Would this ARMv8 board work with generic-aarch64 image?

Product support balenaOS
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Found the Libre Computer (Le Potato) board on Amazon, still for a reasonable price. I’m guessing it would work with the generic aarch image, but just double checking with the community to make sure before making the investment.

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Hello, Luandro

I’m not familiar with this particular board, but the generic-aarch64 device type image is built to support a wide range of hardware, so long as the boot process is UEFI compatible. For example, ARM server hardware such as AWS Graviton should work without issue.

Some boards, such as the Pi 4, also have experimental implementations of UEFI firmware, and u-boot itself can be configured to support UEFI booting. Consequently, it may be possible to modify the generic-aarch64 image with a customized build of u-boot that chainloads GRUB in cases where the board itself doesn’t ship a UEFI implementation.

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It’s a lot pricier, but one option that should work is the Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC, which supports UEFI. We haven’t tried it ourselves, but the generic-aarch64 image should boot and run.

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Thanks for all the info @jakogut, I’ll have to do some investigation around UEFI to learn more.

The appeal for the Libre Computer is the still cheap price-tag, and availability. But the Firefly ROC is quite an impressive machine, for a resonable price, thanks for the tip.

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This is the board featured in the IoT Happy Hour #45: Building balenaOS for a Device.

@dtischler have you pushed the support for this board to the official balena-allwinner repo?

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The Libre Computer “Le Potato” board uses an ARMv8 processor, which means it’s a 64-bit ARM chip (also called aarch64). In most cases, this kind of board can run a generic aarch64 image of Linux, like Ubuntu or Debian, but it’s always smart to check for hardware support like Wi-Fi, video, or camera features. If you want to use apps like PhotoRoom APK, which works on Android, you’d need to install an Android-based system or use an Android emulator on the board. Since Le Potato supports Android builds, you could install one and then run the PhotoRoom APK to edit photos, remove backgrounds, or create visuals for social media. It’s a budget-friendly way to build a small photo-editing device, especially useful for people learning digital tools or running a small business. Just make sure the Android version you install is compatible with the APK file.