• @[email protected]
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    706 days ago

    Nice to see! Baby steps and all that. Getting RISC-V to a consumer-level state is still a pretty gargantuan task that has a lot of catch-up to do, but it’s walking along its path steadily.

      • @[email protected]
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        115 days ago

        If someone who makes ARM hardware wants to make a mainboard, I’d imagine Framework will work with them under the same conditions they’re working with DeepComputing on the RISC-V one.

      • @[email protected]
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        35 days ago

        From what I can see, arm Linux itself is still a very small market so I don’t see how a small company could work on it and make a profit from that. Maybe once it becomes more mainstream and there is a bigger demand for it, they would definitely consider it. I would rather have them focus on what they have and expand their production, cost and sales region at the moment.

        • @[email protected]
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          135 days ago

          If ARM is a small market, RISC-V is even smaller.

          I personally like when boundaries are pushed, and welcome more independence on x86.

          • Cethin
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            65 days ago

            Yeah, but there’s no license fees for RISC-V, so they need to sell less volume to be profitable.

        • @[email protected]
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          24 days ago

          arm Linux itself is still a very small market

          • Android
          • Raspberry Pi and similar SBCs
          • data centers (someone linked AWS graviton)
          • Chromebooks

          The list goes on. Linux is well established on ARM, and outside proprietary software, pretty much everything works on it. Desktop linux has been ready on ARM for over a decade, and people would buy it if it existed in a decent laptop.

          If Framework can source decently fast ARM chips and board for a decent cost, people will buy then, myself included. If they include a trackpoint and physical mouse buttons (esp middle mouse button), I’d replace my Thinkpad today even if it’s still on x86.

          There’s demand for it today, it’s just probably in the thousands instead of millions.

  • ZeroOne
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    65 days ago

    Reminder, you can play QUAKE on RISC-V, wooohoooo

  • @[email protected]
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    236 days ago

    Can someone shut up the edgy guys trying to play Nostradamus? Go play with your x86 and overpriced nvidia RTX cards that you use only to run one lame game. People building the future don’t care about your prejudices.

      • @[email protected]
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        14 days ago

        Discourse is inaudible in the replies because users assumes things they don’t know shit about. I asked them to check the manufacturers video for fact checking but they continue spouting nonsense. At one point I wondered if some are not AI trolls.

        • @[email protected]
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          14 days ago

          Even worse, people saying it’s not interesting because they don’t want to buy RISC-V. Then why are you here even?

    • @[email protected]
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      15 days ago

      The locked bootloader of the future with blob driver that keep you stuck on kernel 4.16 forever?

      Just how much of a regression will this future bring? Yes, I am very bitter to have discovered my phone is not rootable, if that’s the future tgen fuck the future.

      • @[email protected]
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        55 days ago

        The SOC uses U-Boot to boot. The Imagination GPU is more of a problem, but there’s work underway to get an open source driver fully working. I’ve got my own kernel and mesa running on multiple dev boards and, while I can’t run a full desktop with mesa on that PowerVR driver yet, I have been able to render some basic things with it. I can, however, install a 6.6 kernel and some userspace binaries to get full acceleration ITMT.

        This isn’t really ready for standard consumer use anyway. The point of this is basically as a glorified developer board, which was exactly what I bought it for.

      • @[email protected]
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        25 days ago

        Don’t assume Qualcomm’s general hostility to user control and freedom is representative of all non-x86 systems.

        This system isn’t like that at all. It’s usable with mainline Linux and mainline U-Boot and has no proprietary driver blobs. Granted, RISC-V has some more progress to make in terms of boot image standardization, and this board in particular uses an old SoC from three years ago (JH7110) which predates a lot of improvements that have been happening to various intercompatibility-focused RISC-V standards.

        For some of the most recent ARM systems (notably excluding Qualcomm junk), I can write a single installation image for a Linux distro of my choice to a USB drive and then boot that single USB drive through UEFI on several completely different systems by completely different vendors. Ampere, Nvidia, and more. ARM’s SystemReady spec results in exactly the same user-friendly process you’re used to on x86.

        The RISC-V ecosystem isn’t there yet though its very recent RISC-V BRS (Boot and Runtime Services) spec promises to bring that for near-future hardware. But this DeepComputing board doesn’t have that and doesn’t have some other features (vector instructions, RVA22/23, etc) that are very likely to become the minimum requirements for several RISC-V Linux distros in the not too distant future.

    • @[email protected]
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      966 days ago

      It is not marketed for consumers. It’s a development board, and the first one at that. Check the videos from the team, they are on YouTube.

      • bluGill
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        36 days ago

        Just like kde 4.0 and wayland were not marketed to consumers and yet consumers used them anyway and then decided latter releases marketed to consumers must also be bad.

        • @[email protected]
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          126 days ago

          “Early KDE 4”, but I’d add that the distros are also to blame for packaging it in the main repositories when it should have been stuck way out in some dev repos, out of sight of users. And of course, KDE 4 was actually quite good once it got the kinks worked out.

    • ms.lane
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      6 days ago

      That’s the future of RiscV. (The soldered down everything part)

        • Captain Aggravated
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          106 days ago

          Well, the RISC-V instruction set is open source, but that doesn’t imply a system architecture standard. So there’s not going to be one. The x86 PC became an industry standard basically by accident, an accident that is unlikely to happen again. Hell, even CP/M, the DOS before DOS had to come in different flavors for different manufacturers because the several manufacturers that supported it didn’t build compatible computers.

          Microsoft has so much inertia on x86 that it’s probably not going anywhere, and RISC-V will become the new ARM, same cores slapped into whatever the hell the company wanted to build that day. With no standard platforms, there will be no modular accessories. What you’ll get are sealed shut devices with no user serviceability, the RAM and storage soldered to the board and the bootloader stored in on-chip ROM.

            • Captain Aggravated
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              46 days ago

              Sure, it’s technologically possible. Is there even an inkling of a plan to go from “dev kit” to “widely available consumer product?” Because basically the only “widely available consumer products” are locked down playpens like iPhones and such. Even a lot of x86 devices are going to the soldered everything approach.

              • @[email protected]
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                66 days ago

                Is there even an inkling of a plan to go from “dev kit” to “widely available consumer product?”

                It’s not a dev kit, it’s meant to be a regular PC with upgradable storage, RAM, and PCIe slot for $120. Milk-V and other RISC-V companies already have widely available consumer products (Milk-V Mars, Banana Pi, etc.), they’re just usually SBCs because that’s what’s easiest to produce and RISC-V is early in development. Remember that the first standard with Vector instructions just came out a few months ago (RVA23), and there’s no point in trying to seriously compete with X86/ARM PCs until you have that.

                Even a lot of x86 devices are going to the soldered everything approach.

                That right there tells you this is not a RISC-V/ARM problem. It’s just that everyone knows on-SOC memory performs better than DIMM, and manufacturers are starting to offer these to compete with Apple M chips.

                • Captain Aggravated
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                  36 days ago

                  I didn’t say it’s a problem inherent to RISC-V; it’s more that anyone who can make the jump to RISC-V (or ARM) will do so in a locked down sealed shut proprietary format like Apple, or doesn’t have the capability of making a platform shift at all like Microsoft. You could make an ATX form factor ARM or RISC-V machine with a lot of processing power and run Linux on it, but who would buy it and for what? That question is why no one makes such a thing.

        • @[email protected]
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          35 days ago

          Cheaper, better high-speed connections, lack of upgradability.

          a great number of laptops are already doing this. Apple lead the way.

          • @[email protected]
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            14 days ago

            And I bought my last laptop specifically because it didn’t pull this crap. I was going to buy a T-series Thinkpad to replace my previous T-series, but the soldered RAM and lack of expansion slot killed that, so I got an E-series instead because it didn’t have soldered RAM. I still have it 7 years later.

            I’m not buying a laptop with soldered everything unless it’s literally the only option.

    • @[email protected]
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      46 days ago

      The NT kernel is built on top of a hardware abstraction layer, which should make it easier to port it to different architectures.

      It's a neat kernel, shame about the Windows on top of it.

      • @[email protected]
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        45 days ago

        Yeah, porting the kernel is the “easy” part for any OS. Its the user space and building up a software ecosystem for the new architecture that is a pain in the ass.

      • @[email protected]
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        15 days ago

        To be fair, most/all kernels are written on a hardware abstraction layer, although lot of that kernel was built off of VMS… 😂

  • @[email protected]
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    -86 days ago

    Boardless? What, like, components connected directly to the chassis instead?

    That sounds like ass.

    • @[email protected]
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      166 days ago

      It’s just the chassis, screen, battery, and keyboard. You would just buy one of their boards separately to go in it, or make one yourself I suppose.