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Linus Tech Tips put out a video this week on Floatplane about the Pinebook (not the Pro edition) and it was woefully underpowered. CPU was compared to the PS3 a

Linus Tech Tips put out a video this week on Floatplane about the Pinebook (not the Pro edition) and it was woefully underpowered. CPU was compared to the PS3 and GPU was compared to the original Xbox, for reference. It barely ran with the stock software (they had to install updates/new software to get it running) and was unable to play a 480p YouTube video fullscreen without noticeable frame drops. The hardware in it and their tablet and phone prototype are several generations out of date (easiest example is WiFi only being 802.11n and single band). They were also unable to get Windows running on it when they tried using a Raspberry Pi image, if that is something you care about. Pine64 themselves claim that the machine is not a daily driver. The Pinebook Pro looks more respectable hardware-wise, but I would avoid looking at it as a daily driver until you can find reviews of it saying otherwise. I had been looking at the phone a few days before and was astonished at how outdated the hardware was, even for an open source device that is possibly upgradeable.

Youden 7y ago
I'm not saying the old Pinebook wasn't bad, I've never owned it but some of your points are a bit hollow for me. > CPU was compared to the PS3 and GPU was compared to the original Xbox, for reference. Why is this a problem? This is "desktop" hardware against mobile hardware. > It barely ran with the stock software How so? It didn't perform well? It didn't boot at all? > and was unable to play a 480p YouTube video fullscreen without noticeable frame drops With which software? Did it support the A64's hardware decoder? > They were also unable to get Windows running on it when they tried using a Raspberry Pi image ...Is expected that you're able to boot Raspberry Pi images on completely different devices? > Pine64 themselves claim that the machine is not a daily driver. I think you should have opened with that. > I had been looking at the phone a few days before and was astonished at how outdated the hardware was, even for an open source device that is possibly upgradeable. Open source hardware projects don't have the luxuries that multi-billion dollar behemoths like Samsung do. They don't have access to pre-production SoCs so they're handicapped from the start and they need to handle everything from design to parts sourcing to manufacture to distribution themselves, with a small team. That means you're going to get "outdated" hardware. You don't buy open source for the latest shiny things, you buy it for other reasons.
- rjsw 7y ago
  There is a project that adds hardware video acceleration [1]. [1] https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus
- burnte 7y ago
  > Why is this a problem? This is "desktop" hardware against mobile hardware. No one said this was a problem, the commenter was simply stating the comparison. > How so? It didn't perform well? It didn't boot at all? The commenter explained that in literally the second part of the sentence: > > It barely ran with the stock software (they had to install updates/new software to get it running) >With which software? Did it support the A64's hardware decoder? Again, as stated by the commenter, it was using youtube in the distro that comes with the machine. > ...Is expected that you're able to boot Raspberry Pi images on completely different devices? It's not too far fetched, they're not very different at all, they're both quad-core A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit based SOCs with similar clock speeds, and the some of the Pine boards with more RAM can run Win10. > Open source hardware projects don't have the luxuries that multi-billion dollar behemoths like Samsung do. Pine64 is just a Chinese knockoff of the Raspberry Pi, and is more closed than RPi due to the AllWinner SOCs they use. They have more support and reliability issues too. There's no need to be rude, but if you're going to be rude, you should at least be accurate.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    > It's not too far fetched, they're not very different at all, they're both quad-core A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit based SOCs with similar clock speeds, and the some of the Pine boards with more RAM can run Win10. There's a lot more to a system than the CPU. For the Raspberry Pi, someone bothered to port EDK2 and write ACPI tables: https://github.com/andreiw/RaspberryPiPkg https://github.com/andreiw/RaspberryPiPkg And Microsoft themselves were interested in the Pi (for IoT Core), so they even have some support for weird Broadcom hardware in the NT kernel. If someone writes ACPI tables for Allwinner SoCs, it will work :) > more closed than RPi due to the AllWinner SOCs they use Allwinner has the most community support out of all SoCs there are. It is reverse engineered of course, but it's really good. To the point of someone writing a FOSS driver for the video decoder: https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus — the RPi still only has blobs for video acceleration. The GPU situation is a bit reversed: VC4 is well established and maintained by Broadcom, while Panfrost and Lima are still pretty young. It would be very incorrect to suggest that anything is more closed than the old garbage SoC that's in the RPi. It starts booting from the GPU (!) and it has a custom Broadcom exclusive interrupt controller instead of ARM GIC (!!). The author of the open GPU side firmware for the Pi literally suggested Allwinner (sunxi) as a better alternative: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware/issues/37#issuecomment-388695429 https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware/issues/37#is... But Rockchip of course a much better company because they themselves work with upstream Linux.
X-Istence 7y ago
I own one of the original Pinebooks, and for $99 it is a great little machine. Comparing it to my MacBook Pro... it's terrible. It has some flaws, and it may be underpowered for things like YouTube, it works flawlessly as a small note taker that has an extremely long battery life and a decent screen/keyboard. It's also really nice for having a Linux machine around that most dongles/serial consoles just work with when you head into the datacenter to deal with a Cisco device that isn't playing nice. For the price point, you get a lot. As an owner of a Pinebook, I am looking forward to the Pinebook Pro.
- rocky1138 7y ago
  As a note taker, how long is the delay between you opening it to the point where you can type a note?
  - X-Istence 7y ago
    I was using Google Docs for note taking, and as long as drive.google.com was already loaded, I could pop open the lid and create a new document in about 3 - 5 seconds.
- tombert 7y ago
  You must have had a very different experience than I did; in my case even running something like LibreOffice was laggy, and the default install of KDE was laughably slow. Command-line applications worked fine, and yeah, I mostly live in the command-line anyway, but if the computer isn't even fast enough to go to Stackoverflow at a reasonable speed when I encounter s a problem, I don't see how usable it is for me. It was bad enough to where I tried opening it up to see if I could reasonably-easily install an ODroid N2 or NVidia Jetson in there. (I'm sure someone smarter than me could make that work but it didn't look like a trivial operation). I'm hoping the PineBook Pro is bit better, since I love the idea of having a good ARM based laptop with FOSS software driving it, but as it stands my Pinebook is more or less a paperweight
  - znpy 7y ago
    In pinebook’s defense... OpenOffice/LibreOffice is slow and lags pretty much everywhere.
blu42 7y ago
I have a RK3399-based (same chip as in the PBP) chromebook -- ASUS Chromebook Flip CA101P -- as one of my daily rides. It has no issue playing 1080@60fps & 4K@30 youtubes (I cannot physically output more than 4K@30 to my TV). Its Chrome browser is among the fastest browser experiences I get in my daily routine (which includes linux and windows desktops). On top of it, that chromebook lasts 6-10h of productive usage on a single charge. Of course, Google's ChromeOS level of polish is a far cry from most 'freely assembled' distros out there, but last time I checked, the ubuntu/debian images for the PBP were getting there in terms of working features and performance.
fheld 7y ago
>Linus Tech Tips put out a video... They just uploaded it to youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=sXLdIYL30tw
- Lerc 7y ago
  So a quick look at Linus Tech tips tells me far more about the video creator than the hardware. This is a combination of gurning and cheap shots. This seems to be a repeated methodology. Ordinarily I would consider reviews like this completely worthless, but I think I might have overestimated their value. The fact that people are repeating attitudes conveyed by these videos elsewhere would suggest to me that they simply make the world a worse place. Normally I try to maintain a more positive air in comments, but this is simply terrible.
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
And Raspberry Pis are bad at mining Bitcoin, but no one in their right mind would use a Pi to mine Bitcoin. For $99, I'll be more than happy if it runs Void or Alpine Linux, gcc, i3wm, vim, git, and Firefox renders websites that know not to abuse Javascript. That's all I need 80% of the time.

Youden 7y ago

I'm not saying the old Pinebook wasn't bad, I've never owned it but some of your points are a bit hollow for me. > CPU was compared to the PS3 and GPU was compared to the original Xbox, for reference. Why is this a problem? This is "desktop" hardware against mobile hardware. > It barely ran with the stock software How so? It didn't perform well? It didn't boot at all? > and was unable to play a 480p YouTube video fullscreen without noticeable frame drops With which software? Did it support the A64's hardware decoder? > They were also unable to get Windows running on it when they tried using a Raspberry Pi image ...Is expected that you're able to boot Raspberry Pi images on completely different devices? > Pine64 themselves claim that the machine is not a daily driver. I think you should have opened with that. > I had been looking at the phone a few days before and was astonished at how outdated the hardware was, even for an open source device that is possibly upgradeable. Open source hardware projects don't have the luxuries that multi-billion dollar behemoths like Samsung do. They don't have access to pre-production SoCs so they're handicapped from the start and they need to handle everything from design to parts sourcing to manufacture to distribution themselves, with a small team. That means you're going to get "outdated" hardware. You don't buy open source for the latest shiny things, you buy it for other reasons.

rjsw 7y ago
There is a project that adds hardware video acceleration [1]. [1] https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus
burnte 7y ago
> Why is this a problem? This is "desktop" hardware against mobile hardware. No one said this was a problem, the commenter was simply stating the comparison. > How so? It didn't perform well? It didn't boot at all? The commenter explained that in literally the second part of the sentence: > > It barely ran with the stock software (they had to install updates/new software to get it running) >With which software? Did it support the A64's hardware decoder? Again, as stated by the commenter, it was using youtube in the distro that comes with the machine. > ...Is expected that you're able to boot Raspberry Pi images on completely different devices? It's not too far fetched, they're not very different at all, they're both quad-core A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit based SOCs with similar clock speeds, and the some of the Pine boards with more RAM can run Win10. > Open source hardware projects don't have the luxuries that multi-billion dollar behemoths like Samsung do. Pine64 is just a Chinese knockoff of the Raspberry Pi, and is more closed than RPi due to the AllWinner SOCs they use. They have more support and reliability issues too. There's no need to be rude, but if you're going to be rude, you should at least be accurate.
- floatboth 7y ago
  > It's not too far fetched, they're not very different at all, they're both quad-core A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit based SOCs with similar clock speeds, and the some of the Pine boards with more RAM can run Win10. There's a lot more to a system than the CPU. For the Raspberry Pi, someone bothered to port EDK2 and write ACPI tables: https://github.com/andreiw/RaspberryPiPkg https://github.com/andreiw/RaspberryPiPkg And Microsoft themselves were interested in the Pi (for IoT Core), so they even have some support for weird Broadcom hardware in the NT kernel. If someone writes ACPI tables for Allwinner SoCs, it will work :) > more closed than RPi due to the AllWinner SOCs they use Allwinner has the most community support out of all SoCs there are. It is reverse engineered of course, but it's really good. To the point of someone writing a FOSS driver for the video decoder: https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus — the RPi still only has blobs for video acceleration. The GPU situation is a bit reversed: VC4 is well established and maintained by Broadcom, while Panfrost and Lima are still pretty young. It would be very incorrect to suggest that anything is more closed than the old garbage SoC that's in the RPi. It starts booting from the GPU (!) and it has a custom Broadcom exclusive interrupt controller instead of ARM GIC (!!). The author of the open GPU side firmware for the Pi literally suggested Allwinner (sunxi) as a better alternative: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware/issues/37#issuecomment-388695429 https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware/issues/37#is... But Rockchip of course a much better company because they themselves work with upstream Linux.

X-Istence 7y ago

I own one of the original Pinebooks, and for $99 it is a great little machine. Comparing it to my MacBook Pro... it's terrible. It has some flaws, and it may be underpowered for things like YouTube, it works flawlessly as a small note taker that has an extremely long battery life and a decent screen/keyboard. It's also really nice for having a Linux machine around that most dongles/serial consoles just work with when you head into the datacenter to deal with a Cisco device that isn't playing nice. For the price point, you get a lot. As an owner of a Pinebook, I am looking forward to the Pinebook Pro.

rocky1138 7y ago
As a note taker, how long is the delay between you opening it to the point where you can type a note?
- X-Istence 7y ago
  I was using Google Docs for note taking, and as long as drive.google.com was already loaded, I could pop open the lid and create a new document in about 3 - 5 seconds.
tombert 7y ago
You must have had a very different experience than I did; in my case even running something like LibreOffice was laggy, and the default install of KDE was laughably slow. Command-line applications worked fine, and yeah, I mostly live in the command-line anyway, but if the computer isn't even fast enough to go to Stackoverflow at a reasonable speed when I encounter s a problem, I don't see how usable it is for me. It was bad enough to where I tried opening it up to see if I could reasonably-easily install an ODroid N2 or NVidia Jetson in there. (I'm sure someone smarter than me could make that work but it didn't look like a trivial operation). I'm hoping the PineBook Pro is bit better, since I love the idea of having a good ARM based laptop with FOSS software driving it, but as it stands my Pinebook is more or less a paperweight
- znpy 7y ago
  In pinebook’s defense... OpenOffice/LibreOffice is slow and lags pretty much everywhere.

blu42 7y ago

I have a RK3399-based (same chip as in the PBP) chromebook -- ASUS Chromebook Flip CA101P -- as one of my daily rides. It has no issue playing 1080@60fps & 4K@30 youtubes (I cannot physically output more than 4K@30 to my TV). Its Chrome browser is among the fastest browser experiences I get in my daily routine (which includes linux and windows desktops). On top of it, that chromebook lasts 6-10h of productive usage on a single charge. Of course, Google's ChromeOS level of polish is a far cry from most 'freely assembled' distros out there, but last time I checked, the ubuntu/debian images for the PBP were getting there in terms of working features and performance.

fheld 7y ago

>Linus Tech Tips put out a video... They just uploaded it to youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=sXLdIYL30tw

Lerc 7y ago
So a quick look at Linus Tech tips tells me far more about the video creator than the hardware. This is a combination of gurning and cheap shots. This seems to be a repeated methodology. Ordinarily I would consider reviews like this completely worthless, but I think I might have overestimated their value. The fact that people are repeating attitudes conveyed by these videos elsewhere would suggest to me that they simply make the world a worse place. Normally I try to maintain a more positive air in comments, but this is simply terrible.

lone_haxx0r 7y ago

And Raspberry Pis are bad at mining Bitcoin, but no one in their right mind would use a Pi to mine Bitcoin. For $99, I'll be more than happy if it runs Void or Alpine Linux, gcc, i3wm, vim, git, and Firefox renders websites that know not to abuse Javascript. That's all I need 80% of the time.