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Pinebook ARM Linux Laptop Powered by Allwinner A64 CPU
- Zekio 10y agomajor downside for me is the DC jack for charging, they always break for me...
- batbomb 10y agoThe entire machine is the same price as an apple power adapter.
- cordite 10y agoTo be fair, they have a processor in the power adaptor
- phpnode 10y agoIs that processor more or less powerful than the processor in this laptop?
- eltoozero 10y agoFunny question, but the answer is less powerful. "This processor is a Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller, roughly as powerful as the processor inside the original Macintosh." "MSP430 is a 16 bit processor running at 16MHz. The Dhrystone benchmark measures 1.4 MIPS."[1] No doom or rooting your MagSafe adapters. [1]: http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surprising.html?m=1 http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...
- tluyben2 10y agoMSP430 are nice to play around with for hardware projects and they are very cheap, so you can quickly get to cheap products if you start your work with them instead of far more expensive processors.
- kogepathic 10y agoIs an MSP430 really cheaper than a low end STM32? I mean the MSP430 was great, 10 years ago, but the industry hasn't stood still.
- tluyben2 10y agoTrue, good point. I just have many MSP430 boards lying around, so even blowing up and giving away a few 100 I would be fine hence I go for them when trying something out. I worked on a few projects with low powered bluetooth that had mandatory MSP430 usage so I again something I go for if I have to try something quickly and has the potential to turn into something I want to give away/sell.
- dTal 10y agoMaybe not actual Doom, but that's fast enough to run some sort of FPS at least. Certainly fast enough to be a useful personal computer.
- flukus 10y agoMaybe, it's been ported to commodore 64: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=doom+on+commodore+64&safe=active&espv=2&biw=1527&bih=895&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwj5sJCWi8PQAhXIEbwKHbdTBAIQsAQIIA https://www.google.com.au/search?q=doom+on+commodore+64&safe...
- batbomb 10y agoThe entire machine is the same price as an apple power adapter.
- jklinger410 10y agoThis is going to be exactly $89 worth of computer. More for people who never leave terminal or for teaching kids linux.
- phpnode 10y agoeven if you live in a terminal all day 1280 x 720 is just too small to be practical. edit - I too once basked in the warm rays of a 320x200 CRT, it's OK at the time if that's all you've ever experienced, but it's hard to go back to that from 4k.
- david-given 10y agoMy 640x480 ARM-powered Psion netBook is crying now...
- rbanffy 10y agoI don't think my IBM 3151 has that many pixels.
- vardump 10y agoIt was possible to achieve a lot with just 320x200 on 8-bit systems. Or on programmable calculators (TI, HP, etc.), with just 128x64 or so screen. Or on Amiga (704|640)x(200|256|400|512). Or VGA PC 640x480. VGA was for the first time truly enough for an IDE. SVGA 800x600 soon followed. And 1152x864, etc. So one should definitely be able to manage with 1280x720. I think we can adapt to whatever is available. I guess one could even manage software development with just a single line (320x8, 40x1 characters) display. It'd certainly be far from optimal, but you could do it. Of course now I enjoy 4K resolution and multiple monitors...
- userbinator 10y agoI think we can adapt to whatever is available. I guess one could even manage software development with just a single line (320x8, 40x1 characters) display. It'd certainly be far from optimal, but you could do it. Or even a dumb terminal (TTY) that prints to physical paper.
- kefka 10y agoRemember, this company is known for flouting all of the GPL, and providing extremely out of date drivers. And they also refuse to submit back into main any of the hardware changes they make. Whatever condition you buy it in now will be the condition it will be in 10 years. Expect absolutely no upgrades of the kernel subsystem.
- throw2016 10y agoThe sorry state of open source on ARM is not due to the vendors but ARM itself and to an extent Google. The effort to open GPU drivers on ARM is over 5 years old now I think and you can see all the promises made on the ARM community forums. The blame is shifted from the vendor to ARM and then back like a football and open source developers give up and look for something productive to do. It appears Arm is not interested in open source or moving beyond the mobile market where things are tightly controlled.
- Solinoid 10y agoCan you explain further how Google is possibly at fault here? Legitimately ignorant of the situation.
- rwmj 10y agoGoogle is currently developing an alternate kernel which will be MIT licensed. They've been removing GPL from userspace as fast as they can, and now it seems they want to remove it from the whole system. http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-new-operating-system http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-ne... https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENS...
- mwcampbell 10y agoI doubt that the primary motivation for Magenta is to eliminate the GPL'd Linux kernel from Android. A much more practical way to do that would be to use one of the BSDs.
- woodruffw 10y agoIt's nice to get a laptop form-factor with a 720p screen for less than $100, but it's worth noting that the specs are on-par with a 2-year old smartphone flagship. Given Allwinner's history of GPL skirmishes and backdooring, I'm also not too happy to see their CPU in this machine.
- lgeek 10y ago> specs are on-par with a 2-year old smartphone flagship Cortex-A53 is a low cost, energy efficient, slow, in-order implementation. I don't think it was ever used as the main core in a flagship smartphone. Something like a 2012 ODROID-X2 SBC with its Cortex-A9 cores should have no trouble outperforming it, but it doesn't support AArch64. > Given Allwinner's history of GPL skirmishes and backdooring On the other hand, the linux-sunxi community does a pretty good job of bringing mainline support for Allwinner SocS and they're working on the A64. That's probably the longer term plan for the creators of this laptop.
- Nanite 10y agoThe Cortex-A53 is also used in the Orange Pi 2, a Raspberry Pi 3 alternative for $20. On paper this is some nice bang for the buck hardware, just the implementation is sub par.
- crudbug 10y agoImpressive specs, How much cost difference if 1080P screen is used ?
- colindean 10y agoThis must be based on the NexDock: http://nexdock.com/ http://nexdock.com/ The pictures of the laptop are exactly the same device I have sitting in my lap right now. The NexDock of course has no computer inside it: it's a keyboard, touchpad, SD reader, USB hub, and display.
- tluyben2 10y agoWhat device do you attach to it?
- alan_cx 10y agoSimply scroll down and: "How Does It Work? NexDock is a laptop that runs on your smartphone, tablet or mini PC. Use NexDock with the latest Windows 10 mobile devices (such as the Lumia 950) and take advantage of the new Continuum feature, which allows smartphones and tablets to switch between touch and desktop modes. iPhone and Android users can utilize of the mini HDMI port or wireless adapter for a substantial screen size and productivity upgrad
- tluyben2 10y agoI was asking him specifically what he attaches to it for his work.
- kogepathic 10y agoThere are still a few places selling the Motorola Atrix lapdock. I got a brand new (old stock) one for 50€!
- olegkikin 10y agoPineBook is cheaper than Nexdock though.
- welly 10y agoLooks pretty interesting and my initial excitement for this soon dulled when I thought that if I'm taking this device somewhere I might as well just take my laptop. Still, it looks like a very cool gadget. What's the battery life like on it?
- hoverbear 10y agoAre there any other 64 bit ARM laptops out there worth looking at? Maybe with a GSM/LTE module, more RAM, or a better screen?
- rwmj 10y agoWell it's not exactly a laptop, but how about a Denver-based tablet with a nice keyboard? https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/nexus-9-ssh-on-the-go/ https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/nexus-9-ssh-on-the-go/
- aexaey 10y agoSome chromebooks have aarch64 ARM CPU, including new Acer Chromebook R13
- hoverbear 10y agoOh hrm, yes I didn't think of those. Some even have SIM cards.
- lgeek 10y agoThe Samsung Chromebook Pro looks pretty promising (RR3399, 4GB DRAM, 2K screen), but it hasn't been officially released yet.
- Animats 10y agoThat's useful. I've been buying old Asus EeePC machines on eBay for small projects. Unlike a Raspberry Pi, you get a keyboard, screen, case, and power supply, all for under $50. But the supply of old subnotebooks can't hold out forever.
- akhilcacharya 10y agoWhat sorts of small projects?
- pmontra 10y agoI increased the RAM of my EEEPC 901 to 2 GB years ago (2009-2012?) and I used it to develop Rails applications on trains and during a vacation. Not as fast and comfortable as my Core 2 Duo laptop at that time, but it worked. By the way, it still works even if I don't turn it on often nowadays.
- sattoshi 10y agoI would do this but I have little to no faith in ebay sellers. I usually buy off old electronics from people I know in person.
- akhilcacharya 10y agoThis is getting close, but I don't think my dream machine is on the market yet - I'd really like something dirt-cheap, has has an ARM chipset running Debian/Ubunt and lasts for 15 hours on battery. A modern Tandy 100. Are there any other machines like this, or are cheap machines like the post as far as it gets? I would have considered the ARM Samsung Chromebook, but it has pretty awful battery life.
- david-given 10y agoI have an Asus Flip Chromebook. It doesn't do 15 hours, merely 10, but it's very light, pretty cheap (I bought mine in the UK for £250, but I've seen it in the US down at about $150), has 4GB RAM and a quad core ARM processor making it plenty fast enough for development, and it's even got a reasonable keyboard. Minor features: capacitative touchscreen, screen that folds all the way round for use in tablet mode, MicroSD card slot, nice big clicky touchpad, completely silent, and a metal case. http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-chromebook-c201-review http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-chromebook-c201-review I run ChromeOS on mine, with Debian in a chroot using Crouton; but I gather you can run Debian on it natively, although with some blobs: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/C201 https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/C201
- ansible 10y agoI have an Acer R11, which is similar. Crouton is a great project. Given the price and performance of current generation Chromebooks, I don't see much advantage in going for ARM systems right now.
- david-given 10y agoThe Flip is an ARM system!
- ansible 10y agoYes. What I mean is that the power consumption is a little better, but the current generation Intel Celerons have quite low power consumption too. One nice thing about x86-64 is that you can also run closed-source apps like games. For example, after having installed Crouton, I was able to install Steam and play some of the Linux games in my library.
- vegabook 10y agoI fully expect it to be an utter piece of junk, but at 89 dollars with 2GB RAM this beats a Raspberry Pi or a Cubietruck hands down on price/performance considering either of the latter require at the very least 100 bucks extra for monitor, keyboard, power supply, SD card, and cabling, after which you're also left with a rats nest of wiring and awful little plastic bits and pieces all over the place.
- jamespo 10y agoI wish they could do exactly the same thing, but the form factor of a Psion 5MX Palmtop
- hsivonen 10y agoWhat's the mainline kernel story? Or story for ongoing kernel security updates by other means?
- makomk 10y agoFor the A64, mainline support is still very much a work in progress that isn't usable as-is I think.
- SwellJoe 10y agoAnyone know if more RAM will be plausible for a machine like this in the near future? I'd love to have a new netbook, but 2GB is what my 6+ year old Dell mini 9 has; this wouldn't be a very big upgrade, though a bigger screen and keyboard would make it more suitable for actual work.
- Paul_S 10y agoIf it had a normal keyboard I'd buy one. Amazing little package.
- npx 10y agoI've been waiting on this for years! Not specifically THIS, but hardware along these lines. I'd like to see at least 4GB of RAM, and then I think that I could use this with Alpine Linux as my daily driver. Not quite perfect yet, but very close to what I want!
- escap 10y agoif you don't mind X86, http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/10/24/jumper-ezbook-2-cherry-trail-laptop-with-14-full-hd-display-4gb-ram-64-gb-storage-sells-for-190-promo/ http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/10/24/jumper-ezbook-2-cherr... Current black friday sale is $178 to $185
- faragon 10y agoI own a Pine 64 board (2GB RAM, 1 gigabit ethernet) based on the same Allwinner A64 SoC. It performs OK for light tasks (Debian), however, it lacks proper graphic acceleration (which is OK for using it as a build server, but short if you want e.g. play YouTube videos, so unless in the case of the laptop hardware accelerated graphics are provided, it would be hard to use it comfortably -if they do, I would love to buy one!-).
- andreiw 10y agoWhy only 2GB? Especially for a device that's not shipping yet. I understand there might be SoC limitations, but I would be really surprised if the A64 cannot support 3 or 4GB. A53 is a bit on the slow side, but the worst part is that it's not a great (as in, representative of the architectural requirements on software) chip for porting software to AArch64, because of its simplistic design - you will be able to get away with forgetting a barrier, or TLB or cache maintenance instruction here or there, and your code will work (but blow up on other, more advanced uarches, like A57 or other non-ARM designs). It's basically a minor step above using Foundation Model.
- teekert 10y agoAs someone who emails from a Nextcloud instance online, writes and reads a lot of text and logs into a Linux cluster for data analysis in Jupyter Notebooks. This could completely replace my company issues HP Elitebook (price around 1200€), the screen is even better. I would like it even more if it were just a Raspberry Pi (possibly with a very fast ssd if it were possible) inside, simply because of the support and trust I have in them.