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StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

us.starlabs.systems

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Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#301

Post by snvzz »

LeonM wrote: post #225
snvzz wrote: post #221

... on Legacy ISA. I'd rather a RISC-V Pinetab-V, based on the same JH7110 as VisionFive 2.

> ... on Legacy ISA. Since when is x86 legacy? > I'd rather a RISC-V Pinetab-V, based on the same JH7110 as VisionFive 2. Have you actually used one of those? They are excruciatingly slow. Less performance than most Raspberry Pi. Maybe it works for your niche workflow, but for StarLite to succeed they'll have to build a _usable_ product. Also competitive ARM based alternatives (such as Snapdragon) require many closed…

>Since when is x86 legacy?

Since the first commercial RISC chips obsoleted x86 in the 80s.

>Have you actually used one of those?

Yes, JH7110 on VisionFive 2.

>They are excruciatingly slow. Less performance than most Raspberry Pi.

Not my experience, owning VisionFive 2 and all raspberry pi B boards (1,2,3,3+ and 4), all of which have been used heavily.

The CPU is much faster than RPi3b+'s while using way less power. Only a little slower than RPi4, and this is assuming the RPi4 has a huge heatsink like mine does. JH7110 doesn't require a heatsink nor throttle under load, for it stays under 75C even when running builds 24/7, yet is designed to survive 125C.

Whereas everything else in the SoC is better. Especially the GPU, which in the RPi4 is anemic, and can barely keep up even for 2d at 1080p. The experience is much better on VisionFive 2 for even simple tasks like web browsing, and it's not even close. Night and day.

Nevermind the upstream support effort[0] getting this far in just a few months (indiegogo delivery was in March), and follows standard RISC-V boot/firmware interface specifications, whereas Raspberry Pi is all bespoke and never cared much about upstreaming support.

>Also competitive ARM based alternatives (such as Snapdragon) require many closed source blobs to function.

Here I just do not understand what point you're trying to make.

0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#302

Post by PrivateButts »

Arnavion wrote: post #286
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…

To answer the general point first: >I don't know how much touch screen only computers are considered during development of desktop environments and display servers Phosh, Plasma Mobile and SXMO are DEs for phones and tablets, so they support touch fine. I run Phosh (also on pmOS) on my phone and have none of the problems you described. GNOME is also making its own GNOME Mobile. --- Now, for your specific hardware: I…

My point was more towards the 2-in-1s and tablet PCs, not really phone or 'true' tablets. Devices that have been pretty popular over the last decade, like Surface Pros (I had used a Pro 2 and Pro 3 during my experiment) or Lenovo Yogas.

----

Didn't really consider postmarketOS. I haven't played with installing mobile operating systems on desktop hardware in a long time.

----

Yeah I think what screwed my testing was applications that were using xwayland without me noticing. The stable firefox snap at the time (which is preinstalled on Ubuntu), uses it apparently. I have only used Xorg before, as I've never felt the need or desire to step into the tarpit that's migrating to Wayland.

----

Neat workaround for your tablet, glad it works well for you.

----

End of the day, I'm sure that I could have puttered on it and eventually got it all working (aside from the hardware on the surface that appears to be completely locked down), but it's a pretty poor showing out of the box. YMMV and all that, and I hope that more investment in the space makes it a better experience in the future.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#304

Post by tedcrilly »

I've been mulling over many tablet options recently with a goal to reduce the number of devices I travel with (terminal, email, playing HW accelerated video, reading comics). I considered everything from an iPad through a Surface with Linux and all the way to more exotic options like https://junocomputers.com/product/juno-tab-2/ or https://www.fydetabduo.com/ but they all lacked something. I was close to going with a Google Pixel with Graphene OS but Google's atrocious pricing in Europe made me reconsider. This one finally made me pull the trigger, mostly because it is Linux-first and came with no "This is a beta product" or "generally works, but..." asterisks. Fingers crossed that it delivers.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#305

Post by Arnavion »

PrivateButts wrote: post #302
Arnavion wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer the general point first: >I don't know how much touch screen only computers are considered during development of desktop environments and display servers Phosh, Plasma Mobile and SXMO are DEs for phones and tablets, so they support touch fine. I run Phosh (also on pmOS) on my phone and have none of the problems you described. GNOME is also making its own GNOME Mobile. --- Now, for your specific hardware: I…

My point was more towards the 2-in-1s and tablet PCs, not really phone or 'true' tablets. Devices that have been pretty popular over the last decade, like Surface Pros (I had used a Pro 2 and Pro 3 during my experiment) or Lenovo Yogas. ---- Didn't really consider postmarketOS. I haven't played with installing mobile operating systems on desktop hardware in a long time. ---- Yeah I think what screwed my testing was a…

Phosh and SXMO at least (not sure about Plasma Mobile but probably it too) generalize to running on large screens with external keyboards etc, so they should work for such hardware too, so you can try them if you are still interested.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#306

Post by ThatPlayer »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #178
ThatPlayer wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, HDMI seems to lag DisplayPort capabilities when it comes to higher resolutions and refresh rates. I think that one very much depends on when you chose to look at it. HDMI 2.1 has more bandwidth than DisplayPort 1.4, enough to do 4k@120 which DP1.4 wouldn't be able to do it without dropping color down to 4:2:0. DisplayPort 2.0 devices are starting to come out, but even Nvidia's RTX 4000 series still do not have…

That's a fair point. I admit I was judging by the availability on the PC side (I don't follow the console market). Although, if I'm not mistaken, my particular PC monitor initially didn't support HDMI 2.0, even though it's a 4k panel. There was a further revision which included it. I have that revision, but support is still somewhat wonky, in that it can't seem to switch on its own from 2.0 to 1.4b.

Display support is always last in this chicken-and-egg problem. As far as I know, there's still no DisplayPort 2.0 supporting displays, so any of the higher end monitors require display stream compression. I can't even get a DisplayPort 2.0 MST hub so I can chain multiple 1440p@144 monitors. Which is definitely something that HDMI can't do.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#307

Post by marcellus23 »

yencabulator wrote: post #294
marcellus23 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPadOS Safari is just as capable as desktop Safari. Why do you think otherwise? Also, it’s not 2006 anymore, maybe stop calling people “fanboy” for preferring a different computer than you.

What motivated me to want a "real browser" was bookmark management. Managing & reorganizing bookmarks on mobile Chrome was frustrating. And I absolutely will label anyone a fanboy if they barge into a Linux conversation going "Rah rah Apple best Linux sucks" without actually contributing anything insightful, useful, or specific. Please don't just repeat the age old "Apple did it best" line, we already understand you…

I'm not the person you responded to. I don't think "Rah rah Apple best Linux sucks" is a good characterization of his comment though. "This looks interesting but Linux has historically been a worse touch experience than iPad" is a better paraphrase, and I think the sentiment belongs in this discussion (because any entrant to the tablet market is competing with the iPad, whether you like it or not).

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#308

Post by hollerith »

no_time wrote: post #132
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…

>On screen keyboard was completely broken with Wayland, with some apps like Firefox just not popping it open Did you check if FF was actually running in wayland mode? Not trying to blame you, the current situation is pretty dire. The only reliable way of finding out if something is actually using wayland is running xeyes and seeing whether the eyes move above the target window.

>running xeyes and seeing whether the eyes move above the target window

Or running xlsclients

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#309

Post by yencabulator »

marcellus23 wrote: post #307
yencabulator wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What motivated me to want a "real browser" was bookmark management. Managing & reorganizing bookmarks on mobile Chrome was frustrating. And I absolutely will label anyone a fanboy if they barge into a Linux conversation going "Rah rah Apple best Linux sucks" without actually contributing anything insightful, useful, or specific. Please don't just repeat the age old "Apple did it best" line, we already understand you…

I'm not the person you responded to. I don't think "Rah rah Apple best Linux sucks" is a good characterization of his comment though. "This looks interesting but Linux has historically been a worse touch experience than iPad" is a better paraphrase, and I think the sentiment belongs in this discussion (because any entrant to the tablet market is competing with the iPad, whether you like it or not).

Once again, ChromeOS on a tablet is a perfectly fine experience. If you, or anyone, wants to argue about why a specific Linux-based desktop on a tablet isn't great, do that, don't just restate generalizations like "Apple is best and everything else is unusable and it's always been like that", that comes across as FUD based on opinions and fanboyism.

I've used ChromeOS tablets for years. I haven't tried KDE/Gnome on a primarily touch based device, just ChromeOS, so I can't speak for those, but I see no inherent reason why they'd be worse. There is an iPad some 30 feet from me right now, so I think I am in a position to be able to compare to that.

Re: StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

#310

Post by heavyset_go »

cricalix wrote: post #90
heavyset_go wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fractional scaling works well on Plasma under Wayland if you're using an up to date distribution.

Though other things don't work well. Like Plasma's whole toolbar with clock widget etc. It freezes, and you can't interact with the frozen widgets. Only answers are kill and restart, reboot, or switch back to X. It'll get there, but it's still not at a level I would say is daily driver (for me - I like my toolbar clock to actually tell me the current time). (Kubuntu with KDE project's PPA to be on latest stable)

I'd try with a rolling release and see if you still encounter the problems. I use Plasma panels with the clock widget and haven't experienced freezes or had to restart anything.
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