With RISC-V still in its infancy stage, devices powered by this emerging technology are a bit lacking on the compatibility and performance fronts. That said, progress is definitely being made on the RISC-V front – and the Milk-V Jupiter is proof of that fact. After reviewing the mini-ITX motherboard earlier this month, I began looking into other operating systems I could use with the device.

Besides an OVM-based derivative of Bianbu OS, there was yet another customized version of the operating system that's centered around the Kodbox multi-cloud file manager. Since I’d never heard of Kodbox before, I absolutely had to check it out. And that’s probably one of the best decisions I’ve made in recent times, because this is an incredible operating system for the RISC-V motherboard!

Installation and first boot

A fairly straightforward process

I know I’ve said this a couple of times in my earlier article, but I can never get over how easy it is to install operating systems on the Milk-V Jupiter. Having reviewed the Milk-V Mars earlier this month, I was afraid that the installation process for the Kodbox-based Bianbu OS would give me a lot of headache. Thankfully, the installation process was extremely seamless, and I was able to log into the Bianbu OS terminal after flashing the image onto a microSD card.

With that, I ran the ip a command to find the IP address of the Kodbox server, and used it to connect to the Kodbox web UI from my primary PC. The System Installation wizard presented a couple of options for me to choose from, though I went with the default SQLite and File Cache settings. After setting a password for the root user, I finally arrived at the File Manager.

Software and features

Plugins aplenty, without a single compatibility issue in sight!

If you’ve ever used Nextcloud, you’ll feel right at home on Kodbox. Designed to simplify file-sharing between all your client devices, Kodbox is more of a personal cloud platform than a full-fledged NAS OS. Uploading files is a piece of cake, and so is arranging them inside folders. Video playback works surprisingly well, and I didn’t have any problems creating backups of the files I uploaded earlier. Kodbox also has a neat desktop UI, though the real star of the show is the extensive plugin support.

When I used OpenMediaVault on the Milk-V Jupiter, I was extremely disappointed by the lack of support for most plugins. Initially, the Plugin Center failed to update the existing plugins. Installing new plugins also displayed a network error. Luckily, updating the Kodbox version got rid of these issues, and the OS was finally able to connect to the plugin repository. I tested pretty much every free plugin I could find, including exceldraw, Minder, Drawio diagram, and Photopea, and to my surprise, they worked without any performance or compatibility problems whatsoever.

But before I conclude this post, there are two minor drawbacks to Kodbox that I need to highlight: many of the UI elements aren’t available in English. Sure, you get the option to translate from Mandarin, but there are a couple of tabs where you might not be able to access the English translation facility. Another problem is that Kodbox requires you to pay for a premium license to access some of its advanced features. While I can see why certain enterprise-grade plugins like Office Online and Autodesk Viewer are locked behind a paywall, the addition of a premium license leaves a bad taste in my mouth (even though most users won’t need access to the paid features anyway).

Kodbox: A fantastic addition to the RISC-V ecosystem

It may sound like I’m fawning over Kodbox, but after spending a lot of time getting things to run on RISC-V systems (and failing miserably on multiple occasions), the OS was a breath of fresh air. Even though Ubuntu and OpenMediaVault worked well for the most part, the Kodbox version of Bianbu OS is the only operating system where everything just works without any issues. And that’s something I really hope to see in the RISC-V sphere going forward.