Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be Crap

[mangobrain]

I don't understand why everyone is so up in arms about this. It's still a great help to toolkit developers, display server developers, and anyone wanting to port operating systems other than Linux - or maybe even write their own, what with the Raspberry Pi's focus being education. It still means we don't have to wait for Broadcom to catch up if changes in newer kernels cause breakage - OK, so we can't change the GLES implementation, but we can at least keep the current one working!

As for bitching about instability, yes there have been some issues, but work on the USB driver is on-going. Personally, my two Pis are now completely stable for how I use them, so I have absolutely no complaints. Early adopters ought to expect this sort of thing, and be willing to either help, or wait it out. The Foundation got a lot more interest than they anticipated for something which was very much supposed to be an early, developer-focussed release.

[blackiwid]

I don't understand why everyone is so up in arms about this.

If they would have anounced, we release a wrapper or a kernel-headers thing or something like that... and thats now easier to port the propriatary driver it would be ok... but now they claim something different, they did say we have a "fully opensourced" driver and that other companys should take a example on this... and the point is to get good press and sell more units... thats a fraud like thing.

[bnolsen]

Oh come on, the rpi shouldn't be getting as much hate as it is. In some ways it helped to create a new market for ultra cheap computers.

The newest rpi revision with 512MB ram seems to have mostly cleared up the USB insanity the original model had. Unfortunately it also fractures the rpi community now that some developers will target 512MB and leave the 256MB crowd out in the cold. Not to mention the hordes of users who bought very buggy hardware.

The armv6 soc with vfp in many ways is a wildcat, an ancient arm core with a (relatively) rare fpu, making for a very slow soc that's a pain to support.

The ideas and goals were okay, execution? Not so great. Cubieboard rules over this thing, although it's not in mass production yet.

[AJSB]

I didn't knew about the CubieBoard existence if it wasn't this thread ....it's indeed a very interesting device to make all kind of experiments and seem to have the right punch to do even some "Desktop" stuff at an minimal decent speed....any more devices of this type running Linux and in this price range (up to $50) ?

[bnolsen]

I didn't knew about the CubieBoard existence if it wasn't this thread ....it's indeed a very interesting device to make all kind of experiments and seem to have the right punch to do even some "Desktop" stuff at an minimal decent speed....any more devices of this type running Linux and in this price range (up to $50) ?

It's nice...the USB is fully interrupt driven, the ethernet native, the SATA2 is purely native and full speed like a desktop PC, a "case" for 4USD. Just missing those accelerated MALI drivers!

[AJSB]

It's nice...the USB is fully interrupt driven, the ethernet native, the SATA2 is purely native and full speed like a desktop PC, a "case" for 4USD. Just missing those accelerated MALI drivers!

With time those drivers will be ready, i hope...Lima project should have some official support from ARM...yeah, i know, i'm a big fan for NVIDIA blob and usually bash Nouveau so how can i say that about Nouveau and this about Lima ?!? Completely different markets and concepts....


A desktop for $ 49 , LOL !!!

The ODROID-X is also VERY VERY nice (with that Exynos 4 Dual SoC and all ) but it's in a different price tag ...

In both cases, excellent "budget" Desktop PCs...

[KeyJ]

it turned out to be exactly what the foundation said

Unfortunately not - or not completely. In the announcement, the foundation said that there's a fully open source ARM userland now (which is true), but they also boasted that they have the first fully-functional fully open source SoC GPU drivers (which is not true). It's the latter part that stirred up things. If they just went with "Hey guys, here's the userland sources, you may now port your oddball operating systems to the Pi!", nobody would have argued and everybody would be happy about the little, but noticeable progress that had been made. But instead they went on to promise something they didn't deliver. It's just natural that this causes a few raised eyebrows.

[Pallidus]

google is now selling a complete laptop based on exynos 5 for 250...


now subract the screen, keyboard, touchpad, ssd, 2g of ram...


If someone really wanted I'm sure they would be able to sell an ARM a15 soc with 1 g of ram for around the 50/70 price point.

[curaga]

It's nice...the USB is fully interrupt driven, the ethernet native, the SATA2 is purely native and full speed like a desktop PC, a "case" for 4USD. Just missing those accelerated MALI drivers!

While all those make it actually usable (unlike the Pi, with its crappy USB and ethernet implemented via USB), the sata driver for a10 is not yet fully stable I hear.

[AJSB]

...and now for something kinda of different....


Why a ODROID-X when for same around same price (after you add 4GB of RAM !!!) you can get this :


http://www.minipc.de/catalog/il/1412

Intel D2700MUD (Intel Atom 2x 2.13Ghz CPU, TPM, DVI) [FANLESS]


Name D2700MUD
Form Factor Mini-ITX Mainboard (17x17cm)
CPU Intel® Atom™ D2700 (2x 2.13GHz)
1MB Cache, With Hyper-Threading
Chipset Intel NM10 Express
Graphics VGA + DVI-D + LVDS
Memory 2x SO-DDR3 800/1066, 4GB max, Single channel
Power 24 Pin ATX
LAN 1x Intel 10/100/1000 MBit
Connectors (rear) - 4x USB 2.0
- 1x LAN RJ-45
- 3x Audio
- 1x PS/2
- 1x LPT
- 1x DVI-D
- 1x VGA
Audio 5.1 Channel HD Audio
Connectors (internal) - 2x SATA-II (3GB/s)
- 3x USB 2.0
- 1x PCI
- 1x Mini-PCIe
- 2x RS232
- Front Audio
- 1x TPM
- 1x SPDIF
- LVDS (Single 24bit)
Included - D2700MUD Mainboard (with 2x 2.13Ghz Atom CPU)
- I/O ATX rear plate
- 2x SATA cable
- Quickstart-Guide
- Drivers CD



...granted, is bigger, with more power drain , less robotic friendly, but for a budget Desktop PC, you can get a lot of ports, PCI besides integrated graphics (that sucks , i know) with 4GB RAM and fully compatible with x86 witch should make it easy to install ANY regular LINUX distro and run anything for it...

They have a lot of other models....like this one with HDMI:

http://www.minipc.de/catalog/il/1413