Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop • Hacker News Board

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#51

Post by Sanddancer » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 11:34 PM UTC

pantalaimon wrote: post #50

ChuckMcM wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for TI is kinda 'checked out' of the Linux support business sadly.

Are they expecting their SoCs to run Windows instead?

No. They seem to be focusing more on the RTOSes, like VxWorks and QNX. There's more to OSes than just Linux and Windows.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#52

Post by X-Cubed » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 11:42 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #45

How 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

What's unfinished about the NeTV? You can buy the kit and download the source code and do want you want with it.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#53

Post by muyuu » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 11:54 PM UTC

Very curious about the capabilities of that FPGA in combination with the rest of the hardware, and the high-speed expansion port.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#54

Post by Sanddancer » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 12:11 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #47

akkartik wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The first paper is not complaining about FreeBSD, it's complaining about open source software in general, using the FreeBSD ports tree as an example. All of the software examples given are equally valid for Linux -- libtool and all its ugliness is still required, a lot of intermediary libraries are thrown out in the end result -- and the lessons are still unlearned. The mess of OSS begat ALSA, obstinate kernel developers refusing to do the right thing with ALSA begat PulseAudio, etc. Yes, commercial software sucks, but that does not excuse just how much of an unholy mess open source software is.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#55

Post by rwolf » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 12:14 AM UTC

badataccounting wrote: post #14

Great idea really I wish them success!! but why are they using the keyboard from a Thinkpad.They are the most infuriating keyboards ever as the fn key is on the bottom left side with Ctrl one key in one. Even Lenovo's come with a switch in the BIOS to undo this. Before anyone says this is the actual format of the qwerty keyboard the overwhelming majority of people are used to it with Ctrl on the bottom left so just l…

Thinkpad keyboard only appears to come with $5,000 limited-run version, and it's detachable. Every other version explicitly does not come with a keyboard because of how little consensus there is.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#56

Post by sneak » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 1:18 AM UTC

Open laptop because we're worried about state-sponsored attackers expending multiple millions of dollars of time and resources to undertake the lowest level of attacks upon our hardware.

Top model ships with a keyboard with a radio transceiver built in.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#57

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

pantalaimon wrote: post #50

ChuckMcM wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for TI is kinda 'checked out' of the Linux support business sadly.

Are they expecting their SoCs to run Windows instead?

What Sanddancer said, they are investing in their Tiva (aka Cortex M series) parts and de-emphasizing the OMAP line. (they may have said the OMAP5 is the last of that series) I don't think they felt they were offering a lot of value over the other Cortex A9 vendors.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#58

Post by joezydeco » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 2:41 AM UTC

storborg wrote: post #44

mmastrac wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bootstrapping SoCs gets really tricky when you don't have a JTAG device. The newer chips that let you boot directly from SD have been a great leap forward in development speed.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#59

Post by zmanian » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 5:18 AM UTC

What are the use cases for the FPGA realistically? Then only piece of easily downloaded and installed code is a SHA based crytocoin miner.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#60

Post by cbsmith » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 5:45 AM UTC

zmanian wrote: post #59

What are the use cases for the FPGA realistically? Then only piece of easily downloaded and installed code is a SHA based crytocoin miner.

Actually pretty handy for doing optimized NIC/protocol processing. Particularly handy for wireless stuff IIRC. It's about as close as you can get to a software defined CPU, so the options are kind of limitless.