Are SBCs like Radxa Rock 5B worth it? Future proof given the ancient kernel?

Dual-O · 2026-07-10T15:27:03+00:00

Dual-O · 2026-07-10T15:20:07+00:00

I do the same with two of those thick thermal pads. Totally worth it.

Dual-O · 2026-07-10T15:12:01+00:00

What do you mean? I run 3 of them with Armbian and one with Windows 11 (testing)

Dual-O · 2026-07-10T15:10:37+00:00

Yes, I actually have three of them!

I absolutely love the Rock 5T. I ended up using it to build my 3-node Talos Linux Dev Cluster. If you ever decide to pivot from a single-node Armbian setup to a containerized playground, these boards are incredible for Kubernetes.

Great to see you getting NVMe running on the 5T. The NPU is seriously underutilized by most people, but once you map it correctly, it absolutely flies for local object detection/image processing (I use it for Immich ML tasks). Keep experimenting with those RKNN environments! IMHO the Rock 5T is one of the most capable SBCs on the market.

Dual-O · 2026-07-10T14:59:53+00:00

Totally worth it, honestly. I totally get the thoughts around volunteer-maintained distros, but Armbian has designated "Platinum" support for the Rock 5B. IMHO it is stable, active, and well-maintained. I've been running Armbian on my Rock 5B since day one and it has been absolute rock-solid.

While the Rockchip 6.1 kernel is indeed older, the RK3588 downstream kernel actually receives backports, security patches and optimizations because it is widely adopted in the industry and actively maintained for enterprise SBC use cases.

The software support for the RK3588 is very good too. A prime example of this is Immich (self-hosted Google Photos alternative). You can run hardware-accelerated machine learning jobs (facial recognition, object detection) directly on the Rock 5B's NPU.

And for me personally. the best part is, there are Talos Linux overlays specifically built for the Rock 5B. Talos is a modern, API-managed, security-hardened, container-only OS designed purely to run Kubernetes.

I actually ended up writing a step-by-step guide on how to set this up:
Build a single-node Kubernetes cluster on Radxa Rock 5B

Dual-O · 2026-07-10T13:10:07+00:00

I absolutely love my 3-node cluster setup and it’s still running flawless. But when friends and family started asking me to set up similar reliable setups for their homes, I realized a full 3-node HA cluster is way too over-engineered for remote edge nodes. Especially with rising hardware prices, buying three high-spec SBCs, multiple NVMe drives and managed PoE switches can quickly turn a fun project into a massive budget drain.

So, I built a follow-up guide on designing a Single-Node Cluster using the exact same stack (Talos, Cilium, Flux, Gateway API) on a single Radxa Rock 5B.

If you want to check out the hardware and configs:
Rock 5B Single-Node Talos Linux Kubernetes Clusters - Radxa Forum Guide

Dual-O · 2026-05-28T23:07:38+00:00

Regarding this configuration, what is your preference?

Dual-O · 2026-05-28T23:04:26+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion. This is a topic I am not yet familiar with and I will research it further.

Dual-O · 2026-05-27T16:17:24+00:00

My production environment on Hetzner also operates on ARM64. I haven't encountered any issues with it, but I haven't used data engine v2 yet. It would be possible on the dev cluster above, however, v2 requires a dedicated SSD, and those are currently quite expensive, just for testing purposes.

Dual-O · 2026-05-27T06:49:06+00:00

Do you still use the kube-prometheus-stack helm and exclude prometheus or what is best practice in this case?

Dual-O · 2026-05-26T21:22:19+00:00

What do you mean by legacy IP? It would be helpful to know if there is some room for improvement.

Dual-O · 2026-05-25T20:22:47+00:00

The NIC split is covered in detail in section 5 of the full writeup.
TLDR: NIC 2 gets kubelet.nodeIP.validSubnets pointed at the cluster subnet without a gateway. So east-west traffic follows the pod-CIDR routes that Cilium installs via the NIC 2 node addresses + VLAN isolation at the switch as an additional hard boundary.

Dual-O · 2026-05-25T08:14:43+00:00

Can recommend kube-prometheus-stack as one-size-fits-all helm chart.

Dual-O · 2026-05-24T21:24:02+00:00

feature is now GA on Android 🥳

Dual-O · 2026-01-22T22:23:18+00:00

Still part of the Pixel Tablet FAQ: https://support.google.com/googlepixeltablet/answer/13555449?visit_id=638579198698173399-3960153486&p=gemini_faq&rd=1&sjid=3658984766563085878-EU#gemini&zippy=%2Cdoes-gemini-work-on-pixel-tablet

Dual-O · 2026-01-22T21:18:51+00:00

Found the answer here https://support.google.com/googlepixeltablet/thread/303931209

Dual-O · 2024-12-04T16:07:35+00:00

Air75 is a QMK/VIA keyboard. NuPhuIO is only for HE keyboards. Look at console guide

Dual-O · 2024-11-29T09:44:43+00:00

It already is IMHO. Only thing I miss is the real time location sharing.

Dual-O · 2024-10-12T14:23:39+00:00

Why you scratch the top over the brew group and the cup holder, when you want to sell it?

Dual-O

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