Newer Linux with working SPI sought after

#1

Hi everyone,

I’m running my Zero in a Beepy. For it to work, I need SPI for the display and I2C for the keyboard.

The only configuration I was able to run both was using the official Ubuntu Focal image. However, that image obviously is ancient. :neutral_face:

I tried the official Kali and Armbian builds, but I couldn’t get SPI to work on both. On top of that, both (IIRC) are missing kernel headers, so I can’t build any drivers.

I even tried https://github.com/radxa-pkg/linux-stable for a newer kernel, but couldn’t get that configuration to run, not even on the Focal image.

Although I could live with an old kernel, I still would like to have current software, so Kali with it’s rolling release would be great, but as I said, no luck with the SPI there.

I assume a connection between SPI not working and the way parameters are passed to the boot process, but I’m not very familiar with SBC boot and U-Boot etc.

Any hints would be HIGHLY appreciated.

Cheers

#2

Ubuntu Focal is an LTS release so all the software should be updatable to current. If the kernel supports everything you need it to, sounds like the way to go.

Alternatively, Armbian has a fantastic build system that makes it a breeze to roll your own kernel with whatever patches and configuration you want. I just built 6.3 with the realtime patchset for my Rock64 the other day. It took forever but when it was done, it was just a matter of dpkg -i *.deb && reboot.