VisionFive 2 (Lite) Debian 202510 Released

Actually I meant ready to flash, not to build my own. Just like Raspberry Pi.

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There was a list but it has not been updated since 2023

It would good if they made updated download portal just like Raspberry Pi OS downloads – Raspberry Pi

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Step back and think about it for a second. How many products and product ranges does the commercial arm of the Raspberry Pi foundation sell a year. Compare and contrast that to StarFive, I am not saying that it can not be done. But to host all operating systems, and continuously update them for your own boards has a time and monetary cost.

Me personally I’d prefer to see those resources and manhours / womanhours / peoplehours used to upstream the source code. In my mind having simple things like the device tree source for the VisionFive 2 lite upstreamed to https://kernel.org for inclusion in time for the one after next longterm support kernel (it is probably too late to land in 6.18, which might end up being the LTS select this December). If it makes it in before next December then it should be available in Debian Forky.

I’d also love to see the chips and media VPU drivers make it into the upstream kernel.

Having a bespoke list of distributions, stored in one location, that just work would be nice, but having all the hardware fully functioning in every Linux distribution and every Operating System (e.g Haiku, *BSD, …) would be even better in my opinion.

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Are you looking for this?

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Exactly but it should be more organized, with a clean interface, direct links, a changelog, and references. It should also include other supported distributions such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, OpenKylin, OpenEuler, Deepin, and OpenWRT, and be kept up to date all in one page.

Because it looks like maze 社区应用 | RVspace

Btw : there’s no compatible os for Lite version in this links, this post VisionFive 2 (Lite) Debian 202510 Released are the first.

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The software vendors you listed are those who do system integration, and most of the people they face are end users, so they need to design pages according to the habits of end users.
StarFive is a CPU manufacturer and a hardware supplier. It doesn’t have much investment in software development and mainly targets software integrators, so its design is primarily focused on practicality.
Raspberry Pi has made a lot of money, it is no longer just a hardware provider, it should have software development investment.(Raspberry Pi is a hardware integrator, and the CPU was not designed or produced by it.)

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Hi guys, i received my VisionFive2 by first time, and i’m try to boot this debian image using sdCard, but i’m with the same problem:

mmc0: Failed to initialize a non-removable card
Missing modules/dev/ does not exist.

I flash sdCard with dd:

sudo dd if=./starfive-jh7110-202510-minimal-desktop-wayland.img of=/dev/rdisk4 bs=1m

Error On boot:

Current partitions on sdcard:

/dev/disk4 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *63.9 GB    disk4
   1: 2E54B353-1271-4842-806F-E436D6AF6985               2.1 MB     disk4s1
   2: 816E2DB1-6FE4-4797-B3FF-2DE37CB85318               4.2 MB     disk4s2
   3:                        EFI esp                     104.9 MB   disk4s3
   4:           Linux Filesystem                         5.4 GB     disk4s4
                    (free space)                         58.4 GB    -

I need run a old debian image version? What can I do in this case?

First, confirm whether your VF2 is 1.2a or 1.3b, There seems to be a label on the development board. Mine is 1.3b, TF startup is normal. Some netizens say that the 1.2a startup will not work properly.

Then VF2 and TF will have compatibility. You can try switching to a TF brand。

You can get the 202409 image from here (choose Baidu or OneDrive and navigate the dirs): https://debian.starfivetech.com/

Get the update-debian-img.sh script and update-from-bookworm.png (picture with instructions).

sudo sh update-debian-img.sh

I have made a video to explain the process.

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I have VF2 1.3b (double checked: it says so on both the silkprint and in /boot dtb stuff). As a test I upgraded the debian 6.6 image on a SD card. It did not work, but that was probably me messing up by choosing to overwrite the bootloader instead of keeping the original version.

Then I burned the new image on a fresh card (genuine 64 gb sandisk, never had them fail anywhere on my sbcs). Again it did not work. Same string of messages as felipeagger displays.

My (daily use) system runs on an emmc, I was right to be cautious before simply “following the instructions” (“Overwrite what? Yes or no? Can’t you just tell me?!”) Now I am scared to upgrade it.

The board is progressing fine, the chip is fine, but the instructions are, as usual, clear as mud. Watch your step.

Edit @LivingLinux , if your Firefox WebGL aquarium demo is accelerated, so is mine on previous 6.6.20-starfive, it looks to run the same. Or maybe there’s just no visual difference?

I don’t think WebGL is running on the GPU. glxinfo tells me the renderer is softpipe.

Well! I just had the most amazing adventure with this board. True story:

My emmc-installed 6.6.20-starfive2 system lost GPU acceleration today; using swaywm, I was able to tell almost immediately as the cursor was gone. I mustve done something wrong trying to install desmume and running various windows in qemu, because I didn’t mess with the system at all that day. Either way, it was time to bite, so I changed the repos and once more did the steps as outlined in the png instructions. Did update & upgrade… took its time, made lunch, coffee… before it was finally done.

… then I promptly noticed I forgot the /VF2Lite part of the repo address… so with that added, there were 7 new updates. Update and upgrade. In the end, it did not offer the 6.12 kernel. I got two options: 5.15 or 6.6.20. I was supposed to have 3?

So I followed LivingLinux’ advice and did dist-upgrade, instead. It took a long, long while, again. But in the end, again: two kernels, 6.6.20 and 5.15. So I reconfigured dpkg back to 6.6.20.

I am NOT going to do the next step and mess with spl-uboot now. No way. I want this to boot the next time, since the GPU acceleration is back. Checked sound, same issue in jack - noise, and something is eating ALSA now so even Mednafen doesn’t get sound anymore. Hmm what else can I do?

I tried installing PCManFM next; previously the repo version reported my glibc to be too old. Wow, now it works, and as expected, boots in a short second! I am tired of “Files” taking half a minute, so my next command was “sudo apt remove nautilus,” and I noticed it was going to take gnome-shell, some pipewire stuff and xdg-desktop-portal-gnome with it. (I want the latter to be running for compatibility’s sake, but not the shell and the rest of the demons, so I manually installed xdg-desktop-portal-gnome back next.) Ok. Remove and reboot.

Back in sway, cursor is working, m*rio 64 is working and most notably, my sound issues are gone and sound output from jack is crystal clear!

This board really does have amazing sound, no noise from circuitry can be heard even at high volume levels. I was frustrated that the driver was causing issues for me, well, looks like my failed update escapade ended up in fixing it.

I don’t know what happened to the kernel, but the repos are tuned to latest trixie release and it says it’s updated. Happily still running kernel 6.6.20. But I don’t think I’ll ever update, now, there is plenty of other devices to watch youtube shorts on :slight_smile:

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Update: While the jack noise fix persisted through several consequentive reboots, it did not survive a complete power cycle. I can make the noise go away by deliberately breaking VLCPlayer, but it does not work consistently.

The 6.12 kernel was in the repo, my board just ignored it on update. So I installed it manually. For the spl update I chose “flash”, the last option. I wish that was made clearer.

Stuff works as before, but it seems like there is a slightly bigger idle load on the SoC, so loading some things takes a milisecond longer..? Seems like more of a general gnome-debian issue, though; the base system, for some reason, namely almost doubled in space usage.

Select all, better

I only use Bluetooth audio now。

I upgraded debian2510 to debian13.
I uninstalled gnome.
I use labwc or xfce4 (Wayland).

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