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Pine64 is Working on a Linux Smartphone Running KDE Plasma
- smacktoward 8y agoI hadn't heard of Pine64 before now. Are there any good reviews of their Pinebook laptop out there? A cheap 64-bit ARM laptop could be fun to play with...
- Something1234 8y agoFrom what I heard, the keyboard is crap. I was going to buy one, but the shipping made it not worth it.
- WhiteOwlLion 8y agoI think they'd be better off just offering the computer and screen only in tablet form. Have a case that let's you adjust the viewing angle. BYO keyboard & mouse via USB. I much rather do that...
- X-Istence 8y agoIt is slow. Browsing the web is almost annoying because JavaScript is such a big part of it these days. The keyboard isn't the greatest, and the touchpad is really bad, and support for something other than the OS it came with is still non-existent, although that is getting somewhat better. But it is a fully functional laptop, it works, and lasts quite some time on battery and I have been mainly using it to SSH to various servers/devices and doing work from the terminal and for that it is quite adequate. It's fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider a serious device, not yet at least.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoSome of the KDE guys seem to have made it their pet project to get KDE to run well on a Pinebook[0]. [0]https://dot.kde.org/2018/08/22/kde-plasma-arm-laptop-pinebook https://dot.kde.org/2018/08/22/kde-plasma-arm-laptop-pineboo...
- sevensor 8y agoComments at that link seem to indicate that you're stuck running kernel 3.10? That would be a tough pill to swallow.
- plett 8y agoYes. It's an Allwinner A64 chip underneath and they have binary blobs which they haven't ported to anything newer than 3.10
- bildung 8y agoThe original article says the boards have mainline support. Are you sure?
- imtringued 8y agoA mainline kernel won't be of much help you if you don't have GPU drivers.
- bildung 8y agoWhile not yet in mainline (patches pending), the Lima open source driver for Mali 400 GPUs appears to be usable: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lima-DRM-RFC-Mali-400-450 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lima-DRM...
- buovjaga 8y agoThis uses mainline kernel: https://github.com/anarsoul/linux-build/releases https://github.com/anarsoul/linux-build/releases (Arch Linux) Forum topic: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4715 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4715 Apparently there will be an Armbian image with mainline as well: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6538&pid=40821#pid40821 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6538&pid=40821#p...
- jandrese 8y agoI have one of their SBCs. On paper it has pretty good specs, and it was cheap, but in practice the driver situation is a disaster and all of the good documentation is written in Chinese, if it exists at all. I have avoided the company ever since.
- apple4ever 8y agoSame here. I funded the project on Kickstarter. Specs looked amazing- so much better than the Pi. But the software support sucks. Until they have better support I’m staying away.
- hawski 8y agoI hope that someone will do something like Pinebook, but with iMX8.M. The SoC used by Purism with their Libre 5 effort. Maybe even Purism themselves. Main advantage is higher hopes that mainline Linux will just work at some closer point.
- craftyguy 8y agoAgreed. The Pine products have great mainline kernel support if you ignore pretty much everything you might want in a phone/laptop/desktop (graphics, input, etc).
- danbolt 8y agoIt's not the latest and greatest, but the MNT Reform[1] uses an i.MX6QP. [1] https://mntmn.com/reform/ https://mntmn.com/reform/
- marcosscriven 8y agoI bought a Rock64 on the basis of good benchmarks, but found the stability of the board absolutely atrocious unfortunately. Not sure if the same goes for the Pine64? Certainly for the Rock64 there was virtually zero post sale suppor.
- faragon 8y agoPine64 is ok, at least with Debian 8 (no hw video acceleration, fine for doing ARMv8 tests/builds).
- rbanffy 8y agoI have a Pine 64 controlling a small cluster of Pi Zeros. So far (a couple years, months in this role) it's rock solid.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- WhiteOwlLion 8y agoASUS tinkerbox is solid, but you also have to pay $60 instead of $25. I'm planning on buying ten Rock64 for clustering because for the price I'm willing to sacrifice some quality for performance gains.
- scns 8y agofor an SBC with mainline support i would take a hard look at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/la-frite-open-source-fries https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/la-frite-... disclaimer: not affiliated
- gwbas1c 8y agoI thought all cheap Android phones count as a "cheap Linux phone?" I really want a phone that I can plug into a screen and keyboard and have a full desktop environment. (I know Samsung makes something like this)
- icebraining 8y agoYou shouldn't need a Samsung; if your phone supports MHL, you can plug a screen and a keyboard, and you can use GNURoot (not rooting required) + XServer XSDL to run a full GNU/Linux desktop. There's also a packaged version: https://maruos.com/ https://maruos.com/ | https://github.com/maruos/maruos https://github.com/maruos/maruos
- v_lisivka 8y agoOr Motorola Droid4, where it called "WebTop". It was good idea: built-in keyboard, display as touchscreen, and large display, but firefox was painfully slow because phone was too weak for that. I hope, someone will reimplement that with WiDi, on-screen keyboard and touchpad/magnifier, and support for both android and desktop apps.
- ufo 8y agoThis is the diference between Linux and GNU/Linux. These phones are trying to use the same userland and similar distros to what you would use on the Linux desktop.
- da_chicken 8y agoThat didn't work very well for Windows 10.
- raxxorrax 8y agoWindows 10 didn't have many ARM-targeted apps. A problem that would be smaller in the open source world.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago1440x720 seems like a pretty high resolution display for $100 device. The laptops would be perfect for me if they had longer battery life than 6 hours. Make it 12 somehow with expansion or something and I'd buy one immediately.
- rbanffy 8y agoFrom what I saw, their laptops have plenty empty space inside. I wonder if adding more batteries would work or would somehow mess the battery controller.
- WhiteOwlLion 8y agoI've been looking for an display for all our conference rooms, updating space reservations in real-time. A low cost display like this would be awesome.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoIn fairness you could probably just use a cheap tablet for that.
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- buovjaga 8y agoMods might want to change the link to the original story: https://itsfoss.com/pinebook-kde-smartphone/ https://itsfoss.com/pinebook-kde-smartphone/
- dang 8y agoOk, we changed to that from https://www.notebookcheck.net/Pine64-maker-of-cheap-Linux-laptops-may-be-making-a-cheap-Linux-phone.346011.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Pine64-maker-of-cheap-Linux-la.... Thanks!
- mitchtbaum 8y agoAny time frame available?
- m0llusk 8y agoArticle says developer kits released Nov 1, developer boards release and demo by FOSDEM, and design complete Q2 2019. Lots of other details make the article worth reading.
- lolc 8y agoI'd really appreciate a (more) open phone platform.
- 51lver 8y agoWhat we really need is a good dialer/sms/mms set of applications and some easy to use USB LTE radios that can do voice and data at the same time. Then we could all be making perfectly usable phones by plugging the parts together and slapping an OS on it, just like PCs in the 90s. :)
- kanyethegreat 8y agoRegarding the first part, isn't that what programmatic voice/text is (e.g. Twilio)? I guess they're more of an API on which you'd build said apps. So, rather, wouldn't something like WhatsApp be one of those?
- vram22 8y agoThere was an Israeli company called Modu (probably for Modular) mentioned on TechCrunch some years ago, that did something like that, but at a higher level, IIRC. Like, you could plug in accessories like a camera or other things, and remove them when you didn't need them. Also, I guess, if the interfaces were well defined, you could swap one module for another one of the same type, for better price, speed or other reasons. Didn't track what happened with that, but the idea seemed good.
- znpy 8y agoInsta-buy.
- collyw 8y agoAnyone know what OS they are planning on using on it? I had an Ubuntu Phone and it was a bit disappointing. Lack of apps, and the majority were web based - which didn't work well offline (not useful when travelling and you can't use maps). When I bought an Android last year it had improved a lot. I can only imagine any new Linux based OS will be even further behind. Its a pity as I hate the locked down, walled garden nature of Apple products, and the high price tag and I hate the intrusive spying nature of Andorid / Google.