Hi. I’ve been wondering - why aren’t Radxa desktop OS images provided with the GNOME desktop environment (I especially mean the 5 series)? And while I understand why one would like to use XFCE (it’s light), KDE is a completely different story.
It is of course only my personal opinion, but KDE is really heavy, buggy and glitchy in general (by nature, not because of Radxa).
GNOME or maybe even Cinnamon would be infinitely better options for someone who wants to use a DE on their board.
Sorry for the slooow reply.
I’m usually running openSUSE Tumbleweed with a Gnome desktop on my Rock 5B, but I keep comparing to other distributions. Right now I’m testing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, the version by Joshua Riek. The experience is well worth sharing.
Yep. I know about Joshua’s Ubuntu Rockchip.
In fact, his work is exactly why I created the topic in the first place.
While his images are absolutely fantastic when it comes to kernel updates and desktop-related stuff (especially hardware acceleration things like GPU support), he doesn’t support all the features that I need.
Some features I personally consider to be selling points for Radxa boards, like the CSI camera or the DSI displays. Those things are (as far as I know) only supported by Radxa.
While Radxa provides the support for those features, they don’t provide what Joshua images provide - a sensible DE, hardware acceleration for graphics, or certain drivers.
So… What I want to say here about Joshua’s vs Radxa images is that it’s always either good desktop experience or good accessory support - never both at the same time.
For example not providing a sensible desktop environment alongside hardware acceleration renders the DSI displays mostly useless.
P.S. Please understand - this is not a complaint or whining. I do not wish to complain for the sake of it or insult anyone’s work and efforts (neither Joshua’s nor Radxa’s). I only wish to bring some matters and arguments to the table, simply for the future. If things get done within like a year or so, I’ll be happy. I wish I could handle some of the things myself too, but I don’t have much knowledge about Linux development…
Support for GPU acceleration is slowly merging into official kernels so more effort could possibly be channeled into supporting the other hardware of the boards.
Right now I don’t even have working sound (neither onboard nor external) in openSUSE Tumbleweed so I’m typing this from a temporary Ubuntu system. My mindset is to make do with a minimal system and consider everything else a bonus.
…but it is usually possible to install another desktop environment from the repositories. One of my old machines had four installed at the same time, gnome, cinnamon, lxqt and kde. With a base distribution that gets the hardware working maybe a gnome DE can be installed on top of that? If that is possible then it would simply be a choice of which DE to choose when logging in.
The only thing lacking would be the acceleration of the graphics. …which is the level I have in tumbleweed right now. But as I said, acceleration is scheduled for the 6.9 and 6.10 kernel releases. I’ll be back waiting in tumbleweed as soon as the sound problem is sorted out.
Does that mean that there will be future kernels with better support out of the box already?
As to installing other DEs from repos - I already tried. Technically it’s possible, but requires much more work than just simply doing apt install. I can’t imagine how many configurations must be made to make them usable.
Once the code is inside the official Linux kernel all distributions can have the features. So when the panthor driver is released (possibly with the 6.10 kernel) then distributions like openSUSE Tumbleweed will have hardware acceleration too. Rolling releases (such as tumbleweed) will add the new functionality in days.
I tried adding another DE to this (on-SD-memory) Ubuntu system. I picked Cinnamon as it is one of the DE that help my friends wean themselves off their windows addiction. It took one apt install command. To me it is almost impossible to adjust cinnamon to fit me because I’m already “damaged” by Gnome. My gnome desktops, such as the one I have in tumbleweed, aren’t customized that much. Dark mode, a change to higher resolution audio and a Fira font or two and I’m quite satisfied. The hour I played around with modifying cinnamon resulted in an OK system. Usable. But I still haven’t figured out how to properly install fonts on an ubuntu system. I have to work on that. But I wrote today’s post on my blog from within cinnamon and chrome. Quite the change from gnome and firefox…
The thing is that you have time to experiment while waiting for stuff to be added to the official kernel. Learning to be fluent on more than one DE is annoying but useful if something goes awry with your usual system. The same reason makes a backup computer a good thing. Even a small and simple one may be sent from heaven. I’m actually proposing a computer-in-a-keyboard based on the Zero 3W in another thread. I think I would like such a computer as my backup unit.
Anyway… I haven’t properly tried ubuntu before and here I am on 24.04 LTS. Not quite official ubuntu, though, but close enough.
What I meant by saying “configurations” is that a DE installed directly from a repo doesn’t function very well - at least in my case. The GNOME that I installed was very laggy and stuttery out of the box.
The difference between having acceleration or not is like that, yes.
Riek’s Noble Numbat is much smoother than openSUSE’s tumbleweed for that reason. I use them both right now. I prefer tumbleweed but I’m probably streaming Eurovision Song Contest on the accelerated system tonight.
Yeah… Yeah… And if I remember correctly there were also some things missing in the settings and such.
In any case - I need both DSI and acceleration so neither Joshua’s Ubuntu nor Radxa’s official images work for me 
But… If you’re saying that acceleration support will be baked into a future kernel version then that’s cool.
Hello. What method are you using to install Tumbleweed? And do you know if the install can be performed on eMMC?
I used the edk2 UEFI (on a SD memory)
https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588/releases/download/v0.9.1/rock-5b_UEFI_Release_v0.9.1.img
Then I installed the system using the DVD install image.
http://download.opensuse.org/ports/aarch64/factory/iso/openSUSE-Tumbleweed-DVD-aarch64-Current.iso
I haven’t tried eMMC. The system is installed on a NVMe SSD.
Hello Hukka,
I am with opensuse tumbleweed iso started with edk2 from sd-card.
ACPI and DBT both setting does not start my iso,only acpi works
I get the plasma desktop running but I am missing wifi with AX210 from my m2 card,broadcom usb-stick works.
Sound also is not detected…
What is you hardware?
My nvme is detected.
Is Gnome better working than KDE?
My opensuse is the latest version.
regards
Uli
My hardware is a Rock 5B 8GB with an Intel AX200 and a WD 250 GB NVMe. My system starts from a EDK2 UEFI firmware on the SPI. The rest of the OS is on the NVMe.
The network card is detected and set up during boot in Tumbleweed but is hard blocked by rfkill (airplane hostage mode). I use a Ethernet cable connected to the router. I heard some rumours that this would be fixed in kernel 6.9.X but as of 6.9.4 it is still hard locked.
The internal sound is not detected but I’ve been using an external EVO4 recording interface for a couple of years anyway. My bass guitar is easier to connect to the computer that way. The EVO4 also supplies the output signal to the small class-D amplifier that drives my Sony speakers.
My desktop of choice is Gnome. Haven’t tested KDE in years. Can’t compare.
I compare Tumbleweed to Joshua Riek’s Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for the Rock 5B. The latter has better support for the hardware at this time, but I prefer RPM distributions so most of the time I’m using Tumbleweed. Riek’s Ubuntu has panfork (not panthor) GPU drivers and is much smoother. It also unlocks the AX200 bluetooth5/wifi6 card.
Oh… I have the UEFI firmware set to use ACPI.
@RadxaYuntian I share the same opinion… why kde and not gnome? I get that KDE received an upgrade but its a bloated DE full of too many useless options… Gnome is just that minimal take…
I can never use kde… just… annoys me.
Are we starting a DE war again? If it is just for me I’d rather support Hyprland only.
We picked KDE over GNOME because KDE’s design language is similar to Windows. GNOME still gives me tablet vibe.
We were close with Manjaro team during that time, so that also influenced the decision (since they use KDE as well).
This is by nature. We work with Rockchip closely to solve hardware usability issues, but this also limits us to their supported software releases. Joshua is free to do whatever he wants and pick whatever components that is just released. We can’t do that.
We are already getting a lot of trouble for having our own system builder, since we are no longer tracking every random configuration files they put in the rootfs without a package. But this is required for us to set up an apt package repository service to support online upgrade.
Yeah I cant disagree. At the end of the day the cli image for all tastes is all we need.
Oh, really? You chose that sluggish, broken bugfest over something that just works? Fantastic.
KDE doesn’t even work well on normal desktop, let alone an SBC…
Speak for yourself. Even if I mostly agree with this, some people still need the graphical stuff, especially with hardware acceleration. And while hardware acceleration isn’t strictly DE-related, some things just work and some things just don’t…
My personal needs aside - we’re doing some work with interactive visualizations right now and Raspberry Pi for example just can’t compete against RK3588 boards with proper software. On top of that, boards and displays other than Radxa’s are just too expensive.
I cant believe what I just read… Well you… are on your own… good luck.