They have been around for a little while now. Had one in college ~4 years ago. Upstream kernel support was a little rough but spec wise they were impressive alternatives to the RPi 3B
Comment on Banana Pi's $31 BPI-WiFi 6 router runs a fork of OpenWrt - Liliputing
JimboDHimbo@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
…When tf did Banana Pi come out? I have a whole new option for SBCs now?? Dope.
Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 8 months ago
lambda@programming.dev 8 months ago
I’ve got multiple Orange Pi’s. They are pretty nice.
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 8 months ago
Banana Pi, Orange Pi, etc really took off a few years ago when raspberry pi got harder to find and was marked up like crazy. Even now it’s still more cost effective to buy the clones, and they’ve expanded their sbc offering to include features not available on the original pi.
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Though many of the alternatives have rather poor software and support, and as you can’t just load an iso meant for a raspi you have to do most stuff by yourself from scratch.
As an example, I have home assistant running on both a Raspi and an Orange Pi board. One of them was a simple iso flash and is still supported and updated, the other took few days of tinkering to sort out and the last time that board got a manufacturer Debian upgrade was in 2020.