7 ms·

$200 Linux Laptop Pinebook Pro Is Available for Purchase

47 points by reddotX 7y ago

Hitton 7y ago
Sadly 4 GB RAM is barely usable these days. I'm much more interested in the upcoming Pinephone[0]. https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinephone-is-real-shipping-soon/ https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinep...
- axaxs 7y ago
  I strongly disagree. Sure you need more to run the latest games, or some video/photo/sound editing, but you wouldn't be doing those types of things on this device. For browsing, checking your social media/email, etc. it's more than enough. Even for coding. I worked a year or so off of a chromebook(with linux installed) with 4GB RAM and never had any issues. This wasn't that long ago.
  - xeromal 7y ago
    Chrome, Firefox, et all can easily use 4Gb of ram in normal situations.
    - axaxs 7y ago
      I always see comments like this, but never understand where they come from. To be clear, I'm not telling you that you are wrong, or lying. I do believe some people see this. I just don't understand how it's normal. I've -never- had anything like this. Am I the odd one out? My system now has 32GB of memory. I have two chrome windows open, one with 14 tabs, the other with 2. Below is the memory situation of the entire machine. $ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 32094 3164 26741 864 2188 27612 Swap: 0 0 0
      - leephillips 7y ago
        You're not the odd one out. My laptop running ubuntu has 4GB, I use it for everything, I use Firefox all the time, and it's fine. I even edit video now and then.
      - xeromal 7y ago
        Yeah, I'm not sure who the odd one out is honestly and no one does unless we have telemetry for all computers but chrome and firefox definitely can hog tons of ram. I guess it depends on what sites you frequent and have open
      - CapricornNoble 7y ago
        >>>I have two chrome windows open, one with 14 tabs, the other with 2 I'm sitting at 5.8/16GB used with 87 tabs open in Brave. I usually leave tabs open as a sort of "soft bookmarking", and a reminder to go back and read something later. For example, I have 7 tabs next to each other from the EvolutionM.net forum, and all those little Mitsubishi icons on the top of my browser are a constant "At some point you need to study how to properly maintain your dual-clutch transmission instead of paying Mitsubishi $1000+ for a fluid flush."
        kjaftaedi 7y ago
        But surely you realize this is a luxury afforded to you by having purchased a machine with more ram. For those that want or need to save money, less ram can be used and the same soft bookmarking can be accomplished by using OneTab or similar browser extensions.
        CapricornNoble 7y ago
        Oh absolutely. I totally understand reducing your hardware costs if your use case is focused. I wish there were more options for purchasing "no frills" hardware in life....particularly cars.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- beatgammit 7y ago
  4GB is plenty for an ARM-based computer. It's rare to find a phone or a SOC with more than 4GB ram, and I think the reason is that you're more likely to max your CPU than your RAM on these limited chips. You're unlikely to be running VMs on these, and you shouldn't be expecting this to be your work primary machine at $200. For $200 on a limited CPU, I think 4GB RAM is plenty. My Chromebook runs 4GB (upper end of that product range, at least at the time), and it works fine for everything we have needed it to do (video streaming, Google Docs, etc). That's the type of device I expect this to replace.
nickcw 7y ago
I don't think it is possible to order one for purchase at the moment; every time I've looked at the website in the last 3 weeks its been either "try again in 1 hour" or "out of stock".
gorgoiler 7y ago
Pine’s hardware is really nice. I would love to be able to install something very close to stock Debian on it, or a Debian distribution sourced directly from somewhere like Raspberry Pi, rather than the current OS offerings. Perhaps the OS situation has been improved with this latest hardware? I’ve never felt comfortable with the OS side they provide: strange versions of Debian from unknown github accounts or links from their wiki to other third party sites I’ve never heard of. I can build from source but don’t have anything like the resources I’d need to audit the source code, again from third party hacker sites, and it doesn’t feel like there are enough collective eyeballs on the OS forks and patches to feel completely confident nothing careless or nefarious made its way into the codebase. I’ve no real reason not to trust them, but if they could roll what they need for their system into an upstream vendor with a brand name I’ve heard of it would give me more faith in using their devices in high trust roles (ie: anything other than local coding or web browsing.)
- cbluth 7y ago
  Ever heard of armbian?
  - gorgoiler 7y ago
    Nice. I didn’t know they had direct support for all this hardware.
kop316 7y ago
I just checked and it is out of stock.
newnewpdro 7y ago
I considered getting one of their 1080p 11" models, but feared receiving something with such a shitty build quality/keyboard it would just be $100 worth of e-waste. Any of you HNers actually use one of these as a daily driver?
- panpanna 7y ago
  I'm also interested in real hands-on reviews by HN readers!

47 points by reddotX 7y ago

Sadly 4 GB RAM is barely usable these days. I'm much more interested in the upcoming Pinephone[0]. https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinephone-is-real-shipping-soon/ https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinep...

axaxs 7y ago
I strongly disagree. Sure you need more to run the latest games, or some video/photo/sound editing, but you wouldn't be doing those types of things on this device. For browsing, checking your social media/email, etc. it's more than enough. Even for coding. I worked a year or so off of a chromebook(with linux installed) with 4GB RAM and never had any issues. This wasn't that long ago.
- xeromal 7y ago
  Chrome, Firefox, et all can easily use 4Gb of ram in normal situations.
  - axaxs 7y ago
    I always see comments like this, but never understand where they come from. To be clear, I'm not telling you that you are wrong, or lying. I do believe some people see this. I just don't understand how it's normal. I've -never- had anything like this. Am I the odd one out? My system now has 32GB of memory. I have two chrome windows open, one with 14 tabs, the other with 2. Below is the memory situation of the entire machine. $ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 32094 3164 26741 864 2188 27612 Swap: 0 0 0
    - leephillips 7y ago
      You're not the odd one out. My laptop running ubuntu has 4GB, I use it for everything, I use Firefox all the time, and it's fine. I even edit video now and then.
    - xeromal 7y ago
      Yeah, I'm not sure who the odd one out is honestly and no one does unless we have telemetry for all computers but chrome and firefox definitely can hog tons of ram. I guess it depends on what sites you frequent and have open
    - CapricornNoble 7y ago
      >>>I have two chrome windows open, one with 14 tabs, the other with 2 I'm sitting at 5.8/16GB used with 87 tabs open in Brave. I usually leave tabs open as a sort of "soft bookmarking", and a reminder to go back and read something later. For example, I have 7 tabs next to each other from the EvolutionM.net forum, and all those little Mitsubishi icons on the top of my browser are a constant "At some point you need to study how to properly maintain your dual-clutch transmission instead of paying Mitsubishi $1000+ for a fluid flush."
      - kjaftaedi 7y ago
        But surely you realize this is a luxury afforded to you by having purchased a machine with more ram. For those that want or need to save money, less ram can be used and the same soft bookmarking can be accomplished by using OneTab or similar browser extensions.
        CapricornNoble 7y ago
        Oh absolutely. I totally understand reducing your hardware costs if your use case is focused. I wish there were more options for purchasing "no frills" hardware in life....particularly cars.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
beatgammit 7y ago
4GB is plenty for an ARM-based computer. It's rare to find a phone or a SOC with more than 4GB ram, and I think the reason is that you're more likely to max your CPU than your RAM on these limited chips. You're unlikely to be running VMs on these, and you shouldn't be expecting this to be your work primary machine at $200. For $200 on a limited CPU, I think 4GB RAM is plenty. My Chromebook runs 4GB (upper end of that product range, at least at the time), and it works fine for everything we have needed it to do (video streaming, Google Docs, etc). That's the type of device I expect this to replace.

nickcw 7y ago

I don't think it is possible to order one for purchase at the moment; every time I've looked at the website in the last 3 weeks its been either "try again in 1 hour" or "out of stock".

gorgoiler 7y ago

Pine’s hardware is really nice. I would love to be able to install something very close to stock Debian on it, or a Debian distribution sourced directly from somewhere like Raspberry Pi, rather than the current OS offerings. Perhaps the OS situation has been improved with this latest hardware? I’ve never felt comfortable with the OS side they provide: strange versions of Debian from unknown github accounts or links from their wiki to other third party sites I’ve never heard of. I can build from source but don’t have anything like the resources I’d need to audit the source code, again from third party hacker sites, and it doesn’t feel like there are enough collective eyeballs on the OS forks and patches to feel completely confident nothing careless or nefarious made its way into the codebase. I’ve no real reason not to trust them, but if they could roll what they need for their system into an upstream vendor with a brand name I’ve heard of it would give me more faith in using their devices in high trust roles (ie: anything other than local coding or web browsing.)

cbluth 7y ago
Ever heard of armbian?
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  Nice. I didn’t know they had direct support for all this hardware.

kop316 7y ago

I just checked and it is out of stock.

newnewpdro 7y ago

I considered getting one of their 1080p 11" models, but feared receiving something with such a shitty build quality/keyboard it would just be $100 worth of e-waste. Any of you HNers actually use one of these as a daily driver?

panpanna 7y ago
I'm also interested in real hands-on reviews by HN readers!