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StarBook 14-inch

starlabs.systems

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Re: StarBook 14-inch

#21

Post by cmeacham98 »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #4

Looks interesting, starts at $930 which is not too steep vs other products in the same space, price of upgrades is not stated which is a bit scary. Several Linux distros tested including Ubuntu, but Debian is not in the list. Appears to have a non-removable battery with nothing said about replacing it. And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc. I didn't notice a me…

> And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc.

It's buried, but their website claims the ME is disabled by default: Go to "Configure", expand "Firmware", and click "Learn More":

> By default, the Intel ME is disabled on both coreboot and AMI.

Re: StarBook 14-inch

#22

Post by [deleted] »

jancsika wrote: post #11
throwaway81523 wrote: post #4

Looks interesting, starts at $930 which is not too steep vs other products in the same space, price of upgrades is not stated which is a bit scary. Several Linux distros tested including Ubuntu, but Debian is not in the list. Appears to have a non-removable battery with nothing said about replacing it. And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc. I didn't notice a me…

> And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc. And of course it can't do fast homomorphic encryption either, so that's a hard pass here.

[deleted]

Re: StarBook 14-inch

#23

Post by userbinator »

imilk wrote: post #9

I can't really tell from the website, do they make their own laptops or are these rebranded Clevos?

Clevos are pretty good as far as right-to-repair is concerned --- they have good service manuals with schematics.

Re: StarBook 14-inch

#24

Post by fmajid »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #4

Looks interesting, starts at $930 which is not too steep vs other products in the same space, price of upgrades is not stated which is a bit scary. Several Linux distros tested including Ubuntu, but Debian is not in the list. Appears to have a non-removable battery with nothing said about replacing it. And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc. I didn't notice a me…

> And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc.

ARM is no better. You’d have to get RISC-V for that.

Re: StarBook 14-inch

#26

Post by tazjin »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #20
tazjin wrote: post #13

Looks decent. From the title it seemed like this only supported AMD, but you can get it with Intel CPUs, too. I've been burned in recent years by trying to use AMD stuff with Linux and just running into even more weird, minor hardware incompatibilities than usual. For now I would not buy an AMD laptop again.

Make sure to use the latest kernels. My Ryzen 2500U laptop has finally been fully stable and usable after about the 5.10 kernel. There were unfortunately a ton of bugs and issues with Ryzen, especially the APUs, in the earlier kernels. Ubuntu 21.10 or similar derivatives have been solid though.

I do, I use linuxPackages_latest from nixpkgs. On my first AMD machine (2020 Threadripper) I even made and carried a kernel patch to correctly address audio output pins for a while. Some of that works upstream now, but the AMD-compatible mainboards are spread too thin to be well-supported.

Re: StarBook 14-inch

#27

Post by CameronNemo »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #20
tazjin wrote: post #13

Looks decent. From the title it seemed like this only supported AMD, but you can get it with Intel CPUs, too. I've been burned in recent years by trying to use AMD stuff with Linux and just running into even more weird, minor hardware incompatibilities than usual. For now I would not buy an AMD laptop again.

Make sure to use the latest kernels. My Ryzen 2500U laptop has finally been fully stable and usable after about the 5.10 kernel. There were unfortunately a ton of bugs and issues with Ryzen, especially the APUs, in the earlier kernels. Ubuntu 21.10 or similar derivatives have been solid though.

As another data point, my 5600g (APU) desktop is quite stable with Linux 5.15 and latest stable mesa.

Re: StarBook 14-inch

#29

Post by CameronNemo »

nukemaster wrote: post #8

Funny, without js all the specs say "0." I guess they wanted it animated for dramatic affect and now you get something very much the opposite, like they're sarcastically selling you a rock. >0th gen Intel processor >0GB of memory >0hrs of battery life >0GB/S SSD write speed

Yeah they would just need to add some ...

Re: StarBook 14-inch

#30

Post by CameronNemo »

fmajid wrote: post #24
throwaway81523 wrote: post #4

Looks interesting, starts at $930 which is not too steep vs other products in the same space, price of upgrades is not stated which is a bit scary. Several Linux distros tested including Ubuntu, but Debian is not in the list. Appears to have a non-removable battery with nothing said about replacing it. And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc. I didn't notice a me…

> And of course the CPU (whether you pick Intel or AMD) is full of blobs, management engine, etc. ARM is no better. You’d have to get RISC-V for that.

There are ARM boards which have fully open TF-A. Various NXP and Rockchip boards have no boot blobs.

Also POWER stuff is free from most, if not all, boot blobs. Maybe something for ram init... I forget.

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