# Journey into the Darkness

## Ch. 7: The Bolt Fiasco

While I was certainly enjoying the command line as the sole means of using computer, there were some things I was interested in which required installing X and a window manager.  I've always loved trains and wanted to make 3D models of steam locomotives in Blender, while coding in Lua was actually prompted by the game Minetest and a desire to write my own mods.  Occasionally there were times when GIMP was needed, while the mapping project used QGIS since it was easy to use and was apparently the only tool capable of doing what I wanted, but I'd since moved out of the place where the ancient XP machine was that ran it.  Playing Minetest on the T430 was only marginally better than the other machines which had come and gone, while Blender had introduced the Evee rendering engine which was too much for this old machine, let alone rendering with Cycles.  I'd been keeping up with the development of single board computers since the first Raspberry Pi hit the market and was thinking of many projects that would make 
use of them, so I was quite pleased to discover the Udoo Bolt v8, the answer to all of my problems.  Or so I thought...

First, this board was expensive, almost $600 for the kit I purchased.  I don't usually have this kind of money to spend on a computer, let alone something so experimental as the Bolt.  Second, it does not have the same degree of support as the Raspberry Pi or a normal desktop, so it was expected to have some issues which I figured would be sorted out with time.  Based on the PassMark score it would be slightly faster than the HP Z600, so it seemed worthy of adding to the arsenal.  Maybe I could build a briefcase computer with some software defined radios or something, possibly even replace the T430 as the daily driver since it could accommodate three SSDs at once. It came with 8GB RAM like the T430, but the only storage was a 32GB eMMC device which happens to be the root of most of my problems with this board. Apparently the required AMD driver is missing from the 4.x Linux kernel but is present in the (broken) 5.x series.

The officially supported operating system was Ubuntu 18.04 with a patched kernel that included the missing driver, so I tried that first.  Soon enough it was discovered that the onboard headphone jack doesn't even work, but HDMI audio output was functioning and would be of no use to me.  In fact, Ubuntu was the only OS I could install on this board that provided ANY audio output. Trying the USB DAC was also met with disappointment as it went undetected. While this board does include an Arduino Leonardo built-in, I never bothered testing it under Ubuntu.  The blinking amber LED on the board would be a constant reminder of just how much I don't like Arduino, especially after trying to use TinyGo without success.  How dare this machine mock me so!

Often my lack of patience will lead to making hasty decisions.  One example is the portable 15" FHD monitor which was purchased specifically for this board. I truly thought I'd make a portable workstation to replace the T430, never-mind how annoying it would be to set everything up and tear it down again.  It was nice to have a single USB-C cable to provide power and video, but the display would never leave the desk.

I was very pleased to find that Void could be installed and made it the primary operating system for this machine, having since abandoned the QGIS map project after a failed attempt to build it from source.  With the 15" FHD display the console font was too small for my liking, but that didn't matter since the Bolt was intended for graphical applications anyway. Playing Minetest was not only possible but also a lot smoother, so I'd throw away countless hours building railroads and experimenting with mods. Blender ran quite smoothly and rendered images more than three times faster, so I would sometimes use the Bolt for offline rendering to get the most out of it.  Then at some point I decided QGIS was needed, so the time came to find another OS that didn't have systemd but would likely have QGIS in the repos. Not only would this be a frustrating experience, it would also reveal just how incompatible the Bolt is with other operating systems.

None of the BSDs could be installed.  For reasons I never figured out, NetBSD wouldn't boot from the flash drive.  OpenBSD didn't recognize the 15" FHD display for what it was and insisted on 80x25 output, which was a colossal waste of pixels since it only occupied a small square in the middle of the screen.  I never figured out if that could be fixed because the eMMC drive wasn't even detected.  FreeBSD might have been different because the boot logs showed something about 'mmc', but it would freeze up within the first few seconds of booting, getting stuck at something about ACPI. I did manage to install Manjaro and even kept it for about a week, despite knowing that it had systemd.  This is essentially Arch with a few changes to make it more friendly for new users who don't want to subject themselves to the painful experience that is installing Arch manually.

There were two options that stood out for being minimal and free of systemd; Obarun and Artix.  They are both forked from Arch and seemed like the best choices at the time.  I don't remember that much about these experiments, but some digging turned up a set of notes I made about the two.  What I do remember is that Obarun was offered with either runit or the s6/66 combo, though it has since dropped runit.  Artix provided runit, s6 and OpenRC on the same ISO and allowed the user to choose during installation.  The decision was made to use Obarun with s6/66, while Artix would just have runit since I was not willing to experiment with multiple init systems at once.  That would just be too much for this feeble brain to handle.  Both operating systems were installed on the Bolt and even the T430, but of course I wouldn't keep them. As it turns out, networking issues that would plague Void began around this time and affected the wireless card in the Bolt.  Apparently neither Obarun nor Artix could use the 5GHz ba
nd, but 2.4GHz was working after switching to a different driver.

In my notes on Obarun, it's mentioned that testing was "extremely brief", and based on the results it must have been on the T430.  The desired software was of course available since it uses the Arch repos and the whole system was on par with Void in terms of overall speed, RAM usage and battery life (T430). Apparently Calf was also working since the notes mention "DSP" and dtach which could only be a reference to the startup scripts I wrote for this. Unlike Void and more in line with a Debian-based distro, Obarun included more software in the base ISO.  Some tools that came pre-installed were lynx, nano and mc among others for the console, which I felt was thoughtful but unnecessary.  While it's not particularly detailed, there is a note about /sys/ being more useful for a system status script I'd written, but I cannot imagine how this would be true since each kernel update would break the script by changing the paths to the virtual files.  Then the first mention of the init system comes along with my inabil
ity to set up networking under Obarun, revealing the main reason why I didn't like this OS.  I'll just quote the original statement;

> On Obarun, it's f#!$ing impossible to get wifi and sshd working thanks to the
> use of s6 and 66, both of which are supposed to be simpler and better
> replacements for the nightmare that is systemd.  Personally I preferred the
> simplicity of runit since it worked with next to no effort, but with this
> setup it's confusing and more complicated than it should be.

Having been quite disappointed by Obarun, I moved on to Artix which turned out to be just as painful to install as plain old Arch.  Sadly the notes are quite sparse, which is unhelpful in understanding just what was wrong with Artix that led to its swift abandonment.  Perhaps I was too loyal to Void and unwilling to leave it.  Somewhere in these notes was a colorful reference to the Bolt being "a needle in the dick", apparently referring to all of the problems uncovered during these experiments.  While I have no idea what that might feel like, I'm sure the pain would be just excruciating. It shouldn't be too surprising since the board was quite expensive and unlikely to get a lot of attention compared to more affordable options.

Recently I tried installing Obarun on the Bolt again to see what I was missing, only to find that networking was notworking.  The machine had an IP address but insisted on acting like it didn't, thereby preventing the installer from even moving forward.  Somehow I failed to think of testing WiFi instead of relying on the Ethernet connection, calling it a dud before I could properly judge it. Surfing the systemd-free community revealed Artix had been dropped from their 'hardcore' list, but antiX was still there.  This is a Debian fork that strives to be COMPLETELY free from anything systemd.  Of course I had to have it, but unfortunately it was missing the driver needed to see the eMMC device.  I was not in the mood to mess around with kernel patching and compiling, so I quit. I'm sure adding a proper SSD would have solved many of the problems with OS compatibility, but their cost and the presence of the T430 with three SSDs would prevent me from even bothering, until one fateful day in 2023 when... Well we'l
l get to that soon enough.

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