[240716] System Release Notice for ROCK 5B

ROCK 5 Series 5B/5B+
1

After several months of preparation, we are thrilled to announce the new release of Radxa OS for ROCK 5B. Below, we highlight the primary features and changes introduced in this version.

Highlights

Based on Debian 12

  • Radxa OS is now based on Debian 12 Bookworm, bringing the latest features and security updates from the Debian community.

The new Rockchip Linux 6.1 kernel

  • The latest Rockchip SDK targets Linux 6.1, brings many more new features over the current 5.10 kernel.

Open source panthor GPU driver enabled by default

  • One major compliant we received about our product is the “lack of” graphical acceleration. The Rockchip SDK does provide the mali GPU driver, However, this driver only supports the OpenGL ES API commonly used on mobile device. For desktop applications, most are using OpenGL, which is incompatible with OpenGL ES.
    Since the release of Rockchip RK3588, the open source community has finally created a free GPU driver called panthor, which is just released as part of Linux 6.10. Notably, this driver support OpenGL, allows existing applications to be used without modification.
    We have integrated this driver into our kernel. Shout out to the Armbian community for creating the backport patchset.

Major changes

  • The default sound server was changed to pipewire.
  • The default window manager & login manager was changed to gdm due to issues with sddm. The supported desktop environment is still KDE Plasma.

Update from existing system

Our system has changed rather significantly since the first 5.10 release. As such, we are preparing an update tool to ease the process. This is currently still WIP so please wait patiently. We should have a testing version out soon.

Download

Please use the following link to download the latest image:

ROCK 5B

6 Likes
2

Great news,

Only KDE? Will there be any CLI/server version?
Have You checked following items:

  • pcie bifurcation
  • npu driver
    ?
1 Like
3

Great to hear official images are beeing updated again! Thank you, looking forward checking it out

4

Where is the rice??

Share an wallpaper please!! We need water in our mouth come on !

5

That are some very good news.

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KDE only, and the plan is to use KDE for RK356X Debian 12 systems as well, since Debian 12’s mesa supports this SoC now. This way we only have a single DE to support.

Now only officially tested & supported images will be built, since unsupported builds generated too many support questions. User can change default target to boot into terminal instead.

We are working on multiple RK3588 products on 6.1. ROCK 5 ITX is one of those, which breaks PCIe 3.0 into 2 x2 port. I have not heard any issue with this.

One customer was trying to do that on the upstream kernel, and he reported difficulties.

0.9.6

7

While KDE is great choice for most users I think that still there should be at least three variants:

  • KDE
  • Gnome (for those who hate first one)
  • CLI / server / minimal (for headless or base point for OMV or HA)

It should be not that hard to build those three, You can find such choice on many other distributions. Server version should be much smaller suitable for most DYI projects, just having core utils, ready to install whatever is needed.

Ability to turn off GUI it’s not the same as building small image:

  • no need to download 4x size image
  • may not fit on limited resources like smaller eMMC
  • there is no need to big clean up after first boot
  • always there are some leftovers after those

Great :slight_smile:

:ok_hand:

1 Like
8

Thanks for the update.
Does this new kernel still supports the SATA port using the official breakout board for the Rock 5B? If yes, where can I find the required DTS overlay?

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I’m not aware that 5B has a SATA breakout board. Can you link it?

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It’s here: https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/guide/sata

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It should be shipped in the system:

1 Like