21 ms·

Pinebook Pro – First Impressions and Setup Tips

177 points by ashitlerferad 7y ago

uaygsfdbzf 7y ago
Total waste of time laptop.
ginaj 7y ago
Says sold out. Probably a gimmick
cperciva 7y ago
Can someone explain to me the logic of putting a pagefile on a ramdisk? If the pages are going to be in RAM anyway, why pretend that they're on disk?
- Kliment 7y ago
  Because it's transparently compressed, so you get more RAM out of your RAM at the cost of some latency and CPU usage. This is a good tradeoff on heavily RAM constrained workloads like attempting to run Slack clients.
  - flatiron 7y ago
    I’m not sure why they went through all that hassle when there is zswap. That’s what I use for low ram devices.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kliment 7y ago
      In this case, because the storage device that's there by default is optimized for low power and not high speed, so RAM is dramatically faster. They implemented swap as well but only as a last resort when the compressed RAM runs out.
      - zamadatix 7y ago
        Sounds exactly like what zswap does out of the box. "Zswap is a kernel feature that provides a compressed RAM cache for swap pages. Pages which would otherwise be swapped out to disk are instead compressed and stored into a memory pool in RAM. Once the pool is full or the RAM is exhausted, the least recently used (LRU) page is decompressed and written to disk, as if it had not been intercepted." https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Zswap https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Zswap
        ashitlerferad 7y ago
        From that wiki page you linked to: "The difference compared to zram is that zswap works in conjunction with a swap device while zram is a swap device in RAM that does not require a backing swap device."
    - mbreese 7y ago
      The default storage is an EMMC chip, so they are trying to avoid hitting that for swap completely. With 4GB of RAM, that’s a reasonable goal. If think of you added in an SSD to the machine, then zswap might be more appropriate.
m_b 7y ago
Why so much ads on a personal website? Half the content of the page is dedicated to them, it's very annoying: https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp
- teekert 7y ago
  Well, the thought crosses my mind every time I think of a good idea for a blog post: Make post, fill with as much ads as is bearable, post to HN, profit. Can't blame him.
  - pi-rat 7y ago
    And that short burst of traffic from a tech savvy group with probably >90% adblock might earn you, like what.. $1.50?
    - vanderZwan 7y ago
      My uBlock and uMatrix setup is pretty thorough and doesn't block these, much to my surprise
      - ekianjo 7y ago
        Local ads probably.
      - sjogress 7y ago
        The ads are served from static.haydenjames.io. Looks like a Wordpress plugin called Advanced Ads Plus[0] is used. 0: https://wpadvancedads.com https://wpadvancedads.com
        isoprophlex 7y ago
        Soon you'll need a gpu to run real time deep learning models that detect and filter these type of embedded ads...
dmos62 7y ago
I didn't think I'd find this post this useful. All my dev machines are underpowered, which is pretty much a lifestyle choice by now. Meaning they are ram-constrained, cpu-constrained and have slow disk IO. I'm not writing this to discuss why I do this, but I feel like that's weird enough to warrant a few words, so one of the upsides is that I am intimately aware of resource efficiency around me. This post introduced me to zram (in-ram compressed swap), which sacrifices CPU cycles for evading in-disk swap usage longer. I've also not considered playing with cpu governors, which I was able to do while reading the post. And, the post provided some swap settings for use with zram, which is great. Again, very helpful post.
- peterisza 7y ago
  I bought PBP for the same reason. However, I am not satisfied with the quality of the touch pad and the screen, so I don't use it.
- kick 7y ago
  zram and zswap are some of my favorite tools on smaller systems. Happy other people are learning about them!
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  I appreciate you developing on underpowered machines, as it likely means the end product will not suck on the average user's computer!
- eb0la 7y ago
  > All my dev machines are underpowered I believe this is a great choice. Most of our code will live in the cloud, and will be billed by the second. If you can feel if something goes slow, you can fix it before you're billed for it ;-) Fast hardware can mask performance problems. I still remember a bug I had in a Turbo Pascal code when I switched from my 286 to a Pentium: my loop counter had an extra '0' and it run unnoticed on the pentium for hours because it was too fast...
  - emidln 7y ago
ekianjo 7y ago
No mention about how good the screen is?
- bewilderbeast 7y ago
  He mentions it shortly, in the Build Quality paragraph.
- k_sze 7y ago
  For me, the lack of guarantee about dead pixels is what is holding me back from buying a PineBook Pro. It’s 2020. Dead pixels shouldn’t be a thing anymore. I would be willing to pay a little bit more and get a unit that is guaranteed to have no dead pixel. Alas, they don’t offer that option.
  - peterisza 7y ago
    You can buy mine for a very good price if you are in Europe. It doesn't have any dead pixels, and I have only used it for 5 hours or so.
    - jve 7y ago
      For how much and what country?
    - jasonvorhe 7y ago
      I'll take it. How can I contact you? I'm located in Germany.
      - peterisza 7y ago
        Please pm me here (same user name, #pinebook channel): https://discordapp.com/invite/DgB7kzr https://discordapp.com/invite/DgB7kzr.
  - kick 7y ago
    "Don't RMA for a few dead pixels" is pretty much standard on every legal text ever, and just because it's date '+%Y' doesn't mean that we've magically solved every problem when it comes to manufacturing, especially with displays. If it means that much to you, get a Chromebook. They'll probably have about as much of a chance of getting a dead pixel, but hey, it's not like you'd know that because Chromebook manufacturers aren't as transparent as PINE64. Assuming their policies haven't changed since I checked them last, Apple still allows 7-8 stuck/dead pixels on devices the size of the Pinebook Pro. Dell six. Apple is the richest company in the world. PINE64 doesn't even count as a startup.
mattlutze 7y ago
I've had a Pine64 in my closet for years from the original Kickstarter and completely forgot about it. Now I've got a fun project for the weekend :)
frockington1 7y ago
I recently bought a dev laptop and was looking at Pinebook Pros. The main deterrent for me was the possibility of dead pixels. I ended up getting a refurbished Dell for $250, as it met my requirements of 8 gb ram and 256 gb ssd. Dell actively checks Linux compatibility so I had no issues at all installing Ubuntu first go
- Whinner 7y ago
  What model Dell?
  - frockington1 7y ago
    Latitude E7250, I think its mainly used in corporate contracts. This was a plus for me as its built to withstand some abuse
rbanffy 7y ago
I can't wait for the ANSI keyboard version to be available again. The only thing I wish it had that it doesn't is a larger battery. There is plenty empty space inside the shell and it'd be awesome to be able to install an extra battery in there.
- RL_Quine 7y ago
  Battery size in laptops is limited by airlines.
  - abtinf 7y ago
    No, its limited by FAA.
  - fulafel 7y ago
    Does this really limit the market for extra batteries a lot?
  - jjuel 7y ago
    But that is 100 watt hours. If my math is correct (which it is possibly very wrong) this battery is only 50WH. My guess is this is to help keep cost down not because it wouldn't be allowed on a plane.
  - tngranados 7y ago
    It's limited by the FAA to a maximum of 100Wh. The Pinebook Pro has a battery of 10000mAh at 3.8V (I think), so 38Wh. There is plenty of room for a bigger battery.
padraic7a 7y ago
I think the device seems incredibly good for the price. That said I don't think I'm ready to move to an arm laptop. The other current Pine devices is just amazing. Check out this footage of the PinePhone running Arch Linux, Chromium and Firefox. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127081
jjuel 7y ago
I have been looking for an ARM laptop at a reasonable price. It looks like this might just check the boxes I am looking for. Can't wait for the US version to be back in stock!
bradfa 7y ago
How much of the u-boot and Linux kernel binaries which ship with the Pinebook Pro (or are used in the images/installers linked from the wiki) is already integrated into the mainline or upstream of each of these projects? If not much, where can I find information about their plans to contribute their changes? Are there any plans for UEFI support to be added to the Pinebook Pro so that it can easily boot installers that already exist for 64 bit ARM Linux distributions?
btrettel 7y ago
An aside: Why do so many websites (like this one) now have large blank spots near images when browsing with JavaScript disabled? I'm not much of a web developer, but it looks like the site was trying to use srcset but used it in a weird way that has two img tags with the srcset of the images, with one with a data URL in the src attribute that contains a blank image and the dimensions of the image. So right next to the image is a large blank spot. It appears that some JavaScript hides one of these images. Similarly, many websites show all sizes of the images when you have JavaScript disabled. As far as I'm aware, it is possible to do responsive images without JavaScript, so I don't get why people do things like this.
- markosaric 7y ago
  Something to do with the fact that he is lazy loading images using JavaScript I believe.
- drdebug 7y ago
  So many websites are completely broken with JavaScript disabled. With or without, even printing a webpage to PDF is becoming a challenge. I sincerely wonder how disabled people use the web nowadays.
Legogris 7y ago
> Mainly, if I remain with the Pinebook Pro or switch to alternatives such as Purism 13, Galago Pro’s 14 or back to Thinkpad T series laptops I am currently on my fourth Thinkpad in a row (T480s) and it's been a good streak, but this will be my last. The Thunderbolt firmware has had severe issues and requires reflashing to be practically usable. Despite Lenovo officially being part of LVFS[0], the only way I could get my laptop operational, after about a full work-day of working with fwupdmgr, digging around the internet for cab files, trying to extract them from the Windows-only releases, running Windows in a VM, etc, the only way I finally got it working was grabbing an old drive from the drawer, installing Windows and downloading their Windows releases just so I could get my controller in a working condition. This is for a laptop released in 2018 with the update shipping in late 2019. [0]: http://fwupd.org/ http://fwupd.org/
- klohto 7y ago
  Do not fear! I hated Lenovo after the T480s and sweared to never buy anything from then ever again. But I bought T490 to my new job and spent a day tweaking it to my liking (I come from mac) and was pleasantly surprised how well it runs. Compared to T480s the touchpad has better feel and the laptop is able to cool itself so I’m not facing the fan issue (it is still present when on AC but hardly noticeable) I’m running Fedora 31 with Cinnamon and with disabled Ethernet, Fingerprint and SD card reader in BIOS, the power consumption with 40 tabs on Firefox and brightness on 40% is around 3.5W which gets me ~10 hours. Pretty sure you could get it even lower with minimalistic Arch setup. Don’t get me wrong, I would love Macbook (2015) in the linux world with stelar touchpad, great battery life and out-of-the box setup, but this as close as it gets and I believe there is no other option right now.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    It’s not this issue itself as much as the half-assed practical non-support for Linux, and the suspicious malware they push on you. At this rate one of the new contenders like Pine, Librem etc should hopefully be mature enough by the point I feel the need to upgrade in some years.. Or Clevo for that matter!
_bxg1 7y ago
There are several reasons I couldn't use this machine as a daily driver personally, but for $199 (!) it's tempting to get it just as a toy. Just to have a: - Dedicated Linux system to play with - Ultra-portable laptop - Cheap travel laptop
sansnomme 7y ago
Considering the price, this can probably retrofitted into a Chromebook. It looks like that it has a better build quality than most Chromebooks in that price range.
dang 7y ago
Similar from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22076143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22076143 Lots more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Pinebook%20%20comments%3E20&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
FloatArtifact 7y ago
Is it possible when considering form factor and cooling to pop other SBC's device advice such as this? 3 years down the road pop in a new board?

177 points by ashitlerferad 7y ago

uaygsfdbzf 7y ago

Total waste of time laptop.

ginaj 7y ago

Says sold out. Probably a gimmick

cperciva 7y ago

Can someone explain to me the logic of putting a pagefile on a ramdisk? If the pages are going to be in RAM anyway, why pretend that they're on disk?

Kliment 7y ago
Because it's transparently compressed, so you get more RAM out of your RAM at the cost of some latency and CPU usage. This is a good tradeoff on heavily RAM constrained workloads like attempting to run Slack clients.
- flatiron 7y ago
  I’m not sure why they went through all that hassle when there is zswap. That’s what I use for low ram devices.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kliment 7y ago
    In this case, because the storage device that's there by default is optimized for low power and not high speed, so RAM is dramatically faster. They implemented swap as well but only as a last resort when the compressed RAM runs out.
    - zamadatix 7y ago
      Sounds exactly like what zswap does out of the box. "Zswap is a kernel feature that provides a compressed RAM cache for swap pages. Pages which would otherwise be swapped out to disk are instead compressed and stored into a memory pool in RAM. Once the pool is full or the RAM is exhausted, the least recently used (LRU) page is decompressed and written to disk, as if it had not been intercepted." https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Zswap https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Zswap
      - ashitlerferad 7y ago
        From that wiki page you linked to: "The difference compared to zram is that zswap works in conjunction with a swap device while zram is a swap device in RAM that does not require a backing swap device."
  - mbreese 7y ago
    The default storage is an EMMC chip, so they are trying to avoid hitting that for swap completely. With 4GB of RAM, that’s a reasonable goal. If think of you added in an SSD to the machine, then zswap might be more appropriate.

m_b 7y ago

Why so much ads on a personal website? Half the content of the page is dedicated to them, it's very annoying: https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp https://imgur.com/a/DBuXPCp

teekert 7y ago
Well, the thought crosses my mind every time I think of a good idea for a blog post: Make post, fill with as much ads as is bearable, post to HN, profit. Can't blame him.
- pi-rat 7y ago
  And that short burst of traffic from a tech savvy group with probably >90% adblock might earn you, like what.. $1.50?
  - vanderZwan 7y ago
    My uBlock and uMatrix setup is pretty thorough and doesn't block these, much to my surprise
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      Local ads probably.
    - sjogress 7y ago
      The ads are served from static.haydenjames.io. Looks like a Wordpress plugin called Advanced Ads Plus[0] is used. 0: https://wpadvancedads.com https://wpadvancedads.com
      - isoprophlex 7y ago
        Soon you'll need a gpu to run real time deep learning models that detect and filter these type of embedded ads...

dmos62 7y ago

I didn't think I'd find this post this useful. All my dev machines are underpowered, which is pretty much a lifestyle choice by now. Meaning they are ram-constrained, cpu-constrained and have slow disk IO. I'm not writing this to discuss why I do this, but I feel like that's weird enough to warrant a few words, so one of the upsides is that I am intimately aware of resource efficiency around me. This post introduced me to zram (in-ram compressed swap), which sacrifices CPU cycles for evading in-disk swap usage longer. I've also not considered playing with cpu governors, which I was able to do while reading the post. And, the post provided some swap settings for use with zram, which is great. Again, very helpful post.

peterisza 7y ago
I bought PBP for the same reason. However, I am not satisfied with the quality of the touch pad and the screen, so I don't use it.
kick 7y ago
zram and zswap are some of my favorite tools on smaller systems. Happy other people are learning about them!
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
I appreciate you developing on underpowered machines, as it likely means the end product will not suck on the average user's computer!
eb0la 7y ago
> All my dev machines are underpowered I believe this is a great choice. Most of our code will live in the cloud, and will be billed by the second. If you can feel if something goes slow, you can fix it before you're billed for it ;-) Fast hardware can mask performance problems. I still remember a bug I had in a Turbo Pascal code when I switched from my 286 to a Pentium: my loop counter had an extra '0' and it run unnoticed on the pentium for hours because it was too fast...
- emidln 7y ago

ekianjo 7y ago

No mention about how good the screen is?

bewilderbeast 7y ago
He mentions it shortly, in the Build Quality paragraph.
k_sze 7y ago
For me, the lack of guarantee about dead pixels is what is holding me back from buying a PineBook Pro. It’s 2020. Dead pixels shouldn’t be a thing anymore. I would be willing to pay a little bit more and get a unit that is guaranteed to have no dead pixel. Alas, they don’t offer that option.
- peterisza 7y ago
  You can buy mine for a very good price if you are in Europe. It doesn't have any dead pixels, and I have only used it for 5 hours or so.
  - jve 7y ago
    For how much and what country?
  - jasonvorhe 7y ago
    I'll take it. How can I contact you? I'm located in Germany.
    - peterisza 7y ago
      Please pm me here (same user name, #pinebook channel): https://discordapp.com/invite/DgB7kzr https://discordapp.com/invite/DgB7kzr.
- kick 7y ago
  "Don't RMA for a few dead pixels" is pretty much standard on every legal text ever, and just because it's date '+%Y' doesn't mean that we've magically solved every problem when it comes to manufacturing, especially with displays. If it means that much to you, get a Chromebook. They'll probably have about as much of a chance of getting a dead pixel, but hey, it's not like you'd know that because Chromebook manufacturers aren't as transparent as PINE64. Assuming their policies haven't changed since I checked them last, Apple still allows 7-8 stuck/dead pixels on devices the size of the Pinebook Pro. Dell six. Apple is the richest company in the world. PINE64 doesn't even count as a startup.

mattlutze 7y ago

I've had a Pine64 in my closet for years from the original Kickstarter and completely forgot about it. Now I've got a fun project for the weekend :)

frockington1 7y ago

I recently bought a dev laptop and was looking at Pinebook Pros. The main deterrent for me was the possibility of dead pixels. I ended up getting a refurbished Dell for $250, as it met my requirements of 8 gb ram and 256 gb ssd. Dell actively checks Linux compatibility so I had no issues at all installing Ubuntu first go

Whinner 7y ago
What model Dell?
- frockington1 7y ago
  Latitude E7250, I think its mainly used in corporate contracts. This was a plus for me as its built to withstand some abuse

rbanffy 7y ago

I can't wait for the ANSI keyboard version to be available again. The only thing I wish it had that it doesn't is a larger battery. There is plenty empty space inside the shell and it'd be awesome to be able to install an extra battery in there.

RL_Quine 7y ago
Battery size in laptops is limited by airlines.
- abtinf 7y ago
  No, its limited by FAA.
- fulafel 7y ago
  Does this really limit the market for extra batteries a lot?
- jjuel 7y ago
  But that is 100 watt hours. If my math is correct (which it is possibly very wrong) this battery is only 50WH. My guess is this is to help keep cost down not because it wouldn't be allowed on a plane.
- tngranados 7y ago
  It's limited by the FAA to a maximum of 100Wh. The Pinebook Pro has a battery of 10000mAh at 3.8V (I think), so 38Wh. There is plenty of room for a bigger battery.

padraic7a 7y ago

I think the device seems incredibly good for the price. That said I don't think I'm ready to move to an arm laptop. The other current Pine devices is just amazing. Check out this footage of the PinePhone running Arch Linux, Chromium and Firefox. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127081

jjuel 7y ago

I have been looking for an ARM laptop at a reasonable price. It looks like this might just check the boxes I am looking for. Can't wait for the US version to be back in stock!

bradfa 7y ago

How much of the u-boot and Linux kernel binaries which ship with the Pinebook Pro (or are used in the images/installers linked from the wiki) is already integrated into the mainline or upstream of each of these projects? If not much, where can I find information about their plans to contribute their changes? Are there any plans for UEFI support to be added to the Pinebook Pro so that it can easily boot installers that already exist for 64 bit ARM Linux distributions?

btrettel 7y ago

An aside: Why do so many websites (like this one) now have large blank spots near images when browsing with JavaScript disabled? I'm not much of a web developer, but it looks like the site was trying to use srcset but used it in a weird way that has two img tags with the srcset of the images, with one with a data URL in the src attribute that contains a blank image and the dimensions of the image. So right next to the image is a large blank spot. It appears that some JavaScript hides one of these images. Similarly, many websites show all sizes of the images when you have JavaScript disabled. As far as I'm aware, it is possible to do responsive images without JavaScript, so I don't get why people do things like this.

markosaric 7y ago
Something to do with the fact that he is lazy loading images using JavaScript I believe.
drdebug 7y ago
So many websites are completely broken with JavaScript disabled. With or without, even printing a webpage to PDF is becoming a challenge. I sincerely wonder how disabled people use the web nowadays.

Legogris 7y ago

> Mainly, if I remain with the Pinebook Pro or switch to alternatives such as Purism 13, Galago Pro’s 14 or back to Thinkpad T series laptops I am currently on my fourth Thinkpad in a row (T480s) and it's been a good streak, but this will be my last. The Thunderbolt firmware has had severe issues and requires reflashing to be practically usable. Despite Lenovo officially being part of LVFS[0], the only way I could get my laptop operational, after about a full work-day of working with fwupdmgr, digging around the internet for cab files, trying to extract them from the Windows-only releases, running Windows in a VM, etc, the only way I finally got it working was grabbing an old drive from the drawer, installing Windows and downloading their Windows releases just so I could get my controller in a working condition. This is for a laptop released in 2018 with the update shipping in late 2019. [0]: http://fwupd.org/ http://fwupd.org/

klohto 7y ago
Do not fear! I hated Lenovo after the T480s and sweared to never buy anything from then ever again. But I bought T490 to my new job and spent a day tweaking it to my liking (I come from mac) and was pleasantly surprised how well it runs. Compared to T480s the touchpad has better feel and the laptop is able to cool itself so I’m not facing the fan issue (it is still present when on AC but hardly noticeable) I’m running Fedora 31 with Cinnamon and with disabled Ethernet, Fingerprint and SD card reader in BIOS, the power consumption with 40 tabs on Firefox and brightness on 40% is around 3.5W which gets me ~10 hours. Pretty sure you could get it even lower with minimalistic Arch setup. Don’t get me wrong, I would love Macbook (2015) in the linux world with stelar touchpad, great battery life and out-of-the box setup, but this as close as it gets and I believe there is no other option right now.
- Legogris 7y ago
  It’s not this issue itself as much as the half-assed practical non-support for Linux, and the suspicious malware they push on you. At this rate one of the new contenders like Pine, Librem etc should hopefully be mature enough by the point I feel the need to upgrade in some years.. Or Clevo for that matter!

_bxg1 7y ago

There are several reasons I couldn't use this machine as a daily driver personally, but for $199 (!) it's tempting to get it just as a toy. Just to have a: - Dedicated Linux system to play with - Ultra-portable laptop - Cheap travel laptop

sansnomme 7y ago

Considering the price, this can probably retrofitted into a Chromebook. It looks like that it has a better build quality than most Chromebooks in that price range.

dang 7y ago

Similar from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22076143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22076143 Lots more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Pinebook%20%20comments%3E20&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

FloatArtifact 7y ago

Is it possible when considering form factor and cooling to pop other SBC's device advice such as this? 3 years down the road pop in a new board?