Roseapple pi (Lemon pi) support

General Discussion
1

Hi guys,
Can someone confirm/say how long will be Roseapple pi supported?
I have move my server from Atom (D510MO) to Armbians Roseapple pi image (on April) and 2 months after Armbian drops support. Dietpi is based on Armbian, thus my question.

Radius

2

We’ll continue to support the board in terms of DietPi scripts/features (things we can fix), however, if any issues relating to Kernel (currently ARMbian built), that is beyond our scope and outside support.

3

Thanks. This does mean, if there are no problems with kernel compiling, board will be supported. I self have problems with compiling kernel 4.12 (and vanilla does not properly compile for Core i5 too, maybe the branch is problematic or I do something wrong).

What should I do, sell the board or try it… thats the question.

Radius

4

Hi,
Where can I found actual image?

I have read https://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=10
and there is nothing about drop support for Roseapple pi.

Thanks Radius

5



Where is NO prebuild DietPi image.

Yes, of course!

https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/1537#issue-298337026

Important changes to the DietPi device lineup:
In the interest of both parties involved:

I have taken the decision to > remove all ARMbian based images > from our lineup.

6

Did we ever supported (had an own image for) Roseapple Pi?

DietPi btw is NOT based on ARMbian. For some devices, many Orange/Banana Pis and possibly Roseapple Pi as well (perhaps before my time), we used ARMbian images in the past as basis, but for many others we did not. And as you can see within the linked topic of k-plan, we stopped using ARMbian images completely, therefore do not have official images for those OPi/BPi any more.

It is now hard to define the word “support”, if you use an ARMbian (or any other 3rd party) image by yourself and use our preparation script, to turn it into DietPi: https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/1285

  • We cannot guarantee it works, since we cannot predict all devices special requirements and/or modifications of the base image.
  • However in most cases, if it’s clearly Debian (or Raspbian for RPis), uses systemd as init/service manager, it should work. We do not touch (pre-installed) bootloader/kernel where we don’t know how to update etc.
  • We will however help you here, if you want to test and face issues, but as said no guarantee it works.

Just checked, since ARMbian indeed seems to not offer an image for this board any more, there is one from Roseapple Pi itself: http://roseapplepi.org/index.php/resources/download/
It is outdated, but at least Debian Jessie, so generally should work with the DietPi preparation script.
However I guess there is some good reason why ARMbian dropped support. Perhaps there are some remaining firmware issues and the manufacturer does not take case of it very well, so that ARMbian’s development on this got a pain, e.g… Just a guess but for me a hint that it might fail or not work well.

You mentioned LemonPi in the header. Besides some outdated shop listings, I can’t find anything about it any more. Manufacturer seems to not exist any more, or was it renamed, since “LemonPi” is used by another company? However I read everywhere that they offer(ed) Android and Ubuntu images, which will not work with DietPi. You need a working Debian image for that.

Hope it helps/clarifies a bid :slight_smile:.

7

Yes, long, long time ago … on 29 Mar 2017 (in: DietPi v148 !!!)

https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/822#issuecomment-290089690

and removed because of lack hardware device to implement.

https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/1385

Other low priority:

 Roseapple Pi | Lack hardware device to implement. > now uses PREP

And, there was only 10x RoseapplePi installation before stepping to DietPi v.6…

https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/1281#issuecomment-350585096

8

Okay reasonable.
Hehe now I see and remember BBB, 4 installs overall :rofl:.

If there is any working Debian based image available, PREP should do it in most cases.

9

Hi,
guys, thanks for explanation.

I have 8 months old baby, so now I have no time to play with images and test new versions. I need “plug and play”, two times per year make backup before update and try run update.

Lemon Pi = Roseapple Pi + 1GB Ram

Lemon Pi was on Indiegogo, then renamed to Roseapple Pi and probably development company just renamed too.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lemonpi-35-single-board-computer-android5-0-linux

Armbian drops support, because of low penetration on market and that USB 3 is broken (I doesn’t know how, works, maybe linux image has bad implementation?). But I mean, that first impulse was Orange pi with zero support of devices and what’s worst, one device was developed in revisions with multiple cpu units (H2, H3, H5 etc) without any reason. This needs more hacking and implementing techniques, that detects cpu etc etc… And after some time, number of supported devices was thanks to Orange pi too high. That I mean.

Ok, one last question:
Why to make support for device, that has very good and stable support from manufacturer? I mean, that this doesn’t make sense. The alternative image must need be much more better then stock from manufacturer or?
Do you have benchmarks Raspbian Vs DietPi? Older Armbian based images have one - against minibian and some other distro. (both are dead).

For me makes sense develop image for device, that has not good support from manufacturer.

I have look on your numbers of installations and 4000 (or how it was) on Rpi, that isn’t quite not much, it’s high, but devices is trillion…

I have cured not to buy something other then Rpi, I have at home Rpi1, Bpi1 (supported with Armbian, probably because I and Igor we are first guys on planet that have buy it and try to use it as NAS :smiley:), both without usage and Rpi3 as multimedia centre. OK, will move all from Rose to Bpi1 or to Rpi3 and not to buy La Frite (LibreElec drops support for Le Potato after one year; it will be the same).

With regards
Radius

10

Thanks for clarification about the LemonPi/RoseapplePi naming :wink:.

I understand that it generally makes sense to enable support especially for devices, where manufacturer does not ship a good/current image already. This is basically where ARMbian does a great job (assumption, I never used an ARMbian image, actually). They support a large number of as well rare devices and even for devices with better manufacturer caring, they bring images with up-to-date kernel etc.

But this is not what we (DietPi) do. We do no kernel/firmware/bootloader coding/development, thus cannot enable support for devices, where not already either the manufacturer or another 3rd party provides a working Debian-based image.
Instead we do software (shell) coding with the aim to enable easy (by times rare) software installations where e.g. Debian repo does not provide a package and/or pre-configuration needs much manual effort, and the same for device configuration.
On top, jep we try to be “better” then other images/distros in terms of image size, idle RAM and CPU usage. So providing an as much as possible trimmed down image/system, but then enable as easy as possible configuration and install of extensions/software, as required.

And jep we have comparisons:

Where did you get the 4000 RPi installs from?
I read 36500 installs, ~8000+ RPi installs, when applying the share between users that provide info (opted in survey), then ~20,000 RPi users: https://dietpi.com/survey/

  • Since we cannot track users stopping to use the instance or when doing a fresh reflash, some might not be active.
  • On the other hand, these are only v6.9 and above installs and there are still pre-v6.9, even pre-v6.0 users, although hard to guess how much :wink:.

With always limited amount of coders/devs/time one needs to focus on the wider used devices over the less used devices. If in theory users would use the manufacturer images, when well maintained and only use 3rd party images, when non (current) from maintainer available, then the install counts for RPi in our and in e.g. surely also ARMbian case should be lower compared to all the OPi/BPi/NanoPi/Odroids installs. But this is not the case. So there ARE other reasons for users to use 3rd party images, some of them I mentioned above, when it’s about DietPi. So even that rare-device users are forced to use more current or even working 3rd party images, they are still so much fewer, compared to the well-known widely-spread RPi/Odroids users.

Off-topic:
Yeah basically shit when manufacturers throw many devices on the marked but do not take care that at least one well maintained image is available. I saw official BPi image as a patchwork from an OPi image, leaving many obsolete files and confusing configurations in place. They not even produced a single image, build up from scratch, leaving all this work to 3rd parties like ARMbian. If you thinking about buying such a device, then see those ancient, most likely broken, at least patchworked images, provided via external download servers (google, mega and such, this further shows how “much” value is given to those images), I am not surprised that marked penetration is lower than it could be. Not everyone directly has all the 3rd party images in mind.
If you provide an SBC, you NEED to provide proper firmware and software, either do it yourself or make deals with external kernel developers/image providers that you can then provide on your website. Everything else it ugly short term money making until users realize that they are lost with obsolete broken work…