Showstoppers for RPI3

[Paul Mather]

On Feb 26, 2020, at 4:21 PM, Ian Lepore <ian at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 2020-02-26 at 15:41 -0500, Paul Mather wrote:
>> On Feb 26, 2020, at 10:33 AM, Ian Lepore <ian at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 2020-02-26 at 06:32 +0100, Klaus Küchemann via freebsd-arm
>>> wrote:
>>>> But that´s the absolute joke of the century :-) that these issues
>>>> last so long here on the mailing list
>>>
>>> The current freebsd-arm devs keep pointing out that nobody is
>>> especially interested in maintaining or working on rpi* stuff at
>>> all.
>>> Why in the world would you be surprised that nobody is working on
>>> it?
>>>
>>> If you want to run freebsd on arm hardware, try using hardware that
>>> people are actually working to support.  If you must use crappy rpi
>>> hardware, either run linux on it, or consider paying someone to do
>>> the
>>> freebsd support you need.  Complaining that nobody will work for
>>> free
>>> on hardware they hate working on is just...
>>> complaining.  Pointlessly.
>>
>>
>> All fair enough.  I'm probably in the same boat as Bob Prohaska
>> inasmuch as I have a couple of Raspberry Pi devices of varying
>> vintages hanging around.  I'm a longtime FreeBSD user, so, naturally,
>> I prefer to run FreeBSD on these devices, and have done so for a
>> while (with varying degrees of success/stability).
>>
>> It sounds from the above I shouldn't bother, for pain and misery will
>> attend me all my days as a result. :-)
>>
>> If Raspberry Pi is a crappy platform and a bad choice to use,
>> FreeBSD-wise, what is the suggested alternative in the same low-
>> power/low-price (and Raspberry Pi-like spec) arena?  Is it the Pine64
>> stuff like the PINE A64, ROCK64, and ROCKPro64??
>>
>> I'm willing to buy something other than Raspberry Pi (I have a
>> BeagleBone Black, for example), but I don't want to buy something
>> that is derided and despised by FreeBSD developers and avoided by
>> them like the plague.  I am not an ARM/SoC or electronics expert, so
>> I feel unqualified to know what is a "crappy ARM platform."
>>
>> Also, if the true situation with Raspberry Pi is that it is unlikely
>> to see development within FreeBSD, it would be more honest to
>> deprecate the platform officially on the FreeBSD site.  I'd even go
>> so far as to suggest not to distribute official images for it, as
>> that carries with it a hint of blessing and support.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Paul.
>
> It really is pretty specific to the rpi family, for a pair of reasons:
>
>  - The hardware is just crappy, buggy, limited, hard to work with.
>
>  - Documentation needed to write device drivers is not openly
> available, and getting an NDA in place with broadcom never seems to
> happen despite people over the years saying they would work to make it
> happen.


I don't disagree with any of this.  I appreciate your honesty in laying out  
the reasons why so many FreeBSD developers are dissuaded from working on  
RPi and the likelihood of this changing.


> For inexpensive low-power boards... For the 32-bit world, the
> Allwinnner hardware is probably best supported, with imx6 a close
> second.  For 64-bit I'd say it's the rockpro stuff.


Thank you.  This is very helpful and much appreciated!

Cheers,

Paul.