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StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

us.starlabs.systems

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Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#191

Post by lproven »

hgomersall wrote: post #144
RF_Savage wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the tragedies of USB-C is how it can be anything from dumb charging only to one's capable of 40GB/s data transfer among everything else.

It makes working out which hole to plug something in to rather tricky. Especially when the little lightning bolt or other graphics have rubbed off.

Seconded.

And even before then.

I have an M1 Macbook Air which will only output video over one of its 2 USB-C ports, not the other. There is nothing visible on the case or in the OS to indicate this.

I have had an Arm and an AMD Thinkpad which both have only dual USB-C, and both unpredictably switch between one or the other being bootable, with no discenable pattern.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#192

Post by lproven »

dheera wrote: post #150
eternityforest wrote: post #15

Why did they have to use a micro HDMI port? Couldn't they have done dual USB-C and made one the DisplayPort output? MicroHDMI is not a very nice connector, it's a lot of pins under mechanical stress from the heavy, rigid HDMI people generally attach to it.

USB-C is equally bad. I really wish they would have the rubber housing of the USB-C go inside the case like an IEC power connector. I break about a USB-C cable every week. Broke one today just by putting it in my backpack while connected to a power brick. Power bricks of the 1990s didn't have this problem. The barrel connectors were almost indestructible. You could drop bricks on VGA connectors and they'd still work.

Wow.

I have never yet broken a USB-C cable. Not one.

When I used an iPhone for a couple of years, I went through approximately a Lightning cable per month, sometimes more. At one point I took a carrier bag of broken Lightning cables to the electronics recycling.

You must treat equipment exceptionally roughly.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#193

Post by lproven »

threeseed wrote: post #87
reustle wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even just as a second display

Luna Display [1] works with iPads running at minimum iOS 12.1. Which means iPad mini 2, iPad Air, iPad Pro 1, iPad 5 and greater. [1] https://astropad.com/product/lunadisplay

iOS 12 is way too new.

I have a Retina iPad stuck on iOS 9, which is now essentially an ebook reader and movie player.

I had two of them stuck on iOS 5. Perfectly working, cosmetically perfect, lots of battery life, but bricks.

Whereas I have a 1st gen Pro and a 5th gen (when the stock iPad got the Air form-factor) which both run the latest iPadOS, but their battery life is now a couple of hours if that. They're nearly useless.

I had a new battery fitted to the 5th gen. It is no better but now the screen is damaged with multiple artifacts visible.

There is no battery replacement for the Pro: it's too big and too fragile.

In other words, in important terms, the old ones were BETTER but they are now useless because of an outdated OS.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#194

Post by iSnow »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #108
MerelyMortal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB-A to USB-C adapters are cheap. USB-A is past its prime. Your post contains only negative points. There will never be a perfect device because everyone has different wants, so enjoy it for what it is.

I'm sorry, I guess I didn't fully express my thoughts. I'm genuinely excited about the device and had signed up to be notified when it's available. I will, of course, wait for the reviews, but at ~600€ with a keyboard, it's already leagues ahead of my current Chromebook, and this is running a "real" operating system! I expressed my issue with no USB-A ports because I prefer my devices to be self-sufficient (I hope th…

Of course, your opinion is yours to have, but honestly, the world has moved on from USB-A for new computers/phones/peripherals. I just bought a couple of those: https://www.amazon.com/Basesailor-Thunderbolt-Converter-Gene... and they stay on the USB-A cable - the price is low enough that I can justify the expense for my 5 or so older peripherals.

The USB-A socket is too big for the slim form-factor of ultrabooks and tablets, and it won't make a come-back.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#195

Post by asddubs »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #131
cookiengineer wrote: post #97

Honestly when I am looking at their other models like the StarBook and StarFighter, I have a weird feeling that I cannot repair them once the battery or other parts breaks down. They have an internal battery similar to the format of A1278 MacBooks, which makes my spidey sense go off that it's not easily repairable without breaking a ribbon flex cable. I don't need a bleeding edge gaming GPU, I don't need USB4, I don'…

> Why can't we have nice replaceable battery packs, RAM, and m2 SSDs anymore? I mean, not even the Framework laptop has a replaceable battery pack? WHY? https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Battery+Replacement+Guide/85

I think they meant batteries you can swap without taking the machine apart, like old laptops had

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#196

Post by wvh »

Qwertious wrote: post #172
wiz21c wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I want to buy a PinePhone. Do you mean that one can't send SMS, place phone calls, browse the web, read (not write) emails without a keyboard ? (these four are 99% of my phone usage).

Drew Devault (Sway and Sourcehut guy) wrote this on his experience with Linux phones: https://drewdevault.com/2023/06/16/Mobile-linux-retrospectiv... tldr: it works and it's great, but it's not reliable in phone/SMS in the way a phone needs to be reliable.

I've been using the Nokia N9 and some of the Jolla Sailfish offspring to this day. The phone part has been very reliable. The rest of the ecosystem is very minimal, almost non-existent, but I can't complain about the basic phone functionality.

With these ARM-style devices that are quite closed down and need their own respective device tree, mass adoption seems a requirement for a company and ecosystem to hit critical mass and be financially viable. I don't think a "Linux phone" is enough of a value proposition to hit that critical mass without any specific features that would appeal to a non-technical crowd and can't easily be replicated by the iOS or Android behemoths.

So personally I think it's not that the open-source/Linux approach can't produce a phone that has good-enough basic functionality, but that there's no clear way to market and sell these phones to a sufficiently large crowd to offset the massive investment into a new platform.

Linux as a whole might be far ahead of iOS and Android as a general computing platform, but a viable device would have to break through the mass production hardware (and marketing!) barrier.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#197

Post by hereonout2 »

pja wrote: post #184
hereonout2 wrote: post #173

I can't see anything about storage, does this have an SSD and if so how large? Looks very interesting to me, I'm just not ready to give up storage like most of the Chromebook options.

It’s M.2 2242 Gen3 PCIe NVMe, 512Gb in the base spec, configurable up to 2Tb, but presumably end user replaceable. https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification

Missed that thanks, certainly piques my interest at this price

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#198

Post by tjoff »

mdp2021 wrote: post #167
tjoff wrote: post #149

Looks much better, and cheaper than I expected. Quality can't be fenomenal at that price point but it looks well thought out from the ground up. Impressive! And thank you for the 3:2 display aspect ratio Gonna keep an eye on this one.

> aspect ratio The specs say 16:10...

Where?

I couldn't find the specs for it, but the resolution is stated as 2880x1920 which ought to be 3:2.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#199

Post by FirmwareBurner »

PrivateButts wrote: post #98

A bit ago I did a bit of an experiment with an old surface tablet, where I threw some linux distros at it to see what the experience was. I tried Ubuntu, Manjaro, and Fedora, and all were extremely janky to downright broken. On screen keyboard was completely broken with Wayland, with some apps like Firefox just not popping it open, to others ignoring input. X had trouble with screen rotation. Fedora wouldn't let me p…

>I don't know how much touch screen only computers are considered during development of desktop environments and display servers

Probably close to zero. Gnome/KDE devs daily drive desktops/laptops and for phones/tablets they don't run FOSS Linux devices but also iOS and Android.

Desktop Linux is already a niche market, and FOSS Linux tablets/phones is even more niche. The only "Linux" built and polished for touch from the ground up is Android but I put Linux in commas for good reason there.

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