After adapting VisionFive 1, VisionFive 2, SG2042 and other development boards, the deepin RISC-V SIG has recently successfully adapted the deepin operating system on the LicheePi 4A development board! This achievement once again demonstrates deepin's breakthrough in promoting the development of the RISC-V ecosystem.
LicheePi 4A: High Performance Development Board with Multi-Core Heterogeneity
It is reported that LicheePi 4A is a Linux development board designed by Sipeed using TH1520 chip as the main control core, which is the strongest RISC-V SBC up to now (2023Q2).
LicheePi 4A contains 4 x Gentech C910 CPU cores, onboard maximum 16GB 64bit LPDDR4X, 128GB eMMC, and supports rich peripherals, including dual Gigabit network interface, USB 3.0 interface, HDMI+MIPI display output, etc. The LicheePi 4A is a Linux development board with TH1520 chip as the main control core, which is the strongest RISC-V SBC up to now (2023Q2). These rich hardware features make the LicheePi 4A a powerful and flexible development platform that provides developers with robust performance to meet the needs of various application scenarios.
Photo credit: Sipeed
New development: deepin successfully adapts to LicheePi 4A
The deepin image for the LicheePi 4A board has been released and is now available for download. The image is based on the latest deepin v23 beta, created on the RISC-V branch of deepin-ports, and utilizes the kernel adapted by revyos for the LicheePi 4A. The kernel is adapted from revyos for LicheePi 4A. After the adaptation and testing by RISC-V SIG, wired network, wireless network, USB port, HDMI output, etc. can be used normally, and the DDE desktop environment is running normally.
The RISC-V branch of deepin-ports has finished adapting most of the packages on the deepin mainline, and will soon be integrated into the mainline. This image adopts the latest results of the adaptation work, equipped with the DDE desktop environment and the browser and other basic functions, and has been tested to be able to meet the daily office and development work, and can obtain a wealth of software resources that have been adapted to RISC-V through the package manager.
DDE is a complete set of desktop environment realized by deepin development team, the front-end desktop components are developed by Qt and Dtk, and the back-end is developed by C++/golang, which realizes a lot of user services and session manager, and the support of a lot of upper-layer application software enriches the ecology of RISC-V software.
Pre-installed Software List
- - System Basics: sudo, neofetch, networkmanager, etc.
- - Desktop environment: dde, lightdm, etc.
- - Desktop experience: deepin-movie, deepin-terminal, deepin-diskmanager, dde-introduction, firefox, etc.
- - Utilities: neofetch, tmux, vim, bash-completion, etc.
- - Kernel: linux-5.10.113-lpi4a (from revyos's revyos-kernel repository)
Note: Due to the limitations of the card storage size, there are not many applications installed in the image, if you need to experience other applications, please use apt online installation.
Keeping up the good work: Improving the deepin & RISC-V ecosystems
Of course, there are some known issues with the image. Since the Imagination driver for LicheePi 4A is not yet fully open-sourced, the rendering uses llvmpipe as a software alternative, so some desktop effects are not available at the moment. deepin will continue to keep an eye on the progress of the open-sourcing of the related graphics driver and the merger of the main lines, and will update the mirrors in due course. In addition, the merger of the RISC-V branch into the mainline is also in the work plan and will be carried out gradually in the future.
Currently, the adaptation of LicheePi 4A is in full swing, and we will improve the basic support, fix bugs, and further improve the stability of operation. At the same time, we will continue to develop more new features and follow up on the latest RISC-V developments. With the release of the new product, deepin will be adapted to more RISC-V architecture devices in the future.
Download the image at：https://cdimage.deepin.com/RISC-V/LicheePi4A-image/
We sincerely hope that this adaptation can inject new vitality into the RISC-V ecosystem, and we look forward to more interested parties joining the deepin RISC-V SIG to discuss more about RISC-V and contribute to the deepin & RISC-V ecosystem.
Entrance to deepin RISC-V SIG: https://github.com/deepin-community/sig-deepin-riscv64