64 Hacker Friendly Single Board Computers (linuxgizmos.com)

An anonymous reader writes: This year, we've seen some incredible price/performance breakthroughs in low-cost single board computers. LinuxGizmos has put together a compilation of 64 low-cost, hacker friendly SBCs that are all available in models that cost less than $200, with many well below $100, including Shenzhen Xunlong's $15 quad-core Orange Pi PC, Next Thing's $9 to $24 Chip, and the $5-and-up Raspberry Pi Zero. Processors range from low-end 32-bit single core ARM chips, to 64-bit ARM, x86, and MIPS parts, and with clock rates from 300MHz to 2GHz. This year even saw the arrival of low-cost SBCs based on octa-core processors, such as the $88 Banana Pi M3.

Comments

The whole list on 1 page?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole list on a nicely scrollable single page? Not a forever useless slider? Not a clunky, bloated slideshow across 64 pages of clickbait? A page designed to actually be useful and not put on a millennial libtard SJW "mobile friendly" shit show? I had no idea the web still did this. Oh and happy new year, everyone.

NOT hacker friendly.

[0100010001010011]

After 6 years with a SheevaPlug I decided to upgrade to a newer batch of 'hackable' ARM boards. Across the board they're terrible with driver and OEM support.

Half are knockoffs of knockoffs made by some Chinese manufacturer. They run a special version uBoot version that is in violation of the GPL. They run "Linux" but what they don't tell you is it isn't a mainline version. It is half full of binary blobs and unsupported past when it was released, despite the board still being sold.

I'm going to try out the Intel Edison next because I've always had good luck with Intel boards, they put development time into making working drivers. (Compare their GigE controllers vs Realtek).

This should be "64 hacker friendly SBCs if your time is free and you enjoy being frustrated by stupid nuances"

Re:NOT hacker friendly.

[petes_PoV]

So apart from the sweeping generalisations, would you care to substantiate some of those claims?

Which SBCs, specifically.

As for being "made by some Chinese manufacturer" - you've just described 90% of the world's consumer electronics. Most of which is excellent.

Re:SBCs: total waste of time and money

[drinkypoo]

I've got three x86 PC in my closet. I've refrained from using them for one reason. Noise. Those things were very loud, and I have no idea how to make them quiet.

A quiet CPU cooler costs more than buying an ODroid or Raspberry Pi, or backing the Pine A64+. And their power budget is comparatively negligible. You're best off donating (or recycling) those things and buying an ARM SBC.

If you do the math, if you live someplace where power is expensive and you regularly use a notable amount of it, then it's actually cheaper to replace those machines than to plug them in and leave them running. That's only become true recently with the ultra-cheap SBCs; they used to come at a massive price premium, but the proliferation of cellphones has made powerful SoCs cheap.