Don't understand the release and hardware philosophy

1st Official Post

    Hi,

    I have a question regarding the release philosophy and hardware, which isn't meant as critique. I'm just trying to understand what's happening.

    So this thread says that there is no generic S905(x) support because of the wacky 3.14 codebase, which is totally understandable.

    But checking the offical download page half of the roaster there is 3.14 (or older) based. Some come with out of the box quirks.

    Another problem is that a lot of hardware listed there is very hard to get around the world (Le Potato) or not purchasable (Slice).

    So my basic question is if it wouldn't make sense to clean house and find a (cheap) worldwide S905(x) partner for us users and support it, instead of linking dead or hard to get products.

    The forum is full of S905 questions and community builds for xyz and it is a very hard to understand zoo for new people, making it hard to get things running.

    Keep up the good work on the software side of things :)

    Regards

    • Official Post
    Quote from aubergine

    So my basic question is if it wouldn't make sense to clean house and find a (cheap) worldwide S905(x) partner for us users and support it, instead of linking dead or hard to get products.

    I'm not an LE developer, but I'm reading here for a while. The main problem is getting driver source code and/or API documentation for the hardware. It's necessary for an LE build. S905x companies have no interest to give those data away, because that makes reproduction easier. That's why the Raspberry Pi became so successful - developers have hardware drivers access.

    S905X is a SoC and the drivers are there. You don't sell SoCs these days without providing Linux drivers or giving access to specifications.

    So the main difference between those boxes is the remote control.

    Quote from aubergine

    S905X is a SoC and the drivers are there. You don't sell SoCs these days without providing Linux drivers or giving access to specifications.

    So the main difference between those boxes is the remote control.

    The remote may be the major difference between boxes from different sellers/manufacturers, but the issue here is with the chipset manufacturers/designers, ie. Amlogic and the like.

    Afaik they only release drivers and software for a really old kernel and they only seem to care about android (I could be wrong, but that's my understanding of the situation)

    • Official Post
    Quote from aubergine

    S905X is a SoC and the drivers are there. You don't sell SoCs these days without providing Linux drivers or giving access to specifications.

    Interesting. Where can I buy that package?

    The common practice is that the manufacturer of a SoC delivers a developer board and an SDK. So the hardware API / drives are part of the SDK. It's hard to separate the hardware API / drivers from the SDK.

    Quote from aptalca

    Afaik they only release drivers and software for a really old kernel and they only seem to care about android (I could be wrong, but that's my understanding of the situation)

    They contracted Baylibre to develop mainline Linux support which was topic of Linuxcon 2017/2018.

    I'm not sure if everything needed on the video side is already done.

    Quote from aubergine

    They contracted Baylibre to develop mainline Linux support which was topic of Linuxcon 2017/2018.

    I'm not sure if everything needed on the video side is already done.

    Afaik, libreelec is working closely with baylibre on that, but it is an ongoing effort. There are development builds for various arm devices including s905x with mainline kernel. Just not ready for primetime yet