The Banana Pi BPI-M7 single board computer is equipped with up to 32GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, and features an M.2 2280 socket for one NVMe SSD, three display interfaces (HDMI, USB-C, MIPI DSI), two camera connectors, dual 2.5GbE, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion.

  • ck_@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    71
    ·
    1 year ago

    My experience with Banana PIs is that they require some obscure kernel to run because the developers cannot be bothered to bring their hardware support and drivers upstream. Same was true for uboot. Has any of that changed in the meantime? If not, that this is a no go for me.

    • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      42
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, this is an absolute blocker for me. If its not supported upstream then it’s a no-go. I don’t want to be running whatever hacked up Ubuntu image the manufacturer put together then stopped updating in 3 months when the next iteration gets churned out

    • Pumpkin Escobar@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s the same, I picked up an Orange Pi 5 plus on sale and didn’t even think about the kernel and module driver situation. It’s rough. Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip and the other contributors do great work to un-fuck the situation and get a non-screwy ubuntu install cobbled together, but in the comments for issues even he gives off a “well, the situation is shit” sort of vibe.

      I won’t buy another rockchip sbc.

    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s too bad because the specs OP listed are pretty great plus I’d love to see the Raspberry Pi Foundation (or whichever corporate entity controls production and sales) knocked down a few pegs due to their anti-consumer behavior over the last several years.

      • ck_@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Definitely, the specs are nice and I also cannot say I’m a huge fan of the RPi foundation. More competition in this space would be great, but not having mainline support is just too much of a hassle.

    • cucumber_sandwich@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      I had the same impression until I dusted off my banana pi one last month and there was an up-to-date armbian image for it. Totally pleasant surprise.

      • ck_@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Fair, but I’m not running armbian, so my requirements boils down to: Must run any up to date Linux distro without having to side-load custom kernels or anything. Should work out of the box.