Many thanks for all this information, onpon4.
I thought there was still some problem with the Allwinner A20 but that
rhombus-tech had solved it on their own board (the people behind
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop.
>the Allwinner A20 is one of the best SoCs for libre software today
That’s what I read on the Freedombox wiki, and I’d like to have a go but
now you’ve made me aware of eoma68/rhombus-tech, well, I think I’d better
wait for mass sale, if that happens.
Reading that page and the rhombus-tech pages, I was under the impression,
this board was made up of smaller modules you could simply unswitch. I was
wrong, then.
You buy the board, you can buy or make a little box for the board. That’s
it. Or you can buy the board inside a laptop, and you keep the laptop case,
keyboard and screen for ever and simply change the board, which is a good
thing.
When you have a desktop computer, you usually keep your keyboard, mouse,
case, and ethernet card (I have one that’s not an onboard one, because the
onboard one is flaky), and sometimes, you can keep some other components or
cards. I assembled our computers, so I try not to throw away components and
re-use them.
Storage is a bit of a headache, with these boards. You need 2.5" hard drive
disks which are expensive or 3.5" HDD in a case, which is also an expensive
solution. I have 3.5" spare HDD but the problem is to connect them to the USB
So apart from the usb ethernet adapter,is it like the
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2 whose price
is before VAT, unfortunately — this becomes clear if you read the
information about how to order.
Yet, I’m not sure about USB ethernet. The Raspberry Pi has an onboard one
and I read it isn’t very good.
As for the computer for my friends, I’ll wait until they’ve bought their
new camera, and then see what they really need to view their pictures on a
light DE, like LXDE or even JWM. Perhaps oldish components will do.
Cheers,
