Allwinner H-Series Category - CNX Software

March 25, 2025March 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.14 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architecture

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.14 on LKML: So it’s early Monday morning (well – early for me, I’m not really a morning person), and I’d love to have some good excuse for why I didn’t do the 6.14 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon release schedule. I’d like to say that some important last-minute thing came up and delayed things. But no. It’s just pure incompetence. Because absolutely nothing last-minute happened yesterday, and I was just clearing up some unrelated things in order to be ready for the merge window. And in the process just entirely forgot to actually ever cut the release. D’oh. So yes, a little delayed for no good reason at all, and obviously that means that the merge window has opened. No rest for the wicked (or the incompetent). Below is the shortlog for the last week. It’s nice and […]

February 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

Armbian v25.2 and DietPi v9.11 released with updated Ubuntu and Debian-based Linux images for single board computers

Vendor-provided Linux images for single board computers are not always working optimally, so this post is a regular reminder that users may want to check out Armbian and DietPi projects mostly supported by the community but also backed by some of the vendors who offload some (repackaging) software work to them. Armbian and DietPi are separate projects, but this month, Armbian v25.2 and DietPi v9.11 were almost released simultaneously. I don’t report on each release (should I?), but they release an update every few months. The last time we had a look at both projects was in September 2024 for the releases of DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8. Let’s see what the new releases have to bring. Armbian v25.2 Main changes: New Boards – Rock 2A and 2F, NanoPi R3S, Retroid Pocket RP5, RPMini, Rock 5T, GenBook, MKS-PI, SKIPR, Armsom CM5, NextThing C.H.I.P, Magicsee C400 Plus Rockchip 3588 Improvements – […]

January 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.13 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.13 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: So nothing horrible or unexpected happened last week, so I’ve tagged and pushed out the final 6.13 release. It’s mostly some final driver fixes (gpu and networking dominating – normal), with some doc updates too. And various little stuff all over. The shortlog is appended for people who want to see the details (and, as always, it’s just the shortlog for the last week, the full 6.13 log is obviously much too big). With this, the merge window for 6.14 will obviously open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests pending – thank you, you know who you are. Linus Release about two months ago, Linux 6.12 – the new LTS version – brought us real-time “PREEMPT_RT” support that had always required out-of-tree patchsets until now, the completion of the EEVDF (Earliest Eligible […]

September 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux 6.11 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.11 is out with Linus Torvalds’ announcement on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML): I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out. The last week was actually pretty quiet and calm, which is nice to see. The shortlog is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but it really isn’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out – the biggest patch in here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation. Anyway, with this, the merge window will obviously open tomorrow, and I already have 40+ pull requests pending. That said, exactly _because_ I’m on the road, it will probably be a fairly slow start to the merge window, since not only am I on my laptop, there’s OSS Europe starting tomorrow and then the […]

September 2, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 released with improved support for Rockchip, Amlogic, and Allwinner SBCs

Armbian and DietPi are two separate projects that provide Linux-based OS images optimized for Arm-based single board computers. The last time we had a look at both projects was in June with the release of Armbian 24.5.1 and DietPi 9.4, but there have been several updates since then including the releases of the latest DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 Yelt just a few days ago. So let’s check out the latest changes. DietPi 9.7 DietPi is a lightweight Debian-based Linux distribution for SBCs and server systems that ships as a minimal image but users can install any packages they want, including the ones required for desktop environment, to match the requirements of the applications. It’s notably used by the Linamp project – a Raspberry Pi 4-based project that brings WinAMP to real life – that we covered a few weeks ago. DietPi 9.7 was released on August 25, 2024 with […]

August 23, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Allwinner H728 octa-core Cortex-55 SoC powers $40+ X96Q PRO+ Android 14 TV box

X96Q Pro+ is an Android 14 TV box powered by the new Allwinner H728 octa-core Cortex-A55 SoC with a Mali-G57-MC1 GPU, and a 4Kp60 / 8Kp24 H.265 and VP9 4Kp60 video decoder that looks very similar to the Allwinner T527 AIoT SoC. The TV box ships with 4GB RAM and 32GB eMMC flash by default, and features an HDMI 2.0 port outputting up to 4K at 60 Hz, a 3.5mm audio jack, an optical S/PDIF output, a gigabit Ethernet port, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, and a few USB ports. X96Q Pro+ specifications: SoC – Allwinner H728 CPU – Octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor in two clusters of four cores four cores GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC1 GPU VPU Video decoder H.265 up to 4Kp60 or 8Kp24 VP9 up to 4Kp60 H.264 BP/MP/HP up to 4Kp30 Multi-format 1080p60 VP8, MPEG-1/2 SP/MP, MPEG-4 SP/ASP, AVS+/AVS JIZHUN Video encoder: H.264 up to […]

July 23, 2024July 23, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

tinySniffer WiFi-connected USB sniffer is based on NanoPi NEO Air SBC

TinySniffer is a USB sniffer based on the Allwinner H3-powered NanoPi Neo Air SBC, designed to capture USB 1.x and 2.0 packets remotely, and whose captured data is compatible with the popular Wireshark packet analyzer tool. Wireshark can already be used to capture USB packets on its own and I reverse-engineered a USB capture video solution that way in the past, but this method has some limitations, for instance, it does not capture some low-level USB packets, in which case a hardware USB sniffer like Total Phase Beagle USB, the PhyWhisperer USB, or the tinySniffer is required. The micro USB OTG port of the NanoPi NEO Air SBC is connected to the host computer and the company added a USB 2.0 Type-A port connected to the USB interface on the GPIO header to connect a device under test such as a USB keyboard, a USB Ethernet dongle, a USB printer, […]

July 15, 2024July 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux 6.10 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux Torvalds has announced the release of Linux 6.10 on LKML: So the final week was perhaps not quote as quiet as the preceding ones, which I don’t love – but it also wasn’t noisy enough to warrant an extra rc. And much of the noise this last week was bcachefs again (with netfs a close second), so it was all pretty compartmentalized. In fact, about a third of the patch for the last week was filesystem-related (there were also some btrfs latency fixes and other noise), which is unusual, but none of it looks particularly scary. Another third was drivers, and the rest is “random”. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.11 opens up tomorrow. Let’s see how that goes, with much of Europe probably making ready for summer vacation. And the shortlog below is – as always – just the last week, not some kind […]