Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#201

Post by mntmn » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

ldng wrote: post #199

mntmn wrote: post #83

I'm also working on an ARM notebook in the spirit of Novena called Reform: http://mntmn.com/reform/ This version is 32-bit, but it has 4 cores @ 1.2GHz and 4GB of RAM. Also, it is actually open source, meaning that all the electronic design files (made in KiCAD) are available on GitHub and as soon as we have decided on the correct formats the same will be true for the mechanical/case parts, so you will be even able t…

> I could not find the design files for Pinebook so I'm not sure what is "Open Source" about it? Schematics are not sources. That might be what you were looking for : https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=5734

No it is not, or I’m too ignorant to find it. Where are the PCB design files?

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#202

Post by prophesi » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

simosx wrote: post #100

steve19 wrote: post #11

This looks like the perfect hackable netbook with very little surface area for attacks but sadly it has an Allwiner SoC (A64) which violates the GPL and contains many binary blobs. I have been burnt with them, MediaTek and AMLogic in the past. Never again. http://linux-sunxi.org/A64#Allwinner

Allwinner has done mistakes in the past and posted tarballs of the Linux kernel source with object files for drivers they did not have the right (from others) to post the source. They called these "SDKs" and distributed them to those that asked. There are ways to get around such issues like distributing those blobs or the object files separately, but they were not savvy in free software. They started getting savvy by…

They've been violating the GPL license for years. The 'nuclear option' has been long past-due.

And the "path of the core kernel developers" is to simply not sue them. Which this "nuclear option" follows. Plus, suing a Chinese company might be a fruitless endeavor.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#203

Post by rjsw » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #178

rjsw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SoC doesn't support much more than 2G, the Allwinner Wiki says 3G is the maximum but you probably want to just use two memory chips to keep costs down.

Is there an ARM motherboard that accepts more that 4GB?

You could get a Xilinx dev board and just ignore the FPGA features, this [1] one will accept at least 6GB.

[1] https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/zcu104.html

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#204

Post by X-Istence » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #169

unlimitedbacon wrote: post #88

I have this laptop. The beauty of it is that it is unashamedly bad. It is the humblest of laptops. The body is a direct copy of the 13" MacBook Air. As a computer, it is at least as usable as a Raspberry Pi. The teardown photos are hilarious because the motherboard only takes up about 1/6 the internal space. The rest is empty. https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ It comes with Ubuntu 16.04, but…

> The teardown photos are hilarious because the motherboard only takes up about 1/6 the internal space. The rest is empty. https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ As mentioned in that review, the software part seems to be a problem area for Pine. That could also be why it's cheap (because it's mainly the hardware alone that one is paying for). I got the original Pine64 board through the crowdfundi…

FreeBSD makes images available for it that you burn to the SD card and pop in and you are off to the races, although just for -HEAD so you end up chasing new images every so often since the system is still heavily in flux.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#205

Post by lphnull » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #195

lphnull wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who say that the raspeberry PI is "bad" and "barely useable" say so because Ubuntu + Chrome + botnet social networking sites tend to slow your PI to a crawl. If you configure i3, compton, and build your own distro from scratch WITHOUT ubuntu, then the rpi can actually be very fast and snappy for programming. If this laptop is anything like the raspberry pi, then it will require LOTS of customization to get the…

Yup, just _not_ using a massive DE goes most of the way for improving performance, especially on little devices like this. i3wm is great for this because it's a tiling window manager for both the masses and for the expert. Also once you are using i3 then using Debian instead of Ubuntu makes little difference to the user while going a fair way to removing a lot of bloat. However suggesting linux from scratch is a bit…

Well said. :)

Personally, I don't think laptops like the Pinebook should ever be used by the masses because, like you said, building your own OS from scratch is difficult, even for the tech savvy! And no I'm not talking about compiling your own Gentoo yourself. What I mean is just starting with a barebones distro with NOTHING installed, then sudo apt-get intsall your carefully selected list of packages- followed by tons and tons of googling and man pages to figure out how to configure your config files in just the right way.

This is how I learned linux- the hard way. My powerful windows 10 workstation died one day, and I decided to actually try using my abandoned rpI for day to day use. It took a LOT of googling, but I finally figured out how to make my pi enjoyable after close to half a year's worth of effort.

I'm definitely buying this laptop when I get paid because I am one of the few people out there who's masochistic enough to enjoy pi-like devices. This laptop is EXACTLY what I have been looking for.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#206

Post by X-Istence » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

unlimitedbacon wrote: post #88

I have this laptop. The beauty of it is that it is unashamedly bad. It is the humblest of laptops. The body is a direct copy of the 13" MacBook Air. As a computer, it is at least as usable as a Raspberry Pi. The teardown photos are hilarious because the motherboard only takes up about 1/6 the internal space. The rest is empty. https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ It comes with Ubuntu 16.04, but…

> * It does in fact turn on.

That is something you and I both have experienced with this laptop :P

As for the rest, it really is bad. Like really bad. Although I did get lucky, I have 0 dead pixels.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#207

Post by gkya » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #195

lphnull wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who say that the raspeberry PI is "bad" and "barely useable" say so because Ubuntu + Chrome + botnet social networking sites tend to slow your PI to a crawl. If you configure i3, compton, and build your own distro from scratch WITHOUT ubuntu, then the rpi can actually be very fast and snappy for programming. If this laptop is anything like the raspberry pi, then it will require LOTS of customization to get the…

Yup, just _not_ using a massive DE goes most of the way for improving performance, especially on little devices like this. i3wm is great for this because it's a tiling window manager for both the masses and for the expert. Also once you are using i3 then using Debian instead of Ubuntu makes little difference to the user while going a fair way to removing a lot of bloat. However suggesting linux from scratch is a bit…

I recently switched to Gnome 3 (5th of march, tells me mercurial), and it just crawled my laptop, w/ 4G mem and i3 cpu @ 1.80 GHz. That's not super fast, but it freezing with merely Firefox and Emacs running was unacceptable. I tended to blame that on Firefox, but when I switched to Qutebrowser I understood that it was not it, and decided to see what was the cause. I saw that my fairly minimal Gnome 3 DE (i.e. the session and nm-applet, no extensions) took half of the resources. Six days ago I switched to Xmonad, boom, the machine hasn't used the swap since. Even when I start Chromium for some silly websites life makes me use. Even when I have Chromium, mpv, Qutebrowser and Emacs all open at once. With Gnome I'd probably have to kill Emacs in such a session a couple times...

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#208

Post by mrbill » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

I had one of these. The concept was nice, screen was much nicer than I expected, but the keyboard was near unusable.

You had to hit each key HARD, directly in the center, for keystrokes to register. Touch typing was impossible.

The trackpad wasn't any better.

Ended up selling it to a coworker (with an additional standalone Pine64 board) for $75.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#209

Post by Posibyte » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

I have this laptop. If you find that the spacebar does not respond well if struck in the center, I've found that a small pressing of hot glue and a quick dab of your thumb on it on the middle ring on the underside of the key does wonders to keep it responsive.

This computer, to me, has been a blast to tinker with. It's so crappy, yet hides nothing. When my monitor didn't work well, I just took it apart, rewrapped the video cable with some copper-snail tape and attached that to the ground plane on the board, and the signal is so much better now.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#210

Post by gkya » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

lphnull wrote: post #205

tomxor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, just _not_ using a massive DE goes most of the way for improving performance, especially on little devices like this. i3wm is great for this because it's a tiling window manager for both the masses and for the expert. Also once you are using i3 then using Debian instead of Ubuntu makes little difference to the user while going a fair way to removing a lot of bloat. However suggesting linux from scratch is a bit…

Well said. :) Personally, I don't think laptops like the Pinebook should ever be used by the masses because, like you said, building your own OS from scratch is difficult, even for the tech savvy! And no I'm not talking about compiling your own Gentoo yourself. What I mean is just starting with a barebones distro with NOTHING installed, then sudo apt-get intsall your carefully selected list of packages- followed by t…

Do you reckon a recent RPi is good enough for Emacsing away, with the occasional PDF-reading and watching videos w/ mpv? I think having a desktop computer with a wider monitor would be a nice improvement for me, given using a laptop for long times is not really ergonomical. If I can have a decent enough desktop experience with such a setup, that'd be very nice.