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Ubuntu 12.04 Ported To the Allwinner A10 MK802 Mini PC

Posted by timothy on from the submini-seems-appropriate dept.

New submitter beefsack writes "Thanks to the strong ARM support in the Ubuntu repositories, Ubuntu, along with Lubuntu and others have been ported to work on the new MK802 mini PC. Performance is very impressive, especially given that Mali GPU driver support in Linux is still lacking features such as hardware video decoding."

27 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. In other words... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Someone has strong-armed the MK802 mini PC into running Ubuntu?

    1. Re:In other words... by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Ain't StrongARM currently w/ Marvel?

  2. "We're sorry, but something went wrong." by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yup. Someone posted a link to your site on /. without hitting a cache service first.

    Amateur mistake, editor. Make this standard practice, for pity's sake!

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  3. Re:slashdoted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Their website must be running off of am MK802. They should upgrade to the MK802+ Extreme Edition.

  4. not news by Cyko_01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Debian has been releasing for arm for years! Since ubuntu is based on debian of course it would follow that ubuntu can be made to work on arm too

    1. Re:not news by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      What's to buy or pirate?

      Chances are that every Ubuntu and Windows user was force fed a copy of Windows with whatever PC they happened to buy.

      "Buying" and "Pirating" are not really necessary here.

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  5. Re:slashdoted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is not TFA, but it's the closest I could find (and it contains practical information, rather than "reporting"): http://liliputing.com/2012/06/how-to-run-ubuntu-linux-on-the-mk802-74-pc-on-a-stick.html

  6. What the mini-PC looks like by k(wi)r(kipedia) · · Score: 4, Informative
    A random search for the actual device yields the following self-explanatory link:

    http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/mk802-new-usb-thumb-drive-sized-android.html

    The link alone should tell you what the device is. Price per unit is supposed to be $74, not quite RasPi class.

    1. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The link alone should tell you what the device is. Price per unit is supposed to be $74, not quite RasPi class.

      This seems a bit expensive, considering that one can buy a 7" Allwinner/Mali-based tablet like the Ainol 7 Elf for very little more, with a touchscreen etc. I can't really understand why anyone would bother with this.

    2. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by MMC+Monster · · Score: 1

      Hardware looks nice.

      Anyone use one of these (or similar) as a cheap NAS device? (With external hard drives via USB.)

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    3. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by wed128 · · Score: 2

      Shipping is $14. the device itself is $74

    4. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by ArsonSmith · · Score: 2

      double the hardware of the RasPi, double the price. It is about the same class.

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    5. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by DrXym · · Score: 1

      They wholesale on Alibaba for $50. I assume you could probably obtain them for even less shopping around that site. In some respects these are more attractive than Raspberry PI since they have 512MB or 1GB ram and 4 GB storage and come with case and cables. On the flip side I doubt they're ever going to be as well supported by the community or manufacturer and it may be the hardware codecs remain locked up.

    6. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by pjr.cc · · Score: 1

      To me, personally what the 'pi has always represented is a arduino replacement and hence while i'm very into arm and tech in general, i've never really been able to get into it given that its only got 256mb of ram. For a while i had this idea in my head of building a vps style system out of small arm boards and the 'pi just isnt going to cut it. The CPU in the thing is probably decent for some applications but there just not enough ram.

      Calxeda are now doing just that (with hp) and now dell are getting into it too, but they're taking it to the high end of the spectrum. Personally i think this is where these little mini-pc's can fit. 1g of ram, 1.5ghz cpu, size of a thumb drive (ok a bit bigger than that). Sure they're 3x the price, but its 3x25$ In fairness what the 'pi's original goals are intended to achieve makes it idea for that application, but to the techo geek in me, its just not quite been able to raise my excitement.

    7. Re:What the mini-PC looks like by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      Boo hoo, it's not $35.
      Its got a case (not a bare board).
      Its got 1GB ram (not 256m).
      its got 4GB flash (not nothing).
      Its got wifi (but no ethernet...)
      It's a 1,5GHz A8 CPU (not a 700mhz arm11).

  7. XBMC Possibilities by bornagainpenguin · · Score: 2

    People are already working on getting OpenELEC (Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center) to work on these, which will make these a wicked entertainment center given that this means XBMC on the cheap. I look forward to seeing these popular up in the houses of every day Joes being put together by their geek friends.

    What I'd like to see is a method of running XBMC as shell and allow Android games to be launched from within the interface. Should provide a library of games that way, especially if it could be made to pair with cellphones as controllers. Seems like everybody has a cellphone these days so it should make having controllers for everyone easier.

    Then of course there are all the emulators....

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    1. Re:XBMC Possibilities by timeOday · · Score: 1

      Would OpenELEC enable hardware video decoding? The summary says it's not supported, and without that it'll be pretty useless for video replay. Software decoding is too jittery.

    2. Re:XBMC Possibilities by bornagainpenguin · · Score: 1

      Would OpenELEC enable hardware video decoding? The summary says it's not supported, and without that it'll be pretty useless for video replay. Software decoding is too jittery.

      That's being worked on. There is a thread on XBMC's forums with the various attempts to get these types of devices working. Some are closer to success than others. Last I heard the Allwinner A10 SOC driver code were released but the developers wanted to make sure they had written legal permission to use them. (Previously the code had license restrictions on it so they are being careful.)

      Since the Allwinner A10 SOC is so popular and so relatively inexpensive I expect that hardware acceleration will come sooner than you think.

      I just wish that there would be some "smartbooks" made using this SOC and released with Linux (whether Ubuntu or some other system, just so long as it is open and not Android--although I wouldn't mind either dual booting or running Android co-currently to get access to those apps while still retaining Gnome 2.xx or MATE desktop) but a cheap XBMC pc would be great too!

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  8. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No it's a Chinese device that shipped running Android 4.0 and as usual the Chinese piss all over the GPL and never ever release source code, so it's a very big deal.

  9. Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by DrXym · · Score: 1

    I have a 7" NATPC using an AllWinner A10 chip running ICS. Cost of device $90 or less on places like EBay. Mostly it runs pretty well but it definitely suffers from not being dual core since there are times related to background activity when performance takes a dump. It's still capable of running most Android games pretty smoothly though.

    1. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by DrXym · · Score: 1

      I don't know since I haven't used Ubuntu on it. As a general rule, anyone who claims you're going to get decent desktop performance out of an embeddable SoC is lying. Same goes for the Raspberry Pi.

    2. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Those cheapo tablets seem to all be around 1ghz, this thing is 1.5ghz so may be a bit faster...

    3. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by White+Flame · · Score: 1

      The RPi folks claim good performance for media decoding & 3D games, but I haven't heard any big claims about CPU-heavy stuff. Most of the RPi chip is the VideoCore processor, with only a tiny sliver of an ARM hanging off the side.

    4. Re:Same chip powers all those cheapo tablets by DrXym · · Score: 1
      The aside about the Pi was because prior to the launch I mentioned in one forum how crap desktop performance would be and a guy with access to a preview board claimed it was good. Then lo and behold it turns out desktop performance is pretty crap which is entirely predictable considering the lack of RAM, the IO constraints, low clock speed, single core etc.. You *could* use it as a desktop, depending on your patience but it would be a borderline experience even with the lightest of window managers and apps.

      I've programmed set top boxes using SoCs not dissimilar to the one in the Pi and I know how weedy they are in general. The built in hardware is meant to do the heavy lifting. Whenever the CPU takes over performance becomes very mediocre. These things are designed to service an embedded linux with a process or two sitting on top controlling the experience, providing a gui and acting as the conductor to set off the decoders and so on. I intend to buy a Pi as soon as my place in the queue comes up but I expect it will end up running something like XBMC which more closely fits the sort of thing it was designed to run.

      The flood of AllWinner A10 chips is interesting though. Performance will still stink but they seem to be ship with more RAM and a higher clock speed which is nice. I wonder what their other hardware performance is like and if it's accessible from open source.

  10. Easier Method to Create a Bootable Ubuntu 12.04 SD by BoydWaters · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nice article here explains how to roll your own:

    http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/06/13/hardware-packs-for-allwinner-a10-devices-and-easier-method-to-create-a-bootable-ubuntu-12-04-sd-card/

  11. Too Bad It's Not Impressive by ilikenwf · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu is a resource hog and IMHO sucks in general, but to each their own. Debian ARM or Archlinux ARM would be a much better choice.

    I feel like this ubuntu bandwagon thing is more for n00bs and people who don't want to set everything up themselves...perhaps Canonical is somehow associated with the US government or something, and wants to get their foot in the door of most Linux users as well...

    Either way...not a good use of resources, IMHO, when something like Debian or Arch would've been much more efficient and fast.

  12. Re:and this is newsworthy why? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1
    Its a device produced in China (like everything else) by an Australian company.

    Miniand is located in Canberra, Australia with a presence in Guangzhou, China. ABN 26 237 024 804