It is totally understandable -- and totally disappointing -- that this custom work of art in hardware comes with regular, bloated, unhackable linux. One can dream..
Specifically what OS did you have in mind?
Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
41–50 of 75 posts
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thou…
I think the OpenPandora project has confirmed the OMAP5's availability and has samples. http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15560-soc-back-and-forth... http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15747-news-from-the-embe...
Except for TI is kinda 'checked out' of the Linux support business sadly.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#43Some 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…
All of the enclosure design files will be published on the Wiki shortly, so you'll be able to make your own. The desktop/laptop versions ship with a spare bezel, as well, so you have one to modify. You could happily make your own case or pay a fabricator to do so, but the case in the campaign is injection molded, so you'd likely pay a lot more to do so.
The focus of this laptop is really on versatile and hardware-hacking-power, not on raw performance. There are a number of flagship features that you won't find in a typical laptop, and gobs of expandability.
For example, there's an onboard FPGA, for when you're at the coffee shop and you need to MITM a high-speed / low-latency protocol.
The schematics are full of attention to detail and fantastic surprises: http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_PVT_Design_So...
As you've pointed out, it seems like a big price jump to go from the bare board to the desktop and from the desktop to the laptop, but you're actually getting a lot of components there, including: very flexible battery charge controller (runs ChibiOS on an ARM7), speakers, speaker mounts, machined SSD mounting rails, and cabling. The screen is a gorgeous IPS panel.
Also, regarding the airplane tray table: it's actually designed to be hung off the seat in front of you, so you've got the entire table free.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#44I'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…
My guess is that he's sourced an incredibly cheap batch of 4GB cards from China. It likely adds very little in terms of cost, but gives much more value to the end-user in being able to just boot it up and have it work.
You are correct, the 4GB SD card is mostly about having a quick start ready-to-roll image.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#45How about finishing some projects before starting new ones?
I'm thinking of e.g. NeTV
http://www.adafruit.com/products/609 http://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#46Some 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…
This is not a commodity, value product. The cost is reasonable for the short production run. The FPGA is a unique feature, and there are plenty of other points you can extend from. If you're not building your own hardware and integrating it with the laptop then it is not for you and you would be wasting $2000.
(Also: "no wireless, less space than a nomad. lame.")
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
The first paper is (a) complaining about FreeBSD and (b) he hasn't seen how bad most commercial software is on the source side.
The second is about suspend; while I somewhat agree on not liking high integration (dbus, high-complexity desktops), suspend has been a total nightmare largely due to hardware manufacturers. You need to do very specific things or the display doesn't come back cleanly.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#48Like the Open Pandora (I still use every second day) or Openmoko (paperweight), I'll happily put my money forward supporting open hardware.
Congratulations Bunnie/xob/others on the release of the crowdfund.
This is stage one. Community, hackability and continuous development cycles will lead to better, more feature packed and stable devices. The CPU was a good choice for performance/power/openness but there is nothing stopping them from using a modular design for the SOC and people could replace them as required.. the www.pyra-handheld.com/ is build on that idea.
I'm looking forward to the use cases for the laptop...
Side question: Is there much in the way of design that can be done to improve the physical security to this design? or are we hoping that people simply don't have the driveby ability to mess with this due to the fringe-ness? and physical access is physical access.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#49I'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%"
I read that as the post-campaign follow-on pre-orders which tend to be fairly standard these days.
Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the OpenPandora project has confirmed the OMAP5's availability and has samples. http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15560-soc-back-and-forth... http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15747-news-from-the-embe...
Except for TI is kinda 'checked out' of the Linux support business sadly.
Are they expecting their SoCs to run Windows instead?