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More Allwinner docs updates
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Both kernels are stable and production ready, but you should use them for different purpuses since their basic support differ:
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- legacy: video acceleration, NAND support, connecting displays
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- mainline: headless server, light desktop operations
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- mainline: headless server, office desktop operations (not multimedia oriented)
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## Legacy ##
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System images with legacy kernel
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### Bugs or limitation ###
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- NAND install sometime fails. Dirty but working workaround: install [Lubuntu to NAND](http://dl.cubieboard.org/software/a20-cubietruck/lubuntu/) with [Phoenix tools](http://docs.cubieboard.org/downloads) and run install again.
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- NAND install sometime fails. Workaround: install [Lubuntu to NAND](http://dl.cubieboard.org/software/a20-cubietruck/lubuntu/) with [Phoenix tools](http://docs.cubieboard.org/downloads) and run install again.
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- Shutdown results into reboot under certain conditions.
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## Mainline ##
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- [Mainline](http://www.kernel.org/) with large hardware support, headers and some firmware included
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- [Docker ready](User-Guide_Advanced-Features/#how-to-run-docker)
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- Enabled audio devices: analog & USB playback
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- Enabled audio devices: analog, SPDIF (if available) & USB
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- [USB / UAS](http://linux-sunxi.org/USB/UAS) – more efficient disk access over USB (A20 and H3)
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- [CAN bus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus) – Controller Area Network
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- [USB OTG connector](http://linux-sunxi.org/USB_Gadget) – OTG or host mode
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### Bugs or limitation ###
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- No HW acceleration for desktop and video decoding
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- NAND is not supported yet.
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- NAND is not supported yet
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- Screen output from kernel is set to HDMI by default. Boot loader can detect and switch, kernel not.
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- HDMI audio is not supported yet
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- SATA port multiplier support is disabled by default, can be enabled by adding kernel parameter `ahci_sunxi.enable_pmp=1`
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**Overview**
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The H3 SoC from Allwinner is meant for OTT boxes and is therefore _not_ accompanied by a separate PMIC (power management IC) unlike most other Allwinner SoCs. No PMIC support means also that there's no battery charging/monitoring implemented so H3 is not that much suited for mobile devices. On the other hand some pretty cheap H3 boards were released that can be driven with rather low consumption and therefore combining H3 devices with a battery became a real use case with boards like [Orange Pi One/Lite](http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_Lite), NanoPi [NEO](http://linux-sunxi.org/FriendlyARM_NanoPi_NEO) or the upcoming NanoPi Air.
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The H3 SoC from Allwinner is meant for OTT boxes and is therefore its reference design is _not_ accompanied by a separate PMIC (power management IC) unlike A series Allwinner SoCs (A10, A20, A64, ...). No PMIC means also that there's no battery charging/monitoring implemented so H3 is not that much suited for mobile devices. On the other hand some pretty cheap H3 boards were released that can be driven with rather low consumption and therefore combining H3 devices with a battery became a real use case with boards like [Orange Pi One/Lite](http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_Lite), NanoPi [NEO and Neo AIR](http://linux-sunxi.org/FriendlyARM_NanoPi_NEO).
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As usual [SoC](http://linux-sunxi.org/H3) and [device information](http://linux-sunxi.org/Category:H3_Devices) can be found in linux-sunxi wiki. Same applies to status of [mainlining kernel efforts](http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort). Adding to the usual SoC feature set (I2C, SPI, PWM, UART, SDIO, GPIO and so on) H3 has one USB OTG port, 3 real USB host ports (not exposed on all devices), Fast and Gigabit Ethernet capablities (board specific), a Mali400MP2 GPU and Allwinner's video encoding/decoding engine.
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When CPU or GPU cores are fully utilized H3 tends to overheat over time like any other popular ARM SoC released within the last 2-3 years. With Armbian we provide sane dvfs settings (dynamic voltage frequency scaling) that help a lot with throttling but in case you plan to operate your H3 device constantly under high load please check Armbian forums first since boards behave differently (related to voltage regulation and PCB size and design -- some use copper layers to spread the heat away from the SoC). Also consider applying a heatsink to the SoC (a fan should not be necessary unless you want to do number crunching on your board and then you obviously chose the wrong device).
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When CPU or GPU cores are fully utilized H3 tends to overheat over time like any other popular ARM SoC released within the last 2-3 years. With Armbian we provide sane dvfs (dynamic voltage frequency scaling) settings that help a lot with throttling. In case you plan to operate your H3 device constantly under high load please check Armbian forums first since boards behave differently (related to voltage regulation and PCB size and design -- some use copper layers to spread the heat away from the SoC). Also consider applying a heatsink to the SoC (a fan should not be necessary unless you want to do number crunching on your board and then you obviously chose the wrong device).
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You find some [differentiation criteria regarding supported H3 devices as well as an overview/history of H3 software support in our forums](http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1351-h3-board-buyers-guide/) or use Jean-Luc's [nice comparison table](http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/06/08/allwinner-h3-boards-comparison-tables-with-orange-pi-banana-pi-m2-nanopi-p1-and-h3-olinuxino-nano-boards/#comments) (both slightly outdated since more H3 devices have been released in the meantime)
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**Kernel support**
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Due to H3's overheating tendencies a working throttling implementation is important when more heavy workloads should run on the board. This is implemented in legacy kernel (settings have been improved a lot by linux-sunxi community and us compared to Allwinner's defaults) but not yet in mainline kernel which is one of the reasons that prevent us from releasing Armbian images with mainline kernel. The other reason is the Ethernet driver still being WiP in mainline kernel. So while you currently only get legacy images in download area you can already try to build your own images with kernel 4.x using our build system and choosing _dev_ branch.
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Due to H3's overheating tendencies a working throttling implementation is important when more heavy workloads should run on the board. This is implemented in legacy kernel (settings have been improved a lot by linux-sunxi community and us compared to Allwinner's defaults), but in mainline kernel it is still Work-in-Progress which is one of the reasons that prevent us from releasing Armbian images with mainline kernel. The other reason is the Ethernet driver still being WiP in mainline kernel. So while you currently only get legacy images in download area you can already try to build your own images with kernel 4.x using our build system and choosing _dev_ branch or use prebuilt nightly images for some boards.
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Armbian legacy images for H3 devices are based on Allwinner's 3.4.39 BSP/Android kernel with +100 patches on top to fix countless security issues and to add features (we're using 3.4.112 at the time of this writing). This kernel supports nearly all SoC features and thanks to the awesome linux-sunxi community we provide also HW accelerated video decoding with desktop images (please use the included mpv player, more app support is WiP).
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Armbian legacy images for H3 devices are based on Allwinner's 3.4.39 BSP/Android kernel with +100 patches on top to fix countless security issues and to add features (we're using 3.4.113 at the time of this writing). This kernel supports nearly all SoC features and thanks to the awesome linux-sunxi community we provide also HW accelerated video decoding with desktop images (please use the included mpv player for this).
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Please don't expect most of these features to be available when we provide mainline kernel images, those are more suited for headless/server operation and will shine in areas like networking or IO performance. Please have a look at what to expect again in [linux-sunxi wiki](http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS#New_opportunities_with_mainline_kernel)
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