[gbl08ma]

The problem, as always, lies in the fact this is powered by an AllWinner SoC. They are not famous for respecting the licenses of the software they use, namely the Linux kernel, and things like graphic acceleration are usually hard to get working (and I'm not talking about working without blobs, I mean they are hard to get to work at all).

IMO this is the major downside to Raspberry Pi alternatives like the Orange Pi and this. The Raspberry Pi is more expensive, but at least there's more documentation available, an effort to merge kernel stuff upstream, and there are even people working in getting proper, blob-free Mesa drivers working: https://wiki.freedesktop.org/dri/VC4/

With that said, it's nice to see cheap ARM64 development platforms becoming available, even if they aren't as open/supported as they should be.

[soared]

I agree. These companies keep trying to compete on price, but thats not the #1 differentiator. Rapsberry Pi is so successful because of the community support and therefore ease of use. I would be more convinced by a new board if they supplied extensive documentation and had a bunch of project guides ready to go.

[makomk]

It's hard to get graphics working, but on the other hand you can actually boot upstream Linux in headless mode on the older Allwinner boards right now. Debian Jessie even officially supports the older ones whereas they're unlikely to ever add support for the Raspberry Pi because it requires a binary blob to even boot.

Unfortunately, this is using Allwinner's new A64 chip and I don't think the unofficial sunxi community that provides open source support for their hardware has even looked at supporting that chip yet. Also, whether support materializes depends heavily on how much the companies that are selling boards based on it care about open source, and well...

[mininodes]

"With that said, it's nice to see cheap ARM64 development platforms becoming available, even if they aren't as open/supported as they should be."

^^This is the ultimate take-away, yes.

Over the past year, 64-bit ARM development platforms have dropped in price from the $2999 Opteron A1100 to the $79 Dragonboard, and now to the $15 PINE64.

[wycx]

It is a little unfair to imply there is no effort to upstream support for Allwinner SoCs:

https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort

[StillBored]

I think you forget how closed the rPi was when it was initially released. Its only been pried open by the community over the past few years.