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1 • RISC-V (by Kek on 2025-03-17 01:26:37 GMT from United States)
I have a Raspberry Pi Pico 2. I know it's a micro controller, but it does have two Hazard3 RISC-V cores. My current project is using micropython but I was looking forward to tinkering directly with the RISC-V cores. Personally I think RISC-V is the future for mobile devices, but it's going to be a long and bumpy road to get there given the current tech monopoly landscape.
2 • I like x86, and I'm in no hurry to replace it (by Andy Prough on 2025-03-17 01:29:12 GMT from Switzerland)
Tech news websites seem breathless in reporting year after year how x86 will be retired, replaced by faster, more energy efficient ARM or RISC-V chips. I would like for the promise of fully open-sourced RISC-V devices to be fulfilled, but I'm in no hurry at all to move off from the x86 chips I've been using for decades, which have served me so well, and which have such enormous quantities of freely licensed software written for them. Regardless of the future of ARM and RISC-V, I hope x86 stays with us for many years to come.
3 • RISC-V (by enthical on 2025-03-17 01:39:27 GMT from France)
I don't own any RISC-V device but I'd say that I won't mind.
Not that they are expensive or that I'm kinda broke (even before the inflation), but I don't see which of my device I could hope replacing with a RISC-V device given how little powered they are. The Pinetab-V seems fine but to play with but very slow (and maybe unstable), like a low-end ARM tablet from 10 years ago.
I've experimented few years back with RISC-V (instruction set) and some CPU core using Verilog, but many manufacturers keep using their own extensions which tend to make the ecosystem fragmented.
So maybe in ten years when the first middle-end phones will appear, as long they'll have enough power to run some Android ROM, are pretty cheap and have a good battery life, I'll find some spare time to get me interested into it :)
4 • Mocaccino, KDE and RAM usage (by frc_kde on 2025-03-17 02:43:38 GMT from Brazil)
Thanks to Jesse for this (and for the previous) review on Mocaccino!
I have been using Sabayou in my old PC, prior to 2020, and I feel sad to see it to be discontinued and merged into Mocaccino project — wich I wanted to try, but could not understand how to. — So, I have installed Redcore Linux (Gentoo-based, too), and I liked it, but finally understood that Gentoo is not for me.
Maybe there is some mistake in this statement:
> The Plasma edition of Mocaccino is huge, taking up 1.3GB (1,380MB) of memory just to sign into the desktop. This is, I'm finding, typical of Plasma 6 which is currently one of the heaviest desktops available for Linux. It really is a memory hog, taking twice as much RAM as Plasma 5.
I have both Plasma 5 and Plasma 6, and I could comprove today that Plasma 6 does not take twice as much ram as Plasma 5:
With Plasma 6, I have got these RAM usages at startup, today:
Void (1009 MiB)
Arch Linux (1077 MiB)
Mageia (1094 MiB)
openSUSE (1261 MiB)
Debian (1270 MiB)
Fedora (1365 MiB)
With Plasma 5, I have got, today:
PCLinuxOS (888 MiB)
MX Linux (1155 MiB)
Differences have much more to do with each OS, itself — as far as each distro enables different number (and types) of services. — So, in openSUSE Tumbleweed, I have Snapper and BtrFS maintenance services, for example, and in Debian and Fedora I have some other services enabled by these distro's defaults.
Within Void and Arch Linux, I have the minimal, due to their DIY-characterists. — PCLinuxOS Darkstar is a tiny version — and I have spent some time unbloating Mageia Cauldron.
Also, some distros install and enable the KDE-PIM suite — which automaticly start 17 Akonadi processes — while other distros do not.
In order to somehow "equalize" them, I use to remove / disable PIM, Filesearch and PackageKit (and Plasma Discover) from all my distros.
Another possible source of mistakes are different calculations of RAM usage. When Debian released its 12 Bookworm RC, many people found that it used twice as much RAM than previous Debian 11, but it was not real. — Just, the "free" command from "procps 4" calculates the RAM usage in a different way from the "free" command from "procps 3". Here are some notes on this:
https://byteria.blogspot.com/2020/10/conky-wrong-ram-memory-usage.html
The way I use to measure the RAM usage is absolutely the same for all my distros:
https://byteria.blogspot.com/2023/06/multi-booting-12-distros-linux.html
5 • @2 (by FledermausMann on 2025-03-17 03:00:20 GMT from Australia)
>>Regardless of the future of ARM and RISC-V, I hope x86 stays with us for many years to come
So you enjoy your broken Intel and AMD CPU's, full of vulnerabilities like Spectre/Meltdown which to this day, have not been fixed in hardware? You like CPU's which can be hijacked with their "management engines" and corrupted due to their speculative execution design flaws?
It's fine if you're ok with that. Got to be able to play games after all right?
But for security, RISC-V is the solution.
6 • RISC-V (by penguinx86 on 2025-03-17 03:32:29 GMT from United States)
No, I don't have any RISC-V devices. But pre-Y2K I worked as a sysadmin for a software company that wrote code for UNIX based RISC, MIPS and other systems. These were niche products that never really took off. To me as a sysadmin, UNIX was UNIX and it didn't seem to matter which architecture it was running on.
I think one of the big pushes for RISC-V is China. They are looking for alternatives to x86_64, amd64, ARM, armh processors to avoid possible sanctions. That makes sense from a business standpoing.
I thought of getting a RISC-V single board computer to play around with. But I'm retired not and I don't have the motivation or patients to deal with a an odball compuer project that may not work half the time. This is also why I hasitate to buy a Pinebook Pro laptop with an ARM processor. I spent over 35 years as a sysadmin fixing everybody elses problems. Now I'm retired and I'm getting too old for all that crap.
7 • @5 - I'm still in no hurry to replace x86 (by Andy Prough on 2025-03-17 05:05:29 GMT from Switzerland)
>"But for security, RISC-V is the solution."
I'm all in favor of RISC-V progressing and for us to eventually get some truly open hardware options. But right now, if RISC-V was truly "the solution", then I wouldn't be able to get any work done with the available devices. So that's a big problem.
>"So you enjoy your broken Intel and AMD CPU's, full of vulnerabilities like Spectre/Meltdown which to this day, have not been fixed in hardware?"
Turn off hyperthreading if you are so worried - you'll still be thousands of percent faster than any RISC-V device. And why aren't you using the mitigations that have been freely available to everyone for years now?
>"You like CPU's which can be hijacked with their "management engines"
I use Dasharo Coreboot - any management engine is turned off with the flip of a bit.
>"Got to be able to play games after all right?"
I'm not a gamer, but I do have to be able to get work done.
8 • MocaccinoOS (by Josh Smith on 2025-03-17 05:58:59 GMT from Australia)
I previously was a user of Sabayon and I liked the distribution itself, although I didn't get along with the developers. They always seemed grouchy in the IRC chat room even when I was being perfectly polite. It, therefore, doesn't surprise me at all that the successor to Sabayon only has 4 developers. It would be hard to attract developers when you attack people interested in your distro. But I will admit, Luet does sound intriguing as an approach to package management, and I would like to see it work out. I wish the team luck with realizing it, although it seems far from ready for widespread adoption at the time of this review.
9 • Ubuntu and UUTILS - change is coming (by dePes on 2025-03-17 08:11:14 GMT from Belgium)
The sudden switch to UUTILS has probably something to do with the licensing from GPL, to MIT. The GNU's core utilities use GPL, and UUTILS uses MIT.
The MIT license allows greater flexibility, that allows developers to use open-source components in proprietary projects.
This quick switch suggests that Ubuntu has new plans for their software and services. Good for business, less interesting for those who prefer freedom.
10 • KDE and RAM usage thanks (by BlueIV on 2025-03-17 09:56:51 GMT from United States)
@4 I just wanted to say thanks for all the Plasma memory usage stats you have, plus the additional information. It is appreciated.
11 • parts desert rant (by Clay Hansen on 2025-03-17 10:17:17 GMT from United States)
A food desert for you.? Too bad, wealth for me is more important.
Last October I had 5 computers fail to some malware transmitted by usb sneakernet.
Nothing that hides and tries to get passwords and accounts.
More of a multi-part LInux killer.
USB ports disabled, cannot boot from a live distro on a usb stick.
ls /usr/bin/ls
No such file or directory.
I blamed the helper files, but I have also seen pipe fail error messages.
I thought risc-V might be immune,
maybe I could buy a cheap risc-V board to get a working computer.
But Arrow Electronics only sells to other businesses.
Who wants to deal with the tax requirements of 50 different States.?
You would have to hire more accountants to handle the sales taxes.
Yes, I did buy a new Lenova, but it would not boot Linux, and
would not boot Windows since I do not allow internet in my basement.
So, here I am still trying to fix my computers 6 months later..
A partial recovery running from SSD sata drives.
12 • KDE and RAM usage (by frc_kde on 2025-03-17 10:19:21 GMT from Brazil)
@10 It's always nice to know that those notes were useful! Thank you!
13 • Plasma 5 vs 6 (by Jesse on 2025-03-17 11:17:54 GMT from Canada)
@4: > Maybe there is some mistake in this statement:
>> The Plasma edition of Mocaccino is huge, taking up 1.3GB (1,380MB) of memory just to sign into the desktop. This is, I'm finding, typical of Plasma 6 which is currently one of the heaviest desktops available for Linux. It really is a memory hog, taking twice as much RAM as Plasma 5.
No mistake. Plasma 6 is huge compared to Plasma 5 on every distro I have tried it on. So far Mocaccino probably has the smallest footprint for Plasma 6 at 1.3GB. The others have tyoically been 1.4GB to 1.6GB.
While running Plasma 5, typical RAM usage was in the range of 600MB to 800MB, half the size. This is consistent over dozens of distros over the span of nearly a decade.
14 • Plasma 6 vs Plasma 5 (by Corrado on 2025-03-17 11:55:42 GMT from Italy)
"The Plasma 6 edition of Mocaccino is huge, taking up 1.3GB (1,380MB) of memory just to sign into the desktop." I have calculated about 65% more than Plasma 5.
15 • Contributing to Open Source (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-17 12:08:45 GMT from United States)
Some of us haven't the ability to go very far with coding. The autism spectrum has a lot of nasty turn-arounds in the brain, and even more distractions in the world. We do try, and many of us are blessed with dedicated, clever, and sincere assistance.
We want so very much to help with this great world of Linux.
The langue of coding seems like the language of reading and typing at times. At other times it seems like Martian Lizard People's hieroglyphics.
Code on the page/screen routinely disintegrates like slow motion fire works in the sky repeatedly.. so I start over later.. much later sometimes. :)
But we keep going. I get a warm feeling trying. But that phrase, "contributing to open source" means money to me, not coding. I go around to distros on the list and PayPal loot to them as often as I can. I try to be regular about that.
So, well I just wanted to add one more way to contribute to open source to Jesse's amazing list of suggestions in the Q&A section.
16 • Bohdi (by Geo. on 2025-03-17 12:43:11 GMT from Canada)
Always happy to see dev teams progressing forward in their projects. It can be difficult and uncelebrated work. But Bodhi holds a special place for me. During the lockdowns I had to resurrect an ancient laptop. I tried all the light distros. Some were too heavy to load and install, or the interface would have been un useable for other family members. But Bodhi not only loaded and installed cleanly and but was an easy transition for the Windows user. A shout out to the Bodhi team for your excellent work. Well done. 🙂
17 • Plasma 6 vs Plasma 5 (by tomas on 2025-03-17 13:23:04 GMT from Czechia)
I have just updated my Artix installation of Linux and get "strange" results.
After reboot the system consumes only 0.54 GiB of memory (according to system monitor).
Now, with Firefox running it is at 0.97 GiB.
@16 Have you tried Q4OS Trinity?
I have installed it on an old notebook with a 1-core 32-bit processor and it is the best distro I could make running on it.
18 • @17 (by tomas on 2025-03-17 13:26:19 GMT from Czechia)
Sorry, I forgot to say Artix is on Plasma 6.3.3 running on Wayland.
19 • Contributing with money (by Flavianoep on 2025-03-17 14:51:32 GMT from Brazil)
I have no programming skill and yet couldn't find the time to contribute with translations, which is a thing I could do. Therefore the more adequate way I found to contribute with free software is with money. I think I should pay for the software that helps me in the same way I would have to pay for commercial software. You know, it's free as in "free speech", not free as in "free beer".
20 • @17 • Plasma 6 vs Plasma 5 (by Wally on 2025-03-17 14:09:34 GMT from Australia)
@17, "consumes only 0.54 GiB of memory" I just downloaded the latest KDE Neon and after login System Monitor alone consumes around 170 MB out of 1.4 GB total. Lowest reading I get is with neofetch at 1.024 GB. With free it's 1.24 GB. Strange indeed.
21 • Plasma 6 vs 5 (by tomas on 2025-03-17 17:08:54 GMT from Czechia)
As already @4 said it seems that the memory consumed depends on distro, better said what services and apps run behind the scenes (that the devs make them default).
In @17 I wanted to add that the values are achieved without any system tweaking, but then realized it is not so. I have always hated the visual effects of windows behavior, so I disabled them, also taking into account that my PC is not new and so it makes the system snappier.
I do not know how much memory is made free by this, maybe someone can tell, but I wonder why the devs insist on having some of the effects on when otherwise they could boast with the snappiness of their system.
To Wally on @20: I find rather strange the 1.4 GB of Neon (evidently the devs do not care about it).
My Arch based distro (ex-Antergos) runs on 0.58 GiB (0.53 with custom kernel), now with 1.2 GiB when Firefox is running. (It is Plasma 6.3.3 on X11.)
22 • Gentoo, hey? (by Kevin on 2025-03-17 19:00:03 GMT from New Zealand)
Just this week, I found the key to a problem I was having - on a Gentoo wiki. So I am happy they are around. Must be one of the earliest Linux distros on the block.
Regarding contributing back (question of the week), I have found that your advice to help yourself works. After a while you end up having a solution or two when others ask. And you never stop learning! I just recently found a way to search inside certain files, that also showed me some new-to-me methods in bash shell scripting.
23 • Moccacino OS (by sephiroth7818 on 2025-03-17 19:01:54 GMT from United States)
The Moccacino OS forums on their github, get good responses to issues you have with the distro. Moccacino is a great distro. It needs some polish though. But they're doing great work.
24 • Plasma 5 vs. Plasma 6 (by frc_kde on 2025-03-17 21:58:35 GMT from Brazil)
@13
> others have typically been 1.4GB to 1.6GB.
> While running Plasma 5, typical RAM usage was in the range of 600MB to 800MB, half the size.
Yes! I still remember when Kubuntu seemed to start up using just 400 MiB RAM, back in 2016! — But since 2014 Linux Torvalds had already subscribed another way to measure RAM usage:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/34e431b0ae398fc54ea69ff85ec700722c9da773
From 2020 to day, most of the tools have already moved to this "new calc". Even KDE moved from its old "KSysguard" to its new "Plasma-SystemMonitor".
An exception is "htop", which still presents smaller numbers than "free / top", "inxi", Conky, Fastfetch and other main tools.
So, it is not possible to compare old numbers (or, "htop" numbers) with the numbers from tools in up-to-date versions.
Well, I have not seen RAM usage increase in my distros, as they moved from Plasma 5 to Plasma 6.
Arch Linux, for example:
2022-06-13 --> 951 MiB --> Plasma 5.24.5
2023-06-11 --> 1085 MiB --> Plasma 5.27.5
2023-12-27 --> 1147 MiB --> Plasma 5.27.1
2024-03-11 --> 1094 MiB --> Plasma 6.0.1
2024-11-17 --> 1193 MiB --> Plasma 6.2.3
2025-03-16 --> 1077 MiB --> Plasma 6.3.3
25 • @11 (by FledermausMann on 2025-03-17 22:26:13 GMT from Australia)
>>But Arrow Electronics only sells to other businesses.
Who wants to deal with the tax requirements of 50 different States.?
You would have to hire more accountants to handle the sales taxes.
You can buy RISC-V systems from many places. The easiest and most obvious vendor is Amazon. Buy direct from RISC-V vendors websites. So many options exist. Why are you only using Arrow?
>>Yes, I did buy a new Lenova, but it would not boot Linux, and
would not boot Windows since I do not allow internet in my basement. So, here I am still trying to fix my computers 6 months later..
A partial recovery running from SSD sata drives.
Why did you buy a new laptop? Why not bring it to an IT support service for repair?
At this time, every computer is still able to boot any OS as long as your BIOS settings are correctly configured for booting said OS.
Sounds like you don't know what you are doing. I strongly suggest you seek some professional IT support assistance for your issue.
If your SSD is infected, even if you can get your new laptop running, you would just reinfect your new install while trying to recover data.
If I misunderstood, provide more information in a reply.
26 • RISC-V (by lincoln on 2025-03-17 23:01:55 GMT from Brazil)
Today, the great Achilles' heel for the RISC-V architecture lies in performance, but we already have good examples of the architecture's potential, such as:
- "Lichee Cluster 4A (LC4A) is a high-performance RISC-V cluster computing platform [...]. A single Lichee Cluster 4A can be equipped with up to 7 LM4A core boards. Each LM4A core board contains an NPU with 4TOPS@int8 AI computing power. A single core board supports up to 16GB LPDDR4X memory and 128G eMMC storage." ( https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/lichee/th1520/lc4a/lc4a.html )
- "XiangShan - Highest performing open-source processor series" ( https://tutorial.xiangshan.cc/hpca25/ )
- RISC-V vector extension
27 • Bodhi Linux (by gnikyt on 2025-03-18 19:45:55 GMT from Canada)
Havent used Enlightenment in probably 20 years now. I used to love it. Anyone using it these days?
28 • Enlightenment (by Devlin7 on 2025-03-18 22:02:49 GMT from New Zealand)
@27 - Enlightenment is my preferred DE/WM. It is incredibly light and fast. I admit that the default install is ugly as sin. The great thing is that is easily configurable and I can make it look like almost any other DE. I run mine in Tiling mode, t I can configure it using a GUI and I don't have to edit text files for key bindings or behaviour. Memory wise it is lighter than most WMs after you have added menus, notifications and other useful features. It is also portable. Install enlightenment on a new machines, copy two folders and it looks like it did before. The downside is that a lot of distros don't have it in their repos and if you don't want systemd your pickings are few. Just love enlightenment!
29 • Appimage/Flatpak/Snaps (by FledermausMann on 2025-03-19 00:19:13 GMT from Australia)
This is the best thing about Appimages/Flatpak/Snap packages on Linux:
An easy way to deploy any piece of software (benevolent, malicious, useful, useless, trojan horse, malware, spyware) to the uninformed users as efficiently as on Windows now exist thanks to these package formats.
Anybody can download any Appimage/Flatpak/Snap package make it executable and run it. However, these packages are rarely, if never checked for malicious code and although they do come with warnings for the user, the warnings purpose is supposed to do what exactly? Dissuade them from using it?
One takeaway is that deploying malware/spyware on Linux machines has now become as trivial as it has always been on Windows machines.
Cases of people having their crypto wallets drained for example by fake wallets on Snap have already happened.
I am wondering whether this "evolution" of package management solutions is indeed a step back for Linux, not a step forward as so many people believe.
Thoughts? Comments?
30 • Moccachino (by Joseph on 2025-03-19 00:28:39 GMT from United States)
Sabayon was part of my first attempt to convert to Linux full-time and almost drove me back to Windows. :-) They tried to do so much with so few and so little testing....
The creator of Sabayon loved to write package managers for some reason and Sabayon went through a few of them. All of them had ugly, unintuitive interfaces, little in the way of instruction, were slow as sin and often wanted to update half the OS just to install a single package. It sounds like not much has changed. I remember a blog post back in the day warned that the package manager of the moment would give different results *depending on the order in which you listed the packages to be installed on the command line*! The blog said that "This shouldn't matter, but it does". :-)
One time an update made it impossible to log into the KDE desktop. I had another system I could access to get to their forum and their solution was the usual list of 13 command line instructions to fix it. I asked why they didn't just roll back the bad update and there was lots of head-scratching. Someone pointed out that many people would not have access to a second system to get to the webpage and learn about the fix. I also learned that all their software was compiled automatically and pushed out to a "dev" or "testing" repo and if they didn't hear about errors "in a few days" they just shoved it out to everyone else. I don't think they had any idea if anyone was using the test repo or if anyone had tested any particular package pushed out to it.
I thought this was madness and largely at my insistence with some others joining in they created another repo that was behind the main repo by a few days so people could roll back to it if an update screwed up their system.
I was also encountering a situation where memory pressure would cause the system to keel over and die. Worse, they allowed you to use the JFS file system and I foolishly did based on outdated information I'd read elsewhere. JFS was a journaling file system but it did not checksum the journal. This meant that when the system crashed all the data might be fine but the journal instructions might get corrupted. On reboot JFS would dutifully try to execute the corrupted instructions, destroying the data. :-(
Everyone at Sabayon insisted that the cause of my problem had to be bad memory on my PC, even though testing suggested it was fine. I installed OpenSUSE and the crash at high memory usage immediately stopped. Combined with not letting me make the mistake of using JFS and the Linux world's most advanced and customizable installer and the power of the YaST config tool, I left Sabayon for Opensuse after a few months of hair-pulling and never looked back in almost 15 years (and am now using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed).
The one cool thing about early Sabayon was that the live ISO took so ridiculously long to boot that it actually played a song during the boot process (Pornophonique's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)! I remember building a new PC after a motherboard died and when I thought I finally had everything together I popped the Sabayon ISO from my desk into the drive and fired it up. Eventually the electric guitar intro of the song started blaring out of my speakers and I cheered! :-) The custom artwork and colors of the Sabayon of that era was also some of the best I've seen. Weirdly and sadly, the Sabayon people themselves never saved any images from that era and I've been unable to find one archived anywhere.
31 • RISC-V (by Justin on 2025-03-19 14:24:31 GMT from United States)
I'm on the "needs better performance" bandwagon. Power efficiency is great but sometimes you need performance. A free i486 would give me great price to performance (it was free) but I can't realistically replace a modern system with it.
Starting with embedded makes sense in that less performance is required, and adopters take on less risk trying it out (they spend less money). However, at some point you have to scale up. Raspberry Pi's are running into that problem where it was a cool $35 tinker board, but if I'm going to spend $200 to get a "almost desktop-equivalent," at that price point there are so many options that RPi's often aren't worth it.
32 • @30 (by bob on 2025-03-19 16:54:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Fond memories of just how crazy Sabayon was as a distro. I confirm everything Joseph in post 30 said. Despite working terribly, it did have a coolness to it.
33 • Risc-V and MocaccinOS... (by rhtoras on 2025-03-19 18:21:32 GMT from Greece)
I want the monopoly of X_86 architecture to break. I like freedom which is not offered from Intel and Amd... So Risc-V could be an option to what i am looking for. It is not ready yet or even usable but i am looking forward for a machine compatible with this architecture. Operating systems i am using are mainly Void linux and openbsd. I am glad openbsd offers a Risc-V option. Also there are some attempts in the void-packages repository although not sure if they work or how. I guess they are experimental ? Anyways, real nosystemD has the options and it's a shame tribblix does not offer a risc-V option too.
p.s i dont't get what's so special on MocaccinOS. Nice review Jesse but to me it is just a gentoo with different package manager, similar to redcore linux i suppose but maybe with immutability in mind.
34 • Enlightenment (by rhtoras on 2025-03-19 19:26:45 GMT from Greece)
@28 Devuan, Artix, Void, PclinuxOs, Slitaz and Parabola offer enlightenment. It is also available on freebsd, netbsd, midnightbsd, Open Indiana and Tribblix. It is also offered on Gentoo and MX but they are not hardcore nosystemD options. It also works on Antix if you modify repos and exists on slackware via slackbuilds which i am not familiar with to speak on. So it is offered on nosystemD systems. However i am not 100% sure if i can recommend it. I mean it does not depend on systemD (although some of it's dev's use systemD distros) but in most cases it seems an outdated port is offered on various repositories. And in the end of the day although it is called a wm it looks more like one on steroids. Maybe a desktop environment suits better. If you ask me i prefer Lumina with it's flaws but that's just me.
35 • @33 (by FledermausMann on 2025-03-19 22:21:07 GMT from Australia)
>>It is not ready yet or even usable
Usable can mean a lot. There are plenty of RISC-V solutions, SBC's like from Milk-V (Mars/Jupiter) which are usable for everyday computing tasks like browsing, media playback, coding etc. So, usable for most daily things. Obviously not as fast as some ARM boards, but good enough. Really, the amount of time the CPU is sitting idle and doing very little is a lot for most people. You don't need a Corei7 to browse the web or code Python.
However there is the SPACEMIT K1/M1, Octa-core X60™(RV64GCVB) which can process 2.0TOPS and the board can come with 16GB Ram, so perhaps this a more powerful RISC-V platform.
Now these solutions are not usable for gaming or running LLM's locally. I am sure that will come in the next few years.
But for almost everything else I would say yes, you can buy a RISC-V SBC and use it for everyday computing tasks.
>>openbsd offers a Risc-V option. Also there are some attempts in the void-packages repository although not sure if they work or how.
Armbian offers support for RISC-V boards
On the channel ExplainingComputers, there is a good review of some RISC-V boards if you're interested.
36 • Risc-V (by rhtoras on 2025-03-19 22:59:34 GMT from Greece)
@35 you seem to know Risc-V quite well. You know better than me for sure tbh. I surf the web, watching tutorials, coding and editring images and even stream radio, That's what i am doing. I have seen the video from explaining computers. I was not convinced. Some boards if i remember correctly were too weak to do all these tasks. Others were expensive. Any suggestions ? A pc witrh Risc-V you recommend to do my daily tasks ? Btw internet these days is way too heavy so at least 8 gb is recommended.
p.s Armbian is not an option. It relies on systemD. I'll stick with openbsd which is lighter and safer unless one day someone can audit systemD and prove me it is not bloat, buggy and unsafe.
37 • @36 (by FledermausMann on 2025-03-19 23:47:32 GMT from Australia)
I try to keep up with what's coming out, but not that well versed with RISC-V development.
No suggestions really, just that the last board reviewed by EC was the Milk-V Jupiter, powered by the Spacemit K1/M1 SoC, and that the results were usable. You can get that board with 16GB Ram, so it should be enough.
But yes, for anything intensive or multitasking I don't think it would be that good of an experience.
As for Linux support without systemD, well, that's a whole other can of worms. Who knows if and when that will happen from VOID or Devuan etc.
Gentoo is supporting RISC-V and is systemd-free. Find more info on the Gentoo Wiki
38 • Enlightenment (by GreginNC on 2025-03-20 01:16:53 GMT from United States)
(@34) Strike PClinux from that list. I just abandoned their distro after over 15 years because of this. First they passively aggressively removed the Enlightenment forum and when the maintainer of the community release asked why he got a smart answer. Then after an update Enlightenment was broken and when I asked for help also got a dismissive and smart reply. So no Pclinux does not support Enlightenment and as will only use rolling distros I had to settle for Trinity.
39 • @36 (by GT on 2025-03-21 14:41:34 GMT from United States)
"I'll stick with openbsd which is lighter and safer unless one day someone can audit systemD and prove me it is not bloat, buggy and unsafe."
Philosophically speaking, it is not possible to prove the absence of something. Pratically speaking, all of the major distros (Red Hat, SUSE, Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, etc.) have been using systemd by default for years and have not suffered from it. In the case of Red Hat, Canonical, and SUSE, corporations rely on their software to operate their enterprises, and no collapse of IT departments worldwide due to systemd being buggy, bloated, and unsafe has occurred. The proof is in the pudding.
No one is going to audit open source software for someone else unless they are paid to do it, and convincing those who oppose systemd for philosophical reasons instead of technical ones will never be convinced by any audit, no matter its findings, so there really is no point in that sort of undertaking.
It has been a proven fact that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he killed JFK ever since the three independent investigations concluded shortly after the event. The FBI, local law enforcement, and Congress all came to the identical conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Despite all of the related government documents being released in recent time and "the proof of a cover up" not existing in those documents, those who believe that the Russians, CIA, LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, and the mafia were all somehow involved will never be swayed. Beliefs are much harder to change than ideas.
40 • systemD (by rhtoras on 2025-03-21 20:18:02 GMT from Greece)
I disagree with everything you wrote. Excluding the JFK thing which i don't care and is beyond the scope of my comment.
"Pratically speaking, all of the major distros (Red Hat, SUSE, Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, etc.) have been using systemd by default for years and have not suffered from it"
This never happened. Because #1 there major distros that do not use systemD and never had issues. The oldest one being slackware while Alpine is another one example. Never had issues with openrc while systemD coukd not work with musl. Also Debian was sliced because of this thing. Bruce Perens the #2 debian lead dev said Devuan is better engineered. Snaps relying on systemD is a major headache on Ubuntu systems. Don't tou know it ?
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=systemd Here i see a lot vulnerabilities not to mention the lroblemd caused in the lzma vulnerability which affected only rolling distributions using systemD. There is also an article called:"the real motivation behind systemD" you can read it. Just search in you favourite search engine. Also if we are going to speak technically YES i can do it. I know what i am talking about and i have listened to the opposite opinions. I am just not convinced. And NO we are not
conspiracy theorists we are open source enthusiasts. And when the source is open people should have access in every byte of it.
Then again i was not talking about systemD but for risc-V isos. This was my criticism kn something that hold linux back.
Number of Comments: 40
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