StarFive plans to gradually migrate the maintenance focus of the Linux kernel from v6.1 to v6.6 in the next period, which is expected to be completed by May. By then, StarFive’s officially maintained Linux kernel versions will be v5.15 and v6.6.
Linux kernel v6.6 is the latest upstream long-term support release, With StarFive’s continuous efforts in the past period, most of the JH-7110 drivers have been merged into the Linux kernel v6.6. Therefore, in newer upstream kernels, there is more support for JH-7110 which reduces the number of downstream-relevant driver patches and maintenance workload.
Great news, thank you - this is also inline with OpenWrt’s next LTS kernel planned (6.6), making life a bit easier on the VF2 support side. Is there any expectation around “preview” patchsets earlier than May ?
@ErinD I have a sincere inquiry: Is there a plan to port the RTC driver to the 6.6 kernel? Should I wait for it, or would it be advisable to modify my project to rely on an external RTC (I2C/SPI) instead? Your insights would be greatly appreciated.
@cwt Considering the hardware，RTC driver has no plans for upstream for the time being，but it will be port to the 6.6 kernel. For all that, we still recommend using external RTC（I2C）as much for the project.
Unfortunately wiringpi does not support VF2, if you need to be more convenient to call SPI, we recommend using VisionFive.gpio(VisionFive.gpio · PyPI). The 3D capabilities on GPU have been supported for a long time, and will be released along with 6.6 in May.
You said that the 3D GPU have been supported for a long time. Not to be rude, but that’s disputable. There currently is no image Debian that use can easily “apt-get upgrade” everything on the image with that contains 3D GPU support. Only the engineering release snapshot(not upgradable) has the 3D GPU support. As far as I’m concerned until there is an upgradeable image with everything including 3D GPU drivers in it, there are not images available yet. Ditto for ArchLinux and Fedora images…non-existent with 3D GPU out of the box. Yes, I am eager to see something new in May. I do hope it’s not just another engineering(non-upgradeable" release.
Mesa is a software rendering package providing 3D api for the different standards Vulkan, OpenCL, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, EGL, GLX, Direct3D. The most recently introduced standard is Vulkan intended to replace all other mentioned in that list.
Xorg XWindow display protocol apis will be deprecated and have already been replaced by Wayland and respective compositors for the different desktops KDE Plasma and Gnome. Anything needing Xorg in the above will be provided by an emulation layer called xwayland for the interim until all the developers adopt the newer wayland and vulkan apis.
xwayland running apps are not as performant as their native wayland app counterparts.
mesa running apps are not as performant as their full-gpu native app counterparts.
There is a lot of complexity to get apps running and displaying correctly I can appreciate that.
I have witnessed
debian engineering image with a desktop with no full gpu support. This image comes from starfive directly.
archlinux running kde plasma wayland displaying correctly on an hdmi monitor with no full gpu support. These packages come from cwt.
archlinux running gnome wayland displaying incorrectly on the hdmi monitor with no full gpu support. These packages and images come from cwt
fedora 38, 39, 40 running terminal apps, but not successful desktop just yet and no full gpu support. The desktop packages are all built and installed, but not correctly configured for the VF2 just yet. These packages and images come from koji rocks.
I have not seen 3D mesa running on any default images.
I have not seen any full GPU support running anywhere on the VF2.
As a result of all the above, the user experience on the VF2 in the desktop is not optimal and honestly a painpoint. The full gpu support is absolutely necessary.
it is open sourced. It’s just, that the driver is not ready yet but it’s currently expected to be in 6.8 kernel series. Don’t know how far the mesa part is. Both done by the same guy.
I am sorry that it will still be an enginnering release in May. To support GPU, there is a driver/plugin which lives in Mesa. It is not a easy job to follow each Mesa version.
They are ssslllooowww.