Is there a Dietpi release that would work with an IndieDroid Nova SBC?

General Discussion
1

As per title. And if there isn’t one, does anyone know if the Dietpi team is working on one (<-- quite some time ago, IndieDroid suggested they were, but I have not seen anything about it)?

*Note that I’ve tried a couple releases (OrangePi-based) and none worked, but I did get a ‘Other’ Dietpi conversion to work using ‘generic’ as the target type, but it does not contain drivers for all aspects the the Nova.

Thanks.

2

DietPi is already listed there, but as “in development” so I assume Micha is already in contact with them.

| DietPi | In Development | Micah The DietPi Team |
https://indiedroid.us/software

They also offer a Debian 12 image, you could flash that and then run our installer script:
https://dietpi.com/docs/hardware/#make-your-own-distribution

3

I’m not aware we are doing any development on this. @MichaIng do you?

4

ameriDroid, primary distributor for the IndieDroid Nova contacted me on Patreon whether we could add support this SBC. I always wanted to have a closer look into available kernel and bootloader sources to report back whether we can or not, but honestly, I did never find time to even have a closer look. There are many more higher priority SBCs we are currently either facing issues with or want to do critical feature work for, which stacks up, so I currently do not see any chance, at least if it was me doing a start.

Although, hmm Armbian has at least community support for it: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/39ee6545d91aa27b97ff163473f0b1c5ceeab0f5/config/boards/indiedroid-nova.csc

And aside of the rk35xx (RK3588) kernel, the bootloader is even available form their APT repo: mirrors.dotsrc.org

It has no official Armbian support, no idea how well features work, but it is listed on IndieDroid website among the first OS images, so should be as good as it gets.

Could someone open an issue on GitHub, where I get better reminded and can better manage the task? I’m looking into it after having finished VisionFive 2 Linux 6.1 transition.

5

@imacmill
Did you send me an email directly, accidentally? However, answering here. Which “Debian image” did you run the DietPi installer on? Relevant would be an Armbian image, as this is what we’d use as well, kernel, bootloader and firmware-wise.

Missing GPU acceleration is known and expected for all RK3588 SBCs. AFAIK Mesa 23 adds support for it, i.e. Debian Trixie. There is a PPA with a Mesa fork and multimedia applications, but it can only be installed on Ubuntu:

6

Very sorry, I guess I did email you directly. I responded directly to an email I received from this forum, and assumed, like GIT, doing so would come back here…
I didn’t look at the return email address.

Anyway, I ran Dietpi installer on either Debian Bookworm 12, or Debian Bullseye 11.6, both from IndieDroids download page. One worked, one didn’t…I don’t recall which, as it was several months ago.

I knew going in that encode/decode wasn’t going to work, but I was desperate to get something worthwhile installed on the Nova, as none of the options on their site were acceptable to me. IMO, Dietpi is the ONLY Linux distro that should go on any SBC, or even lower-power mini PCs. I’m running 4 instances of it elsewhere in my house, and couldn’t imagine using anything else.

7

No problem, I was just confused. Yeah we currently use my email to send from forum/blog etc. Theoretically Discourse supports posts via mail, but we’d need to establish a dedicated forum mail address then, and as far as I can see, need to run a real mail server instead of using the Gmail SMTP and Cloudflare for forwarding @dietpi.com mails back to us.

Could you try the Armbian Bookworm 23.08 (minimal) image from here: INDIEDROID NOVA