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Add to SafariWhen comparing Banana Pi vs Olimex A64-OLinuXino, the Slant community recommends Olimex A64-OLinuXino for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers?” Olimex A64-OLinuXino is ranked 34th while Banana Pi is ranked 47th. The most important reason people chose Olimex A64-OLinuXino is:
This board is designed using completely free and open source software that may be run on Linux, Windows, or OS X.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Official support for multiple Desktop-version Linux distros
Banana Pi officially supports Fedora, Arch, Lubuntu and openSUSE. It also can be used with Raspbian (Debian derivative) or Android.
Pro Additional keys for booting or shutting down
Pro SATA port
Pro Excellent compatibility with Raspberry Pi software
Other than having a port of Raspbian (the official OS for Raspberry Pi) available for use with full capabilities, Banana Pi can also use many applications that were originally written for Raspberry. One of these is WiringPi, a C/C++ library which gives easy access to Raspberry's I/O with a strong Arduino flavor. But that is just one example of the many open source projects being ported to Banana Pi.
Pro Onboard Wi-Fi
Most models have an onboard Wi-Fi.
Pro Designed using KiCad
This board is designed using completely free and open source software that may be run on Linux, Windows, or OS X.
Pro Open source hardware
The design files for this board are available on GitHub!
Pro OLIMEX Ltd. provides active support
OLIMEX Ltd. regularly scans the support forums and provides assistance.
Cons
Con Bad software support
Con No off-the-shelf camera modules
The A20 chip that the Banana Pi uses lacks a true Camera Serial Interface implementation, instead it uses a parallel camera interface. The problem with this is that there are no off-the-shelf camera modules that support this and can connect to the Banana Pi, but it should be mentioned that the makers of Banana Pi have promised to create a camera module that is supported by it.
Con Does not fit most Raspberry Pi cases, even though it's where it clearly has gotten the inspiration from
The Banana Pi is pretty noticeable a Rapberry Pi lookalike and the name does not hide this information either. Unfortunately it's a bit larger than the Raspberry Pi, making it very hard to fit into most Raspberry Pi cases.
Con Limited number of supported operating systems
Few operating systems are officially supported, but community-provided ones may be found.
Con Small community
The community is small, so existing project designs and references are limited.
