Wanderson S. Fróes

Hello Armbian community! I would like to share an updated experiment with an old MX9 Android TV Box based on the Allwinner H3. There are older discussions in this forum about running Armbian on the MX9/H3, so I decided to revisit this hardware in 2026 using a much newer Armbian userspace and kernel. This is NOT officially supported Armbian hardware. This is a community experiment using the Orange Pi PC platform as the base. CURRENT HARDWARE Device: MX9 4K TV Box SoC: Allwinner H3 CPU: 4x ARM Cortex-A7 Architecture: ARMv7 / armhf RAM detected: ~1 GB Original system: Android Boot device: microSD Display: HDMI CURRENT ARMBIAN SYSTEM Image originally installed: Armbian_community_26.11.0-trunk.19_Orangepipc_trixie_current_6.18.45_minimal.img.xz After updating: Kernel: Linux 6.18.48-current-sunxi Userspace: Debian Trixie Device-tree platform: Orange Pi PC / Allwinner H3 GRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT I intentionally kept the graphical environment lightweight because of the limited H3 hardware and ~1 GB RAM. Currently installed and working: - Xorg - LightDM - lightdm-gtk-greeter - Openbox - Tint2 - jgmenu - PCManFM - LXTerminal - NetworkManager - MPV - RetroArch - Firefox ESR The desktop currently runs at: 1360x768 @ 60 Hz This resolution provides a good compromise between usability and GPU/CPU load on the H3. GRAPHICS The display pipeline currently looks like: Allwinner H3 | sun4i-drm | /dev/dri/card0 | HDMI-1 | Xorg | LightDM | Openbox The Mali-400 GPU is also detected through the Lima driver. An interesting issue occurred while experimenting with Plymouth. After installing Plymouth and rebuilding the initramfs, Xorg started exposing an unexpected output: None-1 (primary) while the real HDMI connector appeared separately. This caused problems with the graphical login. After removing Plymouth and rebuilding the initramfs, the correct configuration returned: HDMI-1 connected primary 1360x768 The working DRM devices are currently associated with: card0 -> sun4i-drm card1 -> lima So, at least on this particular MX9/H3 + current-sunxi configuration, I decided to leave Plymouth disabled. CUSTOM LIGHTDM / OPENBOX ENVIRONMENT I also created a lightweight custom login/desktop environment specifically for this MX9. The LightDM screen uses an MX9/Armbian design and I am implementing a small script that dynamically generates system information for the login screen, including: - CPU - RAM - storage - network The objective is to make the box behave more like a small dedicated Linux computer than an Android TV Box. CURRENT STATUS WORKING: - microSD boot - Linux 6.18.48-current-sunxi - HDMI video - sun4i-drm - Lima / Mali-400 detection - Xorg - LightDM - Openbox - Ethernet - PCManFM - Tint2 - jgmenu - terminal - MPV - graphical login UNDER TEST: - RetroArch / emulation performance - HDMI audio - hardware video acceleration - USB devices - temperatures under sustained load - long-term stability - Wi-Fi - Bluetooth The internal Android storage has intentionally NOT been overwritten. For now, the complete Linux environment remains on the microSD while I test stability and hardware compatibility. WHY THIS PROJECT? The goal is not to pretend that an old Allwinner H3 TV Box is a modern desktop computer. The interesting question is: How useful can these inexpensive and often abandoned Android TV Boxes still be with a current Linux stack? So far, the result has been surprisingly usable. I will continue documenting the experiment and can publish a complete step-by-step installation guide, including the Openbox/LightDM configuration, graphics troubleshooting and RetroArch setup. Thanks to the Armbian community and to the people who experimented with MX9/H3 hardware years ago. More results coming soon. Next steps I plan to continue testing RetroArch performance, HDMI audio, Lima/Mali-400 acceleration, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB devices, thermal behavior and long-term stability. If anyone still has an MX9/Allwinner H3 or similar H3 TV box, I would be very interested in comparing hardware revisions, especially Wi-Fi chipsets and device-tree differences.