I looked it up rapidly and couldn't figure out the difference with the original OrangePi 5.
By the way, the OrangePi 5 is a pretty good SBC. Much better bang/bucks than RPi, and the mainline kernel support is pretty good and getting better with every release thanks to the folks at Collabora.
> the Ubuntu 24.04 distro is missing from the list, and this is a shame, since this is a board released late 2024. I contacted OrangePi and they mentioned that they would eventually release a 24.04 version, but there was no clear timeline for that.
Pretty much that is where most of these SBCs fall off my list. Without an active OS development its only 1/2 of the puzzle.
> As you can see, the Ubuntu 24.04 distro is missing from the list, and this is a shame, since this is a board released late 2024. I contacted OrangePi and they mentioned that they would eventually release a 24.04 version, but there was no clear timeline for that.
> Sadly, but this was almost expected, there does not seem to be any kind of GPU support in the version that I have chosen. A quick check with glxgears confirms that there is just a software pipe for rendering.
Stuff like this is why people keep picking Raspberry Pi. There's tons and tons of alternative SBCs that have better price to performance on paper, but the software support is always awful. You're always limited to a few distro images released by the SBC vendor, and there's no effort spent by them on getting everything working. This product came out in December 2024, and they STILL don't have images with working GPU acceleration.
These less common SBCs used to be really bad to run because they didn't get updates. Nowadays its always worth checking what is available on Armbian because they have a lot of supported images for these other SBCs.
I tried to use an OrangePi but got frustrated with buildroot quirkiness. We ended up just using an RPI. Other folks in this thread have said similar things, but this really is the reason why RPI often wins.
This may be slightly out of date, but these patches allow HDMI out on uefi for the Max, and can probably be easily modified this for the Ultra. If there is interest I can look into this later on tonight and test on an Ultra. The HDMI device tree isn't too bad, you can kinda guess the address offsets, but you will need to dive into the 3588 refernece manual. There are some design flaws in these boards around using SPI for the wifi and bluetooth and haven't had these work yet. Vulkan hardware support is alright, and can run Chromium and Niri without issues. Ghostty doesn't as it is OpenGL only.
I use these baords for aarch64 linux builds and a basic desktop environment, and it's been pretty rock solid with EDK2. Take a gander ya'll.
Is it well supported by the kernel and upstream? Or are devs going to be left twisting in the wind like nearly every other offbrand ARM SBC?
I don't have to worry about getting even my freakin' 12-yo Raspberry Pi 1 going with newer software than it was originally built to handle. But the Chinese Gooseberry Pi that seemed like such a bargain on AliExpress, esp. considering the price-performance ratio, is a complete crapshoot.
It's pretty amazing what the Raspberry Pi Foundation has achieved in terms of software support and platform longevity in a world seemingly dedicated to bedroom experiments that are bound to eventually end up in a drawer or landfill. I'm old enough to remember the Gumstix and SheevaPlug, and those had these problems too.
I have this board and want to mention that the Armbian image supported for the Orange Pi 5 max seems to work fine as well without modifications. Although I haven't tested much yet besides ssh'ing in over ethernet and doing some basic installations.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 31.4 ms ] threadBy the way, the OrangePi 5 is a pretty good SBC. Much better bang/bucks than RPi, and the mainline kernel support is pretty good and getting better with every release thanks to the folks at Collabora.
https://gitlab.collabora.com/hardware-enablement/rockchip-35...
Pretty much that is where most of these SBCs fall off my list. Without an active OS development its only 1/2 of the puzzle.
> Sadly, but this was almost expected, there does not seem to be any kind of GPU support in the version that I have chosen. A quick check with glxgears confirms that there is just a software pipe for rendering.
Stuff like this is why people keep picking Raspberry Pi. There's tons and tons of alternative SBCs that have better price to performance on paper, but the software support is always awful. You're always limited to a few distro images released by the SBC vendor, and there's no effort spent by them on getting everything working. This product came out in December 2024, and they STILL don't have images with working GPU acceleration.
For a quick bring-up and implementation, take a look at this repo: https://github.com/Pelochus/ezrknpu
I have a Radxa Rock 5C (on Armbian) and it runs various models rather well. Trying to convert models is kind of a pain, though, so watch out.
This may be slightly out of date, but these patches allow HDMI out on uefi for the Max, and can probably be easily modified this for the Ultra. If there is interest I can look into this later on tonight and test on an Ultra. The HDMI device tree isn't too bad, you can kinda guess the address offsets, but you will need to dive into the 3588 refernece manual. There are some design flaws in these boards around using SPI for the wifi and bluetooth and haven't had these work yet. Vulkan hardware support is alright, and can run Chromium and Niri without issues. Ghostty doesn't as it is OpenGL only.
I use these baords for aarch64 linux builds and a basic desktop environment, and it's been pretty rock solid with EDK2. Take a gander ya'll.
I don't have to worry about getting even my freakin' 12-yo Raspberry Pi 1 going with newer software than it was originally built to handle. But the Chinese Gooseberry Pi that seemed like such a bargain on AliExpress, esp. considering the price-performance ratio, is a complete crapshoot.
It's pretty amazing what the Raspberry Pi Foundation has achieved in terms of software support and platform longevity in a world seemingly dedicated to bedroom experiments that are bound to eventually end up in a drawer or landfill. I'm old enough to remember the Gumstix and SheevaPlug, and those had these problems too.
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/51307-orange-pi-5-ultra/