Orange Pi folks, where to go for decent info to get started?

[WobblyHand]

Think I am throwing in the towel on this OPi5+. Tried a different third party distro and see very similar errors with TLS and related things. Some things I can simply fix, others seem intractable, at least to me. Though I've played with Linux for over 20 years, this has me stumped. Have boxed it all up and am returning it. The hardware is mostly good, but the software support for OPi5+ is currently very lacking. The NVME interface makes for a relatively fast machine, but this product just isn't ready for prime time. I wanted it to use the OPi5+ as a tool to do other stuff, not to become a project in itself. The product is not mature enough, for me to invest my time into it anymore. Maybe rev 2 will be better. All the stuff I want to do on it simply doesn't work. It's not like the thing was all that inexpensive, so attempting to get my money back. We will see what happens...

I was able to buy an RPI4B-8GB at list price yesterday. It won't be as slick as the OPi5+, but at least it will do what I need. It's less expensive as well.

 

[rabler]

Sorry to hear it didn't work out. But I have to agree that fighting wonky software is not where you want to spend time. Not sure about the OPi developers, but I have gotten the feeling that there are some hardware vendors that think "open source" means they can sell hardware and let someone else (as in "the community) deal with the software integration.

 

[WobblyHand]

Sorry to hear it didn't work out. But I have to agree that fighting wonky software is not where you want to spend time. Not sure about the OPi developers, but I have gotten the feeling that there are some hardware vendors that think "open source" means they can sell hardware and let someone else (as in "the community) deal with the software integration.

Maybe some day it will improve, but nothing I tried would work (now). Just got errors of various sorts and no real workarounds were to be found. The HW had a lot of potential, but it simply wasn't realized. The alleged 2.5Gbps ethernet was choking on fast downloads (500Mbps actual). If it can't handle the throughput, then something should be in the code to throttle it. (I shouldn't have to hunt for it - it should just work.) Those TLS errors and incompatibilities with many SW packages just didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling, nor did both having a root account enabled AND the password published, and having the orangepi user with password orangepi with sudo privileges and no firewall. Just left a bad taste in my mouth. I did fix the passwords and stuff, but couldn't fix the TLS/openSSL issues.

I have returned every bit of OrangePi stuff that I could. (Board, incompatible wifi, camera) Kind of stiffed on the case though. Fortunately it was $9.99 (when I bought it, it's now $17.99!) and came with a little fan. Maybe I can reuse the fan, but pretty sure the case is a loss. Well, maybe I could use a piece or two of the acrylic for something, but the case is twice the size of an RPI.

More than anything, I was astounded by the near total lack of support by OrangePi. Maybe if I spoke Chinese, it would be different, but support on their English speaking forum is almost nil. The guy, Joshua Riek, who did a third party Ubuntu, tried to help a bit, but looking at the big picture, had to decide that the board itself was not what I wanted to concentrate on. It became a time sink. I don't want to mess with the board for its own sake, but want to use the board as a tool to enable something else.

Probably the older models have a larger english speaking support base in the 3d printing community. The OPi5+ is too new. I also expect the price to come down now that RPI's are becoming more available.

 

[stupoty]

I've been using the armbian (ubuntu based)distribution on tinkerboards and have found it to be very good , and being ubuntu based there is a lot of info for general system stuff and a good range of software available.

Orange Pi 5 / 5B / 5 Plus

Enable 3D Acceleration (Ubuntu Gnome Jammy variant only): sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/panfork-mesa sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/rockchip-multimedia sudo apt update sudo apt dist-upgrade sudo apt install mali-g610-firmware rockchip-multimedia-config Additional...

www.armbian.com

Stu

 

[WobblyHand]

I've been using the armbian (ubuntu based)distribution on tinkerboards and have found it to be very good , and being ubuntu based there is a lot of info for general system stuff and a good range of software available.

Orange Pi 5 / 5B / 5 Plus

Enable 3D Acceleration (Ubuntu Gnome Jammy variant only): sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/panfork-mesa sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/rockchip-multimedia sudo apt update sudo apt dist-upgrade sudo apt install mali-g610-firmware rockchip-multimedia-config Additional...

www.armbian.com

Stu

Thanks Stu. I've sent off the OPi5+ board to be returned. (And the proprietary interface camera, and the wifi module) It was not worth my effort after a while. Too many issues for something that I wanted to be an appliance. I'm willing to tinker with a lot of things, but OS's are not on my list.

I'll tinker with an app, or write my own, but I rely on the base hardware and software to be working. At least on the two distros I tried, it wasn't working well enough for me to get anything useful done, so it was time to pull the plug.

 

[stupoty]

Thanks Stu. I've sent off the OPi5+ board to be returned. (And the proprietary interface camera, and the wifi module) It was not worth my effort after a while. Too many issues for something that I wanted to be an appliance. I'm willing to tinker with a lot of things, but OS's are not on my list.

I'll tinker with an app, or write my own, but I rely on the base hardware and software to be working. At least on the two distros I tried, it wasn't working well enough for me to get anything useful done, so it was time to pull the plug.

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you (and that I had missed your post ) , looks like an amzing board , good luck with the next one !

Stu

 

[WobblyHand]

Amazingly my RPI4B-8GB arrived today. I must have looked at the vendor at exactly the right time and made the order. They are out of stock again. Now waiting on a couple of parts, a 2.5" SSD and a SATA to USB3 adapter, a housing, and power supply.