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Hello 
 again,
I&# 
 39;ll explain below, but TLDR is between the accessibility requirements and 
 the weird nature of the hardware, this is, in no uncertain terms, not the 
 laptop for you. I would highly recommend waiting, at least until the rest of 
 the K1 SOC is fully 
 upstreamed; the wiki page for this I will link again here: 
 https://github.com/ 
 pacemit-com/linux/wiki

Firstly, you 
 ***cannot*** use a custom kernel for this device, at time of writing. The 
 hardware developer has a custom kernel that you *must* use for this device, 
 v6.6. While there is work in 
 progress, a newer kernel that is not distributed by the hardware developer 
 will not work.€€

Next, 
 let's talk u-boot vs UEFI. U-boot requires a lot more than UEFI, as has 
 been mentioned previously. However, there is a lot more information hidden 
 in 
 that statement than you might think. For example, you can't just move 
 the 
 dtb file to the right 
 location. The "dtb" extension stands for DeviceTree Binary, and is 
 directly tied to the kernel version being run. Simply moving the binary into 
 the right location will cause a version mis-match and cause the hardware to 
 not boot properly. Also, 
 with the version of U-boot the DC ROMA II uses, the entire boot stack is 
 stored on the storage medium (be it SD card or NVMe). This is opposed to 
 UEFI, 
 where you just have flash on the motherboard that is smart enough to reach 
 out 
 to the storage to find 
 your bootloader to get the process started. If you look in the installer ISO 
 for Debian, in /boot/dtbs I believe, it lists all the compatible chips, and 
 SpacemiT is not in there. Until it is, the Debian ISO will not work, and 
 given 
 the pace of the 
 SpacemiT crew, I'd hesitantly say expect that to be added in 
 Forky.

To reiterate, simply using 
 Debian Trixie on this device at this point in time *will*. *not*. *work*. 
 The 
 standard Debian kernel does not support the hardware yet, and the SpacemiT 
 kernel you will likely have to rebuild from scratch to get the modules you 
 need for accessibility 
 purposes running, which in my experience is *very* hit or miss getting it to 
 boot afterwards.€€

 
 I own this laptop, and as a person who is lucky enough to not need any 
 accessibility settings, it is frankly a nightmare to use in it's current 
 state. Simply running system updates is not an option, and I've had to 
 completely reinstall the 
 operating system on mine several times because I forgot. I've tried 
 off-and-on since I bought it at least a year ago, and it's currently 
 gathering dust next to my other K1/M1 system while I wait for the 
 upstreaming 
 effort to finish. Even after 
 the CPU gets upstreamed, owners of this laptop will probably need to use 
 DeepComputing's custom ISO while Imagination Technologies (the GPU 
 vendor) 
 gets their act together and finally merges their changes to mesa into 
 upstream.€€

I would highly 
 recommend reading through the issues in the DC ROMA II Github page (see 
 here: 
 https://github.com/DC-Deep 
 omputing/DC-ROMA_Gen2_LAPTOP_K1_RV-L2A€€), just to get 
 a 
 sense for the state of the device as a whole. 
 It's clunky, it's not ready, and it's largely been forgotten by 
 DeepComputing as far as I can tell while they figure out their Framework 
 Mainboard endeavour. The JH7110 SOC is kinda the only good RISC-V chip to 
 recommend right now for 
 anything outside the absolute most niche cases, because it's been almost 
 entirely upstreamed, and therefore is supported by the Debian installer 
 natively. RISC-V is a really cool technology, and I love it a lot, but the 
 hardware ecosystem right now 
 is about the same as the Raspberry Pi 2 was when it came out, and I mean 
 that 
 both from a software support standpoint and from a hardware performance 
 perspective.

< 
 span style="font-size:x-small">To be 
 perfectly frank, if I could talk to my past self, I would say to not buy 
 this 
 laptop and save myself the migraines. In a few years, it will be better, but 
 the hardware barely runs 
 on the hardware manufacturer blessed distro images. The fact that anyone 
 tried 
 to cram this chip in a laptop is a testament to the arrogance of man, 
 because 
 a laptop appeals to normal people, and this laptop is at best a marketing 
 stunt to drum up good 
 PR for RISC-V on the whole.


 
  
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