this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
147 points (98.7% liked)
Linux
56366 readers
564 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
is RISCV mature enough for desktop use? Are there chips based on RISCV that would at least be as good as a AMD/Intel or ARM chips?
If you like working in slow motion, yes, sure.
Source : I have a Banana-Pi SBC https://www.banana-pi.org/en/banana-pi-sbcs/175.html and... it works, running Linux proper, with a desktop environment, which is in itself pretty cool IMHO but damn, you have to be patient. That being said "just" already being at that stage on economically affordable hardware is amazing. We are probably not far, say few years at most, with usable RISC-V chips for mundane tasks, e.g. text authoring, coding, Web browsing, but don't expect compilation of a browser, Blender, or gaming on this for few more years. IMHO it will go fast because it's catching up so the path is rather well laid down, which is much harder than innovating and pushing the envelope.
I wonder if the US is trying to slow down the development of RISCV in order to mantain egemony over chip production. I think RISCV poses a big "security" flaw for them being totally open source.
In what way does it pose a big security flaw? And what are you basing the thought that the USA are slowing down development?
Being an open source architecture gives everyone (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and basically everyone else the US doesn't like, which apparently is most of world) the freedom to innovate at a fast pace, this is what I mean by security flaw. My thought that they could somewhat try to slow down the development is based on the rational thinking that 1. They are actually leading the chip develpment and 2. if someday everyone gets high performance chips (which is still not the case with RISCV yet) than everyone can get better defense industries, better intelligence systems, better military equipment. I'm not implying that they are actively doing it but that it might be in their interest to do so to maintain some kind of military egemony over their enemies, or at least to never be in a significant gap with anyone.
Risc v is an instruction set architecture not a chip design, the actual hardware implementation of any given risc v processor won't necessarily be open source and available to all, it's just a guarantee that if the spec is implemented then code compiled for risc v will run on a RISC V processor.
China has had access to x86 for years, they've not been able to implement a chip on par with current gen AMD or Intel chips.