It is totally understandable -- and totally disappointing -- that this custom work of art in hardware comes with regular, bloated, unhackable linux. One can dream..
Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
21–30 of 75 posts
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#22It is totally understandable -- and totally disappointing -- that this custom work of art in hardware comes with regular, bloated, unhackable linux. One can dream..
"unhackable linux"? What?
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#23It is totally understandable -- and totally disappointing -- that this custom work of art in hardware comes with regular, bloated, unhackable linux. One can dream..
I feel like you must have (accidentally?) withheld context. Since everything is open, you can presumably produce drivers for QNX, FreeBSD, or another OS of your choice. I'm sure you can also boot bare-metal into embedded firmware of your own design.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#24It is totally understandable -- and totally disappointing -- that this custom work of art in hardware comes with regular, bloated, unhackable linux. One can dream..
"unhackable linux"? What?
I suppose I should elaborate on where I'm coming from.
1. http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257
2. https://plus.google.com/110440139189906861022/posts/EKhGyqn1... (including comments)
Don't get me wrong, I use linux everyday and it's better than the alternatives out there. But seeing a blue-sky bespoke attempt like this gets me wanting more.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#25It is totally understandable -- and totally disappointing -- that this custom work of art in hardware comes with regular, bloated, unhackable linux. One can dream..
I feel like you must have (accidentally?) withheld context. Since everything is open, you can presumably produce drivers for QNX, FreeBSD, or another OS of your choice. I'm sure you can also boot bare-metal into embedded firmware of your own design.
Yeah, sorry, crappy writing skills. I tried to elaborate in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7518682.
I'm gradually growing aware that just having the sources be open is not enough to be hackable.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#26I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices that are available: Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a 4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an SSD. All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the flip-to…
If you wanted just the board + case, and aren't really interested in hacking on the device, you might want to look into the Cubox-i4pro which uses the same cpu (though slightly slower clock, 1000 vs 1200 iirc) https://imx.solid-run.com/product/cubox-i4-pro/ I just got my pre order a few weeks back, but haven't had the chance to play with it yet.
It looks like the Cubox isn't open. At least, it fails the 10 minute rule. I couldn't find the design files, beyond pdfs for the schematics of the "upper" and "lower" PCBs (which don't meet the criteria of being open) and nothing for the main board.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#27Some interesting choices, some incredibly disappointing.
A9 core rather than the virtualization-ready A15? (I'd rather have a 64-bit ARM but those are still a ways out)
Edit: and let's not hear about how closed A15 is blah blah. At the end of the day, something is closed. Did Freescale give you silicon masks? Guess it's not totally open after all.
Single SO-DIMM means max 8GB of RAM, but of course since you're running a 32-bit chip you'll be restricted past 4GB anyway.
100 Mbit Ethernet in the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand Fourteen? Edit: Several people have pointed out that, thankfully, the 100Mbit port is a secondary port, while the main one is Gbit. This is actually pretty cool.
The case is actually kind of cool, but you can't really call it a laptop if your footprint is normal laptop size + a separate keyboard. Nobody's lap is that big. I think it could be pretty usable for work while on travel but you can't use it on an airplane tray table.
And then the pricing. Oh my the pricing. $700 for a case and a screen. Another $700 for an RC car battery and an SSD. Not even Apple marks up SSDs and batteries that much.
I would really love to get the laptop spec one for $800-1000--you know, the price of a great desktop PC plus a monitor. Sure, the ARM processor is going to be disappointingly sluggish and I'll be beating my head against the 4GB memory ceiling within an hour, but it looks really damn cool and the screen size is acceptable.
Kickstarter-type things are often done as "backers pay more for a unit, but they get it first and they're willing to pay because they believe in the product". However, the prices will go UP by 10% after this campaign is over! So the $2000 "laptop" will now cost $2200, despite the reduction in component cost due to time and scaling.
Edit: oh, and apparently the case, which I think is one of the cooler parts of this project, doesn't seem to be open? So I can't pay a fabricator $200 to make one, then slap a $400 A15 board in there. The totally open laptop, ladies and gentlemen!
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#28i'd really like to get the main board _and_ the battery board, but no display (wrong size) and no case (wrong size). i'd like to use a modded thinkpad x-series case (and keyboard) and install a better display and board!
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#29I'm happy to see some sane crowdfunding pricing on these reward tiers. So many projects have their reward pricing set similar to retail prices. That's fine if you've already done all the R&D work on the project and there's little risk, but if you actually need net funding from the project then you need a significant overhead on every reward. That said, I hope this is successful, these guys are consummate hardware hac…
They sure made it sound liked the crowdfunded prices were cheaper than retail: "We are offering four variations, and at the conclusion of the Crowd Supply campaign on May 18, all the prices listed below will go up by 10%"
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#30Some interesting choices, some incredibly disappointing. A9 core rather than the virtualization-ready A15? (I'd rather have a 64-bit ARM but those are still a ways out) Edit: and let's not hear about how closed A15 is blah blah. At the end of the day, something is closed. Did Freescale give you silicon masks? Guess it's not totally open after all. Single SO-DIMM means max 8GB of RAM, but of course since you're runnin…
I know Bunnie as an incredible hardware engineer with a lot of experience across the entire process of getting a product from design to manufacture. I'm sure the decisions were made for very good reason.
Freescale has extensive open source board support packages for several flavors of Linux and Android. With the exception of the TI's OMAP5, all of the A15 implementations I know of are under lock and NDA and even though Bunnie could source them, the documentation and software support packages would not be as easy and would require working closely with the manufacture to get them. I have no idea about OMAP5 as I haven't even seen one in production. Most mobile ARM processors AFAIK do not support gigabit ethernet yet, save a few Marvell SoCs (less for mobile and more for other embedded).
Smartphones designed with modern ARM processors require teams of 2 dozen engineers working their asses off for months to make a single revision, and this is when they're partners with the chip manufacturers (ala Google, Apple, or Samsung). Bunnie is working with a much smaller team and with different constraints.
Any board like this is going to be expensive to manufacture and assemble. Even if he were to do a run of 100 units at a time, the overhead of assembly and part purchases in such low quantities are likely to run $100+ a unit. Combine with the extra support costs of including an FPGA in there, and it's not unreasonable to charge so much for such a niche, low quantity product.
Edit: Also Freescale is on the low end of the high end ARM market and they know it. I wouldn't be surprise if Bunnie got some extra help from them during integration.