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I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

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Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#111

Post by jolmg »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #59
roryirvine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers and anything electron-based are your enemy. Firefox is actually pretty good in low-memory situations, silently discarding tabs when under memory pressure, but the main benefit comes from being able to run proper adblocking. Chromium-based browsers just can't compete these days. Otherwise, a bog standard Gnome-based Debian Trixie desktop should be pretty doable. I'm currently using an 8 GB machine with 3.7 GB…

it's probably the "you only notice when it doesn't work" situation, but my experience with firefox on ram limit has been a lot about tabs forgetting the url in them as in, I click "open in new tab", some time later I switch to them... only to get hit with "new tab", even though a moment ago it displayed tab name and I could right click -> bookmark to preemptively copy the address

Haven't had that happen, but what I have had happen is that I open in a new tab, and it just displays this spinner in the middle of the window while on the tab. It never loads. I take the URL from the address bar and drag it into yet a newer tab and there it loads. Then I close the original new tab. Sometimes I gotta do that a few times for the thing to load. I tend to open in new tab with middle click, if it makes a difference.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#112

Post by parlortricks »

spijdar wrote: post #98
roryirvine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers and anything electron-based are your enemy. Firefox is actually pretty good in low-memory situations, silently discarding tabs when under memory pressure, but the main benefit comes from being able to run proper adblocking. Chromium-based browsers just can't compete these days. Otherwise, a bog standard Gnome-based Debian Trixie desktop should be pretty doable. I'm currently using an 8 GB machine with 3.7 GB…

I haven't carefully profiled memory use, but in my experience, Chromium is so much more performant than Firefox on ARM devices that any difference isn't worth it. If you're using a lot of tabs, it might lean in Firefox's favor, but overall performance so strongly favors Chromium that I've given up trying to use Firefox on anything but my high performance machines. I'm not sure where the performance delta is coming fr…

Have you tried a firefox fork like Librewolf? Not saying it makes a difference but it feels faster on my desktop compared to regular firefox.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#113

Post by bdcravens »

cf100clunk wrote: post #46

The situation right now with the Doogee U10 tablet: not commonly available. Once the news gets out about epic breakthroughs on commodity hardware and devices, there's unfortunately a likely spike in the purchase cost, even if such devices can be found at all anymore on the usual online sources of new and used goods.

Supposedly it's available from a third party on Best Buy, with delivery in about 10 days: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/doogee-u10-android-13-tablet...

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#115

Post by jeroenhd »

syntaxing wrote: post #56

Is there something that is good to be a “android” server? I want to sign in to this server for all my chat stuff and use beeper to connect to it. I tried using a tablet but the battery keeps dying.

Depends on how real you want your Android to be, but Google Android emulator images and Androidx86 exist. Many of these apps run fine in Waydroid as well. A remote desktop UI on a Linux server/VM may be all you need.

If you have decent soldering skills, there are guides online about how you can replace the battery in devices like these by soldering a resistor and a buck converter to the battery pins so it can run permanently without turning the battery into a lithium bomb. If you set up ADB access you can control the screen remotely using scrcpy, all you'd really need is a cheap second hand phone, 20 bucks worth of parts, and a steady hand.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#117

Post by jeroenhd »

kklisura wrote: post #48

Why is Android so slow?

It's a device running Android on a bottom-of-the-range SoC with, according to the description, 5 out of "9" gigabytes of "RAM" running from swap space on the internal storage.

Perhaps Doogee could've ported Android better, but I don't think Android will ever run smoothly on this device.

Android contains a lot of tricks to cache as much as possible in RAM so things like sleep/wakeup and app launching can be very fast. You can see the device take a while to launch a terminal on Debian, that's exactly the kind of thing Android uses all of its RAM for to prevent.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#118

Post by jeroenhd »

sbochins wrote: post #75

You can still get old Mac minis for less than that, which have more memory and can run Debian. Probably best performance per dollar hardware available on the used market

80 euro equivalent seems to provide a 2014 Mac Mini with 4GiB of RAM and half a TB of storage over here. Doesn't come with a touch screen, though, and carrying around a PSU for the thing is also a massive pain. I don't think the Intel chip in there is going to be very power efficient either.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#119

Post by dakolli »

ksh09 wrote: post #53
dakolli wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh yes, rely on AI to avoid learning how to do something. Our brains are cooked if we keep up these attitudes.

It helps for fuzzing, maintaining and is actually a great help for seniors, maybe not for the ones who don't care for the project and publish slop. It could now actually help a lot in some ways not just coding though but things surrounding project management.

No it doesn't. It helps lazy people. It helps Lazy seniors, it helps lazy project managers. You have this ass backwards. It helps everyone who is Lazy.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#120

Post by dakolli »

exe34 wrote: post #37
dakolli wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh yes, rely on AI to avoid learning how to do something. Our brains are cooked if we keep up these attitudes.

There are things I will just not bother to learn. I can either not do them, or let AI do them for me. There are things I can do for myself, but can't be bothered. I can either not do them or let AI do them for me. I prefer spending my time doings I actually want to do. Let the machine do the boring things.

I prefer not letting my brain rot. You do you though.
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