Rockchip Ubuntu

Ubuntu images for RK3588 and friends, with hardware video and GPU acceleration.

Ubuntu on Rockchip is mostly community-maintained. The Ubuntu Rockchip project ships images for RK3588/RK3588S boards on the vendor 6.1 kernel with Mali GPU and hardware video decode. Board vendors (Radxa, Orange Pi, Khadas, FriendlyElec) ship their own Ubuntu builds too.

Key points

Check whether an image uses the vendor kernel (full NPU/MPP support) or mainline (cleaner, fewer multimedia features).
Hardware video on the vendor kernel is exposed through MPP and GStreamer/FFmpeg patches, not V4L2 stateless codecs.
For products, pin the image version and keep your DTB overlays in version control.

References

Ubuntu guides

LinuxIntermediate

Build the Rockchip Linux Kernel (Vendor BSP and Mainline)

Cross-compile a Rockchip kernel on an x86 host, install the Image, DTB and modules, and know when to choose the vendor BSP or mainline.

8 min read · RK3588, RK3588S, RK3576

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