[fpc-other] Anyone using Orange PI

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

On 01/03/17 11:30, Marco van de Voort wrote:
> In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:
>>
>> I agree. Most of our RPis are actually running Debian, but in extremis
>> it's always possible to roll back to Raspbian as a baseline configuration.
>>
>> There are of course other small boards: Olimex, Odroid and now Asus.
>> However RPi does offer a fairly flexible and cost-effective range, and
>> unless the OP is considering shipping hundreds rather than 10s of boards
>> I suggest that getting onto both the Linux learning curve and one for
>> minority hardware is quite simply not cost-effective.
>
> The problem is that rpi has no fast storage interface (like SATA), some of
> the more expensive orangepis have sata. (though I'm not entirely sure if it
> is not bridged via usb)

That's true and is obviously a major point. I've got an RPi3 on my desk 
and even though it's not using its SD-Card for live storage there are 
mystery slowdowns which suggests that something's hogging the USB.

But it /is/ fairly painless for (32-bit) FPC and for Lazarus, running 
KDE but with most programs targeting GTK2. I've run an Odroid C2 enough 
to respect the hardware and low-level firmware but to be a bit dubious 
about their bundled Ubuntu, and more than anything else that's a sign 
that there's quite simply not enough people using it.

And speaking as the one person who more than anybody else has bullied 
the community to keep things like SPARC going over the years, I'm keenly 
aware of how frustrating it can be when people agree that it's worth 
fixing something but not enough developers have the required hardware 
(or space, or tolerance for heat and noise :-)

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]