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0 pointsloser7777y ago0 comments

Having dabbled with a few of these boards (RK3399, Hikey960), I can say that the user experience is still quite far off from what you would expect on an x86 NUC running a GNU/Linux distro.

Even finding usable images to flash was tough on the RK3399 and near-impossible on the HiKey960. Even then, the HiKey960 image I found was pretty unstable (randomly killed processes due to a mysterious OOM) and was contributed by a _forum user_, not the official vendor (they seem to mainly support Android).

What should be kept in mind is that these are essentially phones-on-a-board that may or may not have been shoehorned properly to run a desktop Linux. That comes with all of the relevant baggage. For example, the HiKey960 board will aggressively thermal throttle given that all that comes with the board is a piddly copper "heatsink" that you _glue_ on the SoC.

Unfortunately the Raspberry Pi is the only board that I've come across that offers a sane GNU/Linux experience in terms of software support. The performance is acceptable if you consider that even these 4xA73 boards would still get smoked by a reasonable desktop CPU.

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lhl7y ago

For random ARM SBCs, I like the reviews that MickMake does: https://www.mickmake.com/category/reviews Unlike most "reviews" online he actually installs Linux, points out all the things that don't work properly, and runs them through Phoronix, checking performance, power usage, and temps.

At the high end, I agree that unless you have something really specific (if you need Jetson for CUDA or high-end imaging), you'd usually be better off w/ x86 - it's nice to have full mainline support and stuff that just works. In the SBC space, for the same price as a HiKey960 you could get an UDOO x86 Advance or an UP Squared, both of which will beat the pants off the HiKey in most aspects.

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