After 11 tries CIX P1 mailbox driver got put into mainline for 6.17.
It is an almost empty DTS but I think that as of 6.17 or 6.18 enough stuff is now in the kernel that someone should be able to add the IGPU to the DTS (along with most other on-board features) and get it working.
There has been some progress on new feature enablement for the BIOS, but they haven’t put out a new release in a while.
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Do we have any update what or if they will enable all 12 cores in a mainline (kernel or bios)?
all 12 cores are enabled on any recent bios (3.x whatever) it just isn’t the certified systemready one but basically a further developed one
Huh. I tried that (they even pushed this to 1.0.0 https://github.com/radxa-pkg/edk2-cix/releases) but doesn’t run my (mainline) image (I might have to test the DT/ACPI settings). I would wish we would have one stable bios which does it all.
You need to enable ACPI of course to use mainline
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meco - doesn’t work with the Radeon WX5100 in the PCIe slot (even if “disabled” - no output connected) - neither 3.0,3.1 or 1.0 work. Loads kernel, runs boot console but is stuck when the AMDGPU driver loads.
System Ready BIOS (9.0.0) works fine, but only sees 8 cores. Internal GPU does not work when the Radeon is installed. With System Ready, both ARM and AMD GPU work in console mode, as soon as the AMDGPU driver loads, Mali GPU turns off.
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Does anyone know how to overclock the orion o6? Ive seen people do it but no real guide. I use acpi mode with ubuntu and an rx 7700xt works great but i want more performance.
Hello everyone!
I recently bought the 64 GB RAM version of this motherboard, which came with UEFI 0.3.1-1 .
I’ve installed Debian from the ISO image available on the official Radxa wiki.
I’m noticing some strange behavior with the USB-C ports , and I hope @RadxaYuntian or someone from the team can help me understand what’s going on.
Setup
I’m using an Orico USB-C hub that connects:
- My monitor (via USB-C),
- Keyboard and mouse ,
- Other peripherals.
The hub also provides power through the same USB-C cable.
Tests and Results
- Only USB-C Hub Connected
- The motherboard powers on automatically and boots.
- Video: No output on the monitor (via USB-C).
- Peripherals: All devices on the hub work correctly .
- To get video, I must connect the monitor directly via HDMI .
- Radxa USB-C Power Supply + Hub + HDMI
- Power from the Radxa USB-C power adapter.
- After the board boots, I connect the hub and monitor via HDMI.
- Video: Works via HDMI.
- Peripherals: None of the devices from the hub are detected.
- ATX PSU + HDMI + Hub
- Powered through ATX 24-pin.
- Monitor via HDMI, hub connected as usual.
- Video: Works via HDMI.
- Peripherals: Not recognized.
- ATX PSU + USB-C Display + Hub
- ATX power, monitor via USB-C, hub connected.
- Video: Works via USB-C.
- Peripherals: Again, not detected.
Depending on how I power and connect the board:
- With only the USB-C hub , the system boots and peripherals work, but there’s no video output .
- With ATX or dedicated USB-C power , I get video , but peripherals stop working .
Could this be related to USB-C power-delivery negotiation , or some firmware limitation on the USB controller?
Any ideas or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards
I can only confirm that USB-C Power+Video works with my acer monitor directly connected. Do you have a PCIe GPU attached perhaps?
Do not connect multiple power sources. Can you remove power to the hub and try again?
In case anyone’s interested, Ubuntu Server 25.10 appears to work with the Orion O6.
My device is: 64GB, BIOS 0.3.1-1, ACPI mode.
Notes:
- Network seems fine (though I did have to manually enable DHCP but I suspect that’s because I had no network plugged in during install).
- No proper Immortalis G720 drivers yet (I think that lands in Kernel 6.18 - Ubuntu 25.10 stocks 6.17).
- No NPU support (not sure when that’ll come?).
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There will be no gpu driver with kernel 6.18 because the driver need gpu node in devicetree, while no such thing in mainline kernel.
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Forgive my naivete here, but shouldn’t ACPI mode make it so that the GPU can be auto-detected (doesn’t need the device tree)?
panthor driver doesn’t support ACPI.
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Hello,amazingfate,nice to see you with this board.
Hope you will support Orion like you did with Rock 5B.
Thanks for your support.
Uli
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there has been some progress on that front
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That’s not upstream, so I wouldn’t say so. IMHO people who are not running upstream operating systems shouldn’t care whether they are using ACPI mode at all.
According to my understanding, the GPU needs to be on a bus that supports device enumeration such as PCIe (which is pretty much the case on x86 platforms, at least logically), which the SoC fabric or however you want to call it isn’t, and ACPI doesn’t help. Well, UEFI gives you a basic framebuffer device via the GOP services, but that’s not what we are after, of course.
Now, if you control both the firmware and the OS kernel (and possibly the userspace part of the GPU driver) like CIX (and by extension Radxa) does, that doesn’t preclude you from creating your own private “interface” between UEFI and the kernel, which would work around that issue. Whether your solution would be acceptable upstream is an entirely different matter, though.
In fact, that’s what Qualcomm is ostensibly doing with their Snapdragon-based devices on Windows, even though the latter run some form of UEFI in ACPI mode (since that’s what Windows is used to). That’s why there is no such thing as a generic Windows ISO image that would run on any Snapdragon-based device (at least until recently - I am not sure about the latest generation that has been announced not very long ago) and that’s why Linux requires the use of device trees on those machines.
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Intel / AMD iGPU‘s aren’t PCIe either. This is not something unusual. Only thing unusual is the Mali driver which was never intended for desktop class computing at first now needing desktop standards in the driver and that’s coming alone. Cix just backported to 6.13 Panthor to their 6.6 BSP and added the parts that makes Panthor be able to use the Mali ACPI description.
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That’s what I meant by “logically”. Technically they are not PCIe devices, I suppose, but as far as I can tell they present themselves as such (and they appear in the list from lspci, for example), so the OS can enumerate them normally without any special handling. I am not aware of any Arm-based device that behaves that way.
I will be very happy to be proven wrong, of course.
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My 2c to after a while… I finally got my (installed) OSs working with the 3.3.1 BIOS. Of the shelve Fedora 43 and Ubuntu Desktop 25.10 images work out of the box, also.
Now it runs mainline Fedora 43 working (kernel 6.17.x) and to my surprise, my Nvidia RTX5060 is actually working with the off the shelve NVIDIA 580 driver from the Fedora/Ubuntu repo (in a Node 202 with a PCIe 3.0 riser). So, now I have all 12 cores working with an RTX5060.
In Ubuntu 25.10 I can install the drivers but no idea why it does not switch over to the that card - it boots into the Mali GPU (internal HDMI, lvmpipe driver, no panfrost) screen, but fails loading the Nvidia driver or loads it but it does not expand to the “second” GPU for some reason. It also does not switch from Mali to Nvidia. So, desktop just boots into the Mail GPU (with KDE Plasma 6.5). Fedora 43 does just that, it loads the NVidia drivers and then launches sddm on the 5060.
The 5060 does not show the BIOS screen nor a proper boot screen (plymouth) but it runs sddm and gdm3 just fine.
I can run 4 screens on the 5060 (all 4 outputs are working), but not both, the the nvidia and the mali (with 6 screens). That would be neat. I boot into UEFI over another screen through the internal HDMI if I need to change BIOS settings.
Steam works with FEX on Ubuntu, and theoretical on Fedora, too, but on the 5060 in Fedora it crashes with a Steam boot error (I need yet to figure out why). It also shows an error with a missing 32bit lib but in Ubuntu with the same error it starts the Steam frontend just fine.
It did run in Ubuntu with my Radeon WX5100 but not really playable on that card (low on 1080p with some older games) and I can get the 5060 working there, so can’t say if its actually a GPU thing.
I had no luck with the RX9060XT - shows a black screen only (could be the PCIe5.0 card in a PCIe 3.0 riser - that card is pretty finicky even in my other AMD boards). I have another RX6700XT in another build (was to lazy to rip that out) and my 7900XT does not fit into my case. So, no luck for Radeon cards beyond the aging WX5100 - but that one works great, incl. BIOS, Themed GRUB and Plymouth boot screen.
Maybe I take it apart some day and test all the Radeon cards, at least RDN2 cards (6700) should work and I am curious what real game performance on that card would be. Grid Autosport on the WX5100 @ 1080 is kinda playable. The O6 is may daily driver (I do SW/cloud dev) and that’s actually a perfectly capable machine @ 40-60W (incl. GPU).
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