Linux on the MK808 - Rockchip RK3066 & RK3188 devices

According to many sources distros like Ubuntu/Debian work well on RK3066 devices such as MK808, UG802, etc.

From Wikipedia:

Quote

The RK3066 is a high performance Cortex A9 Dual Core mobile processor similar to the Samsung Exynos 4 Dual Core chip. In terms of performance, the RK3066 is between the Samsung Exynos 4210 and the Samsung Exynos 4212.[9][10][11][12]

40 nm
Dual-core Cortex-A9 processor (ARMv7 architecture) clocked up to 1.6 GHz
NEON SIMD support
Quad core Mali 400, clocked at 250 MHz supporting Open GL ES 2.0, Open VG 1.1 support, 9 GFLOPS
VPU (Video Processing Unit) Multi-Media Processor supporting 1080p image and video decoding
DDR, DDR2, DDR3 support, up to 2 GB
HDMI 1.4 Interface
2-channels TFT LCD Interface with 5 layers and 3D Display (1920×1080 Maximum Display Size)
USB 2.0 Interface
SD/MMC Interface

The RockChip RK3066 is a dual-core SoC with quad-core Mali-400MP4.
Benchmarks show the RK3066 is faster than quad-core iMX6q, Actions ATM7029, and has near the cpu performance of the Allwinner A31, Here is a YouTube video comparing the MK808 against the GK802. The A31 GPU is faster, but it won't be able to work under Linux due to the closed PowerVR GPU. The RK3066 uses Mali. Therefore we would have much better luck getting Rockchip GPU acceleration than with the Allwinner A31.

The RK3188 is quad-core A9 with Mali-400MP4. The RK3188 is much faster than Samsung Exynos 4, Actions ATM7029, or even Allwinner A31. While the closed PowerVR GPU in the A31 is slightly faster, according to Tabletrepublic:

Quote

Compared with Allwinner A31 and Actions ATM7029, the RK3188 uses Cortex-A9 architecture which makes it performs much better than both of them. . . It’s definitely the most powerful quad core tablet PC at present.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2013 09:50AM by gnexus.

Since nobody is posting yet on this thread, and I would like to see more info about Linux on Rockchip devices, I have a few more links to add to the thread in hopes somebody might be interested in getting one and helping to improve Linux on the devices:

The rk3066-linux project is at http://code.google.com/p/rk3066-linux/

Omegamoon is working with the MK808, and has sucessfully compiled the Android kernel for Rk3066. Here is his Github repo with kernel sources.

Miniand has a forum page on running Picuntu on the MK808

Here is a page on installing Picuntu on the MK808

Geekbuying has the MK808 for $44

Amazon has the MK808 for $47.94 & FREE Shipping

Certainly there are TONS of MK808 on AliExpress starting at $43.89 with free shipping



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2013 09:12AM by gnexus.

FYI, Mk808 on Aliexpress are around $50 still. $27 price you see is seller bundling a mouse with the MK808 and making it a 2 piece lot. So the real price is $27x2 = $54 for both MK808+mouse.

Quote

real price is $27x2 = $54

Must be same people seling as with the same type of GK802 bundle. . .

I just glanced at the lowest price since I'm not interested in buying one. Corrected my post. Thanks for the update!

Is there any news of Linux on the 3188? Any hope that the 3066 distros will work on the 3188?

I try to buy and MK802 on Amazon. However, instead I received a "Mini TV for android, Dual-Core A9 Processor", covered by a label "Mini Android PC. The device information shows it is an MK808 with Android 4.1. I found there is a step by step instruction to install Picuntu Linux. Just wondering if anybody have tried this one yet?
One question I have is if I follow the instructions, can I still boot into the current Android? Thanks in advance for your help.

A guy from Rikomagic has just released the Linux source code for RK3188 devices. I hope we can see soon Picuntu for RK3188 based TV sticks.
http://www.rikomagic.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4696&p=14002#p14002


Regards.

Thank you for the link.

I always had problems with MK808 for installing Linux (Debian or Ubuntu) and a kind giving up. I had much better luck with MK802. Recently, I tried this new distribution called "danuntu" and had good results. The lxde and KDE images worked fine on my MK808 while previous images did not. I didn't try the other desktop versions but I am sure they should be fine also. The only issue I had was the wifi does not work with the script provided. I then edited the "interfaces" (wifi is handled by eth0, not wlan0) and the "wpa_supplicant.conf" files. It works fine now.
Just want to share my experience with anybody interested.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2014 06:04PM by twinclouds.