
Sorry I did not see this thread , TinkerBoard was not mentioned in any post according to the search function.

In my opinion, the tinkerboard is a good SBC to investigate and see if it is fit for a tinycore blessing.
It is fast, it has got arm processors and a formfactor that would make a lot op people think it is a raspberry pi.
Surely there will be differences that will be difficulties to overcome. But to me it looks like a promising prospect.
I will not list all tech specs, as the Asus website lists them now , but to me the gigabit LAN without usb2 link , the 2 gig RAM and HD audio chip are the main upgrades from the pi3.

As it close to the pi you know well, perhaps you can see if it is possible, and at what what cost.

Greetz M-H

[theYinYeti]

The answer will likely depend on each person’s use of TC.
IMHO, TC is great as a portable desktop+rescue Linux system (on an USB stick) because it is, as far as I know, the only modern Linux distribution with a software repository that can be installed on a Windows-compatible filesystem.
As a consequence, although it is not quite a “board”, I would vote for improved X11 support of laptops.

[Juanito]

I would vote for improved X11 support of laptops.

What do you have in mind?

[theYinYeti]

Nothing in particular, because I do not know much about the internals of TC. I just noticed that X11 fails to start on quite a few laptops I tested it on…

[Juanito]

Please feel free to start a thread detailing which extension you are using (Xvesa, Xfbdev, Xorg) and the errors you get.

[corezoo]

Hi Béla and all,
The Olimex products are of interest to me. They seem to be pro open source as much as possible.
I have not had any experience dealing with them and I have no idea about the quality but they tend to
incorporate some neat features in the OLinuXino designs.

I am saving up for a purchase, hopefully soon.
If I get an extra one, and send it to you,  would you be interested in getting it working with tiny core?

Joe

[wxop]

Hi Béla,

If you're willing to port TCL to OrangePi boards :

• I'm pretty sure that the OrangePi chinese company would certainly be more than happy to freely send you some boards to test, if you'd contact them.
• if not and whenever money is the concern, I'd be happy to sponsor one OrangePi board  if this could help

THank you

[nxtv2.0]

Orange pi plus 2e and orange pi pc2 mainline kernel.
That would be awesome.

[PDP-8]

Firstly - thank you so much for PiCore!

Lately I have been looking at the

Libre Computer Board AML-S905X-CC 4K (2 or 4gb models)

There are many boards out, but the reason I am interested in this one is from an engineering point of view.  Some boards look great, but may suffer greatly in voltage drop when loaded, and result in premature throttling.  A stiff power supply and decent short cabling of course fixes that, but when the average user has to solder directly to the pins rather than use the micro-usb connector, it loses it's appeal.

The Libre Computer board claims to use 50% less power than an RPI3, and can operate at a lower voltage than others, but since I don't own one, I can't verify.

The other aspect that I'd have to ask a developer about is how *truly* open is the Libre board hardware, allowing developers to do their thing without having to beg for information or rely on totally closed binary blobs that could become inefficient a few years down the road with new kernel requirements...

And, the Libre board is available online.  I could snatch one tomorrow.

Lots of pi-copy boards could be reproduced, with small improvements here and there, but the Libre Computer Board seems to have a real "raison d'etre" beyond just being a Pi competitor....

[PDP-8]

Oops - I was wrong, they only come in 1 or 2gb ram versions.

I picked up the 2g version - we'll see how it goes.

[wxop]

Béla

any chance to see TinyCore on OrangePi ?

Best regards

[Robertspark]

+1 for Asus tinker please