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Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

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Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#41
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the same volume, a tablet has more space for batteries than a laptop. A laptop has to use space for the hinge, keyboard, trackpad, peripheral ports, and display. Worse, you can't fit batteries behind a laptop display without ruining the balance. On the other hand, a tablet is practically a screen with a ton of batteries behind it. Here's some real-world data: The 3rd gen iPad has a 42 watt-hour battery. The 11"…

Intel chipsets and processors have gotten very, very good with power management. With reasonable screen brightness and Wifi enabled, my X220 idles at ~8.5W. With a 90Wh battery this gives me ~10 hours on a plane, which is more than I can handle in one go. A tablet TDP (iPad) is about 5W which is 2x better. This is 2X better for a device with smaller screen, no spinning drive, no keyboard, and a much weaker processor.…

Recap: X220 idling: 8.5W. iPad's max 5W.

Agreed about one thing, Intel is finally starting to care about power efficiency. The CPUs have been solid since the Pentium M days, but the chipsets feel more neglected.

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#42

I should be able to figure this out for myself, but I will ask anyway: is 16GB SSD really enough to support Ubuntu and a development environment? At a minimum, I would need Ruby+JRuby+Clojure+editors an an IDE. I could probably live with just 4 or 5 extra GBs for project files and whatever my current writing project is.

However, it looks like it has an SD card socket as well as a USB 3.0 slot. That means you could put a 32GB SD card in there and have plenty of room for projects. If that ounce is too important, you could probably get away with an Xubuntu distribution that's fairly stripped down.

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#43
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only has a 4,000 mAh (15 Whr) battery, smaller even than Nexus 7's 4,300 mAh battery, and considering it also has a much larger 12" screen (more than twice screen area), the battery life would also be smaller than Nexus 7. Nexus 10 has a 9,000 mAh battery, which is also used to compensate for the 2560x1600 resolution. iPad 3/4 has 11,500 mAh and it's pushing 1 million fewer pixels for comparison's sake. But I agre…

I hope Google will partner with ASUS for its next chromebook. Or even Lenovo. I had bad experience with Samsung hardware.

The EEE PC 701 was a remarkable machine.

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#44

I should be able to figure this out for myself, but I will ask anyway: is 16GB SSD really enough to support Ubuntu and a development environment? At a minimum, I would need Ruby+JRuby+Clojure+editors an an IDE. I could probably live with just 4 or 5 extra GBs for project files and whatever my current writing project is.

However, it looks like it has an SD card socket as well as a USB 3.0 slot. That means you could put a 32GB SD card in there and have plenty of room for projects. If that ounce is too important, you could probably get away with an Xubuntu distribution that's fairly stripped down.

That is true: I could just leave a 32GB card in permanently. No reason to remove it.

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#45
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the same volume, a tablet has more space for batteries than a laptop. A laptop has to use space for the hinge, keyboard, trackpad, peripheral ports, and display. Worse, you can't fit batteries behind a laptop display without ruining the balance. On the other hand, a tablet is practically a screen with a ton of batteries behind it. Here's some real-world data: The 3rd gen iPad has a 42 watt-hour battery. The 11"…

Intel chipsets and processors have gotten very, very good with power management. With reasonable screen brightness and Wifi enabled, my X220 idles at ~8.5W. With a 90Wh battery this gives me ~10 hours on a plane, which is more than I can handle in one go. A tablet TDP (iPad) is about 5W which is 2x better. This is 2X better for a device with smaller screen, no spinning drive, no keyboard, and a much weaker processor.…

X2xx seem to be nice laptops; i'm afraid to buy one though because I had quite bad experience with intel laptops including my 2009 and 2010 macbook pro's; they just conk out after 3 hours with new batteries. And I check often to see what is running and work almost only in the terminal (must say, since i replaced the native terminal of mac os x with iterm3 http://www.iterm2.com/ it is much better). The other intel laptops I had didn't even (ever) make that (even the ones with tiny screens). And I don't buy the cheapest stuff.

On the other hand; my S2, iPad 1, Pandora and Zaurus easily make 10 hours. I don't spare them from hard work but they do much better. On the Pandora & Zaurus I can work normally mostly (despite the tiny screens), so I don't mind a 10 inch screen (but preferably with an insane high res like the Nexus 10) at all.

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#47

I should be able to figure this out for myself, but I will ask anyway: is 16GB SSD really enough to support Ubuntu and a development environment? At a minimum, I would need Ruby+JRuby+Clojure+editors an an IDE. I could probably live with just 4 or 5 extra GBs for project files and whatever my current writing project is.

It sounds like it will be fine.

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#48
Does anybody know how well the Mali drivers work on vanilla Linux (non-Android, non-Chrome Linux)?

As a longtime Linux guy, these ARM machines (and the similar tablets) are enticing. I'm finding conflicting reports on the drivers, though. It appears they were closed-source, that there is a project to reverse engineer them, and also I found a website (malideveloper.com) where they appear to have source code officially available...

Re: Samsung's A15 Chromebook Loaded With Ubuntu Is Crazy Fast

#49
post #34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does that really bear out? Why wouldnt it? Been doing it for years now and cannot think of any other way of development anymore.

Depends on whether your use of Firefox is for Javascript or server-side scripting. Running heavy non-minified Javascript with caching disabled is much more pleasant on a fast machine.

Run Firefox on the server and export the display over the network to the weedy laptop.

Depending on the technology used, exporting sound can be an hour of fiddling about to get it setup first time around.

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