5 ms·

Having only 4 GiB of non-expandable RAM is really my only complaint with the PineBook Pro. I bought one anyways though. The only other complaint would be not be

Having only 4 GiB of non-expandable RAM is really my only complaint with the PineBook Pro. I bought one anyways though. The only other complaint would be not being upfront about the video encoder and decoder not being ready, but the decoder looks like it'll work when kernel 5.8 releases. Still though, it's hard to find a $200 laptop with a 1080p IPS display regardless, it being open source just makes it so much cooler in so many ways. I just wish it was easier to try out git kernels (ones with the prototype patches for video decode) on ARM devices. Having to deal with hacking up device tree files is a bit daunting. It's a good learning experience nonetheless. It's nice to be able to collect random patches for things and apply them to your kernel and pretty much being good to go on x86. With ARM you have to ensure you instantiated the driver in the device tree file which gets stuck in the boot partition along with the kernel .

m463 6y ago
I have to say though - this is not a windows or macos machine. Each of those operating systems run an enormous number of background processes (many not in your best interests) Meanwhile with linux your memory needs are generally modest.
- ProZsolt 6y ago
  Till you want to run some electron apps
  - flyingpenguin 6y ago
    As a angular developer... I apologize for the pollution I create, and also strongly encourage you to have more than 4gb of ram.
    - josteink 6y ago
      Can relate. My work laptop was enough for every task I could throw at it... Until I had to work with Angular apps. Then I suddenly needed twice the cores, twice the RAM. I was honestly surprised. Looking at the resulting code, I also have no trouble believing this cost is also brought on to users of Angular apps. For a framework which (IMO) brings so little, the overhead seems surprisingly large.
  - nothal 6y ago
    My life on Linux seems to be focused on avoiding electron at all costs.
  - megous 6y ago
    Depends on the apps. Electron itself is ~80-100MiB
    - de_watcher 6y ago
      Ah, the good old "you're/they're using it wrong" excuse.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      That's part of the problem. Even a hyper optimized Electron app will consume a non trivial amount of RAM. The other factor is that Electron is accessible to people who don't have experience with developing desktop applications. They make some mistakes with a big impact on the user experience. Additionally, the NPM community isn't exactly known for producing few large profile high quality libraries. Instead you just cobble something together by using thousands of small packages with little to no accountability.

m463 6y ago

I have to say though - this is not a windows or macos machine. Each of those operating systems run an enormous number of background processes (many not in your best interests) Meanwhile with linux your memory needs are generally modest.

ProZsolt 6y ago
Till you want to run some electron apps
- flyingpenguin 6y ago
  As a angular developer... I apologize for the pollution I create, and also strongly encourage you to have more than 4gb of ram.
  - josteink 6y ago
    Can relate. My work laptop was enough for every task I could throw at it... Until I had to work with Angular apps. Then I suddenly needed twice the cores, twice the RAM. I was honestly surprised. Looking at the resulting code, I also have no trouble believing this cost is also brought on to users of Angular apps. For a framework which (IMO) brings so little, the overhead seems surprisingly large.
- nothal 6y ago
  My life on Linux seems to be focused on avoiding electron at all costs.
- megous 6y ago
  Depends on the apps. Electron itself is ~80-100MiB
  - de_watcher 6y ago
    Ah, the good old "you're/they're using it wrong" excuse.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    That's part of the problem. Even a hyper optimized Electron app will consume a non trivial amount of RAM. The other factor is that Electron is accessible to people who don't have experience with developing desktop applications. They make some mistakes with a big impact on the user experience. Additionally, the NPM community isn't exactly known for producing few large profile high quality libraries. Instead you just cobble something together by using thousands of small packages with little to no accountability.