10 ms·

The Pine Formula

130 points by cunidev 4y ago

commoner 4y ago
> Pinecil from the open-source TS100 iron The Pinecil is Pine64’s most polished product, and I congratulate them for getting such a high-quality soldering iron down to such a low price point ($26). https://www.pine64.org/pinecil/ https://www.pine64.org/pinecil/ Even if the Pinecil weren't open hardware running on open firmware, it would still be an incredible value. But it is, and my only criticism is that the rewritten firmware flashing tool does not yet support Linux (the older version does work). Other than this, the Pinecil is a gem and an example of the Pine formula at its best. - Pinecil documentation and schematics: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil - IronOS: https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS - PINE64 Updater: https://github.com/pine64/pine64_updater https://github.com/pine64/pine64_updater
MartijnBraam 4y ago
I was going to write something similar, but this covers it pretty well actually. Hopefully there could be some more developer support in the future again like the community editions once were.
- trs-80 4y ago
  I am glad to see a growing chorus of people voicing similar concerns, which myself and others have long held. The article links to a similar article from Drew DeVault for instance (down at the bottom). Perhaps if nothing changes after a while, it might become time to add your voice to the other public pleas. Or maybe speak to PINE64 directly/privately (I don't know how well you know them).
sneak 4y ago
> Some days ago, I was sitting in a dark, neon-tinted, pleasingly nerdy computing club in Berlin, with several Linux hackers around me. Most of them either had a PinePhone or a PinePhone Pro, someone else had Librem 5s plugged into their laptop as they tested out new software. I wish C-Base (the venue in question) were "pleasingly nerdy" enough to ban smoking indoors. Berlin is so maddeningly stuck in the uncivilized past in this regard; I would love to participate in these events and communities but cannot do so until this problem is fixed. There seems to be no will to do so in Berlin.
- c0balt 4y ago
  Please keep cbase (not ccc, standalone hackerspace) seperate from all hackerspaces in berlin. Spaces like xHain have banned smoking indoors while also being a lot more inclusive.
  - cunidev 4y ago
    This. While C-base was a cute space architecturally, as a newcomer I did not find it terribly welcoming. For one, there was an interesting elitarian aura around "members", versus us common "visitors", and the staff (very politely) asked me not to be seen around with a camera on my neck, although I was there with other ~8 people who I personally knew, and only took the "tunnel" picture at the top of the post.
- tunap 4y ago
  Crazy they allow it. Even I, a dirty smoker, know not to smoke around electronics.
- miduil 4y ago
  I thought C-Base banned smoking after the Ordnungsamt showed up? > There seems to be no will to do so in Berlin. X-Hain is your friend, it's small but people smoke outdoors.
selfhoster11 4y ago
The "killer app" of the Pine formula is that it reliably gets brand-new hackable devices into the hands of the community at an affordable price point. A PinePhone is $150 + a whole lot of shipping and import taxes, but many alternatives are: - more expensive - the SHIFT6mq is 600 EUR, the Librem 5 starts (!) from EUR 1600 (!!!), the Fairphone 4 starts at 580 EUR. No way in fucking hell is anyone going to be buying these unless they are already in a well-paying tech job - which is automatically exclusionary towards all tech-curious teenagers worldwide, and working adults from lower-paid countries. Do we seriously want open(-ish) tech to be a toy only for the rich? I sure as hell don't. - unreliable in production - open hardware is often (more often than not?) a limited-edition item. If you are there to order from the initial batch (or if you're lucky, the second batch), great - you can buy it. But discover it a few months/years too late, and the product is so unobtainable from the secondary market that it might as well have never existed. - difficult to purchase across territories - USA-based (or alternatively, European-based) hackers get to enjoy having an open product, whereas the rest of the world merely gets to lick the shopfront window from across the ocean. - less hackable - Can you flash an open firmware on any given Android phone? Anyone's guess. Can you do so for any random Pine product? Most likely, yes, even if it contains blobs. User freedom-wise, blobby but otherwise unrestricted firmware is heck of a lot better than any restricted firmware. - not brand-new - hardware ages both in terms of specs (less powerful than the mainstream non-open alternatives - this is IMO part of what killed OpenMoko so badly), and in terms of actual hardware PCBs, batteries, screens etc aging slowly until it can no longer reliably operate/operate within spec. I will be the first to criticise the fact that Pine seems to be increasingly leaning on the community to produce working software/firmware for their products, but I will also be the first to commend them for their ability to deliver open(-ish) hardware to more than just the globally well-off with cash to burn on their ideals (something that not all of us can do).
- MartijnBraam 4y ago
  The alternative is just using one of the discarded phones most people already have in their drawer somewhere with postmarketOS. If you're in luck it's one of the well supported chipsets
  - 4y ago
goethes_kind 4y ago
What do people with Linux phones do about banking apps? All my banks force me to do online banking through an app (at the very least used as a security token generator). I would really love to have a Linux phone but I'm stuck with Android because of that.
- npteljes 4y ago
  My bank has a website where you can do banking online, and I use that.
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  Personally, I'm using Anbox to occasionally run a single Android app on my Librem 5 and it's a banking app (Polish mBank), which works fine with it. For what it's worth, that app isn't actually necessary, but comes with some handy features that aren't available on their Web frontend like token-based payments that can be used in ATMs or shop terminals without using a card, which is what I'm using the app for (regular payments can be easily made via the browser).
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  The best I can advise is try to access it via the online banking website, if available. Otherwise, you simply cannot use mobile banking apps unless you have some way to emulate a sufficiently "verified" Android environment somewhere (on your phone or some VM somewhere else), and use that to open the app.
  - goethes_kind 4y ago
    I would never try to do online banking on my phone if possible. The banks have however decided that issuing separate security dongles is too costly, so instead they forced us all to install an app that acts as a security token. So I cannot do online banking without the mobile app.
    - tpxl 4y ago
      I changed banks over their requirement of having an android or apple phone. The clerk gaped when I told her I don't have a smartphone.
mfsch 4y ago
It’s worth noting that the quoted article was published on April 1 [1]. While the PineBuds were confirmed in the following community update [2], the PinePod plans are only mentioned in the description of the development board as a “platform for earbuds and a digital audio player”. It seems to me that the plans for a future DAP are still quite nebulous and I wouldn’t give that much weight to the wording used in the April Fools’ announcement. [1]: https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/01/introducing-the-pinebuds-and-pinepod-seriously/ https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/01/introducing-the-pinebuds-a... [2]: https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/15/april-update-no-more-unicorns/ https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/15/april-update-no-more-unico...
- cunidev 4y ago
  I would not say the PinePod project is that nebulous, it has been officially proposed in the "serious" post, and even discussion internally regarding software support is already being done apparently
rjsw 4y ago
I don't run Linux on any of my Pine64 devices, I'm happy with them just doing hardware.
- kop316 4y ago
  Do you run anything on them then? I think the article's argument holds for any software, not just Linux.
  - rjsw 4y ago
    I run NetBSD on my Pinebook and Quartz64.
    - matrix12 4y ago
      Ditto all the Pine items.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Do you use TF-A and/or U-Boot?
paulcarroty 4y ago
> Some competitors to PINE64 and Purism are now Precursor, SHIFT, MNT, and Fairphone among others Great, more competitors - faster evolution. I'll definitely get a Linux phone in near future, just a bit scared about my free time if any update will break the caller or SMS app.
bArray 4y ago
> This product family will never run Linux, as developers will need to develop a new firmware from scratch. This is obviously not a problem for the earbuds, but a big limitation for the player Perhaps not Linux, but I suspect there would be a place here for a Unix-like platform that feels familiar. If for example we could get wide-adoption of something like the JVM or wasm3 [0] on these platforms, code could become quite portable, despite wildly different architectures. For example, Apache's NuttX [1] (that I first learned from Lupyuen [2], a guy making great progress working with Pine64 products). > Processing wise, this chip is well sufficient for TWS headphones, but very inadequate for an audio player. It will not drive a good screen, it nor run high-resolution flacs or (probably?) support a high-quality, high-bandwidth codec. In fact, a first generation iPod Nano (retailing for $149 in 2006) had 16MB RAM, so over 16 times what the PinePod would offer. In fact, even the features of any custom firmware are limited from so little memory I wouldn't call it time just yet. Displays can be interacted with intelligently (to reduce pixel bandwidth) and ultra high quality audio codecs offer diminishing returns, especially when you don't have a DAC or headphones to make the most of them. My advice to Pine64 would be this: 1. Consolidate your product lines. The Pinebook is just a slower Pinebook Pro, just go with the Pinebook Pro. The PineTab is just a Pinebook without the keyboard, again I would consolidate this with the Pinebook Pro and just make the keyboard detachable. 2. The SBCs should just go straight into the device, thus creating a clear upgrade path for future products. If you want a PineBook Pro running Quartz, just swap the boards (of course with daughter boards for USB expansion, display driver, power, etc). 3. Don't be afraid to kill off products. The Pinebook and PineTab have never seen a new release. The PinePhone appears to be taking a back seat to the PinePhone Pro. The PineCube is basically DoA due to the processing power struggling to process the camera image. More generally, try to do fewer things, but do them well. [0] https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3 https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3 [1] https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/ https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/ [2] https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/sensor https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/sensor
- megous 4y ago
  Pinephone is not taking backseat to Pinephone Pro. If they kill off Pinephone, they'll have no smartphone that actually works and will piss off anyone who did a lot of work on software thinking this device is LTS as they promised.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> Most of the competition, at this point, is doing it: SHIFT, Purism, Framework, MNT Research, and Raspberry Pi are moving towards more openness, not less, as time passes. I'm happy to consider that Pine should be doing better, but in what world is Raspberry Pi doing any better? AFAIK they still require closed blobs to boot, and it was my understanding that the company doesn't even consider this something to fix.
dmitrygr 4y ago
> It will not drive a good screen, it nor run high-resolution flacs or (probably?) support a high-quality, high-bandwidth codec. What is this drivel? 900KB of RAM is plenty for all of the above and then some, if you know how to use it. An MP3 decoder's runtime footprint can fit into 16KB of RAM, aac needs just a bit more. A ui can be made of constant image pieces that never need to live in RAM, leaving ram only for things like rendering text. Years ago i made an mp3 player with an OLED screen that properly rendered English, Cyrillic, and accented latin characters in a proportional font, all on a cortex-m3 microcontroller with 64KB flash and 32KB ram.
trs-80 4y ago
I would really like to see someone raise the same questions this article does at the next community Q&A.
schmorptron 4y ago
I wish MediaTek open-sourced their drivers so we could see a PineBook Pro with a relatively capable processor, that thing with a higher res screen and a Dimensity 9000 would be amazing.

130 points by cunidev 4y ago

> Pinecil from the open-source TS100 iron The Pinecil is Pine64’s most polished product, and I congratulate them for getting such a high-quality soldering iron down to such a low price point ($26). https://www.pine64.org/pinecil/ https://www.pine64.org/pinecil/ Even if the Pinecil weren't open hardware running on open firmware, it would still be an incredible value. But it is, and my only criticism is that the rewritten firmware flashing tool does not yet support Linux (the older version does work). Other than this, the Pinecil is a gem and an example of the Pine formula at its best. - Pinecil documentation and schematics: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil - IronOS: https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS - PINE64 Updater: https://github.com/pine64/pine64_updater https://github.com/pine64/pine64_updater

MartijnBraam 4y ago

I was going to write something similar, but this covers it pretty well actually. Hopefully there could be some more developer support in the future again like the community editions once were.

trs-80 4y ago
I am glad to see a growing chorus of people voicing similar concerns, which myself and others have long held. The article links to a similar article from Drew DeVault for instance (down at the bottom). Perhaps if nothing changes after a while, it might become time to add your voice to the other public pleas. Or maybe speak to PINE64 directly/privately (I don't know how well you know them).

sneak 4y ago

> Some days ago, I was sitting in a dark, neon-tinted, pleasingly nerdy computing club in Berlin, with several Linux hackers around me. Most of them either had a PinePhone or a PinePhone Pro, someone else had Librem 5s plugged into their laptop as they tested out new software. I wish C-Base (the venue in question) were "pleasingly nerdy" enough to ban smoking indoors. Berlin is so maddeningly stuck in the uncivilized past in this regard; I would love to participate in these events and communities but cannot do so until this problem is fixed. There seems to be no will to do so in Berlin.

c0balt 4y ago
Please keep cbase (not ccc, standalone hackerspace) seperate from all hackerspaces in berlin. Spaces like xHain have banned smoking indoors while also being a lot more inclusive.
- cunidev 4y ago
  This. While C-base was a cute space architecturally, as a newcomer I did not find it terribly welcoming. For one, there was an interesting elitarian aura around "members", versus us common "visitors", and the staff (very politely) asked me not to be seen around with a camera on my neck, although I was there with other ~8 people who I personally knew, and only took the "tunnel" picture at the top of the post.
tunap 4y ago
Crazy they allow it. Even I, a dirty smoker, know not to smoke around electronics.
miduil 4y ago
I thought C-Base banned smoking after the Ordnungsamt showed up? > There seems to be no will to do so in Berlin. X-Hain is your friend, it's small but people smoke outdoors.

selfhoster11 4y ago

The "killer app" of the Pine formula is that it reliably gets brand-new hackable devices into the hands of the community at an affordable price point. A PinePhone is $150 + a whole lot of shipping and import taxes, but many alternatives are: - more expensive - the SHIFT6mq is 600 EUR, the Librem 5 starts (!) from EUR 1600 (!!!), the Fairphone 4 starts at 580 EUR. No way in fucking hell is anyone going to be buying these unless they are already in a well-paying tech job - which is automatically exclusionary towards all tech-curious teenagers worldwide, and working adults from lower-paid countries. Do we seriously want open(-ish) tech to be a toy only for the rich? I sure as hell don't. - unreliable in production - open hardware is often (more often than not?) a limited-edition item. If you are there to order from the initial batch (or if you're lucky, the second batch), great - you can buy it. But discover it a few months/years too late, and the product is so unobtainable from the secondary market that it might as well have never existed. - difficult to purchase across territories - USA-based (or alternatively, European-based) hackers get to enjoy having an open product, whereas the rest of the world merely gets to lick the shopfront window from across the ocean. - less hackable - Can you flash an open firmware on any given Android phone? Anyone's guess. Can you do so for any random Pine product? Most likely, yes, even if it contains blobs. User freedom-wise, blobby but otherwise unrestricted firmware is heck of a lot better than any restricted firmware. - not brand-new - hardware ages both in terms of specs (less powerful than the mainstream non-open alternatives - this is IMO part of what killed OpenMoko so badly), and in terms of actual hardware PCBs, batteries, screens etc aging slowly until it can no longer reliably operate/operate within spec. I will be the first to criticise the fact that Pine seems to be increasingly leaning on the community to produce working software/firmware for their products, but I will also be the first to commend them for their ability to deliver open(-ish) hardware to more than just the globally well-off with cash to burn on their ideals (something that not all of us can do).

MartijnBraam 4y ago
The alternative is just using one of the discarded phones most people already have in their drawer somewhere with postmarketOS. If you're in luck it's one of the well supported chipsets
- 4y ago

goethes_kind 4y ago

What do people with Linux phones do about banking apps? All my banks force me to do online banking through an app (at the very least used as a security token generator). I would really love to have a Linux phone but I'm stuck with Android because of that.

npteljes 4y ago
My bank has a website where you can do banking online, and I use that.
seba_dos1 4y ago
Personally, I'm using Anbox to occasionally run a single Android app on my Librem 5 and it's a banking app (Polish mBank), which works fine with it. For what it's worth, that app isn't actually necessary, but comes with some handy features that aren't available on their Web frontend like token-based payments that can be used in ATMs or shop terminals without using a card, which is what I'm using the app for (regular payments can be easily made via the browser).
selfhoster11 4y ago
The best I can advise is try to access it via the online banking website, if available. Otherwise, you simply cannot use mobile banking apps unless you have some way to emulate a sufficiently "verified" Android environment somewhere (on your phone or some VM somewhere else), and use that to open the app.
- goethes_kind 4y ago
  I would never try to do online banking on my phone if possible. The banks have however decided that issuing separate security dongles is too costly, so instead they forced us all to install an app that acts as a security token. So I cannot do online banking without the mobile app.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    I changed banks over their requirement of having an android or apple phone. The clerk gaped when I told her I don't have a smartphone.

mfsch 4y ago

It’s worth noting that the quoted article was published on April 1 [1]. While the PineBuds were confirmed in the following community update [2], the PinePod plans are only mentioned in the description of the development board as a “platform for earbuds and a digital audio player”. It seems to me that the plans for a future DAP are still quite nebulous and I wouldn’t give that much weight to the wording used in the April Fools’ announcement. [1]: https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/01/introducing-the-pinebuds-and-pinepod-seriously/ https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/01/introducing-the-pinebuds-a... [2]: https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/15/april-update-no-more-unicorns/ https://www.pine64.org/2022/04/15/april-update-no-more-unico...

cunidev 4y ago
I would not say the PinePod project is that nebulous, it has been officially proposed in the "serious" post, and even discussion internally regarding software support is already being done apparently

rjsw 4y ago

I don't run Linux on any of my Pine64 devices, I'm happy with them just doing hardware.

kop316 4y ago
Do you run anything on them then? I think the article's argument holds for any software, not just Linux.
- rjsw 4y ago
  I run NetBSD on my Pinebook and Quartz64.
  - matrix12 4y ago
    Ditto all the Pine items.
CameronNemo 4y ago
Do you use TF-A and/or U-Boot?

paulcarroty 4y ago

> Some competitors to PINE64 and Purism are now Precursor, SHIFT, MNT, and Fairphone among others Great, more competitors - faster evolution. I'll definitely get a Linux phone in near future, just a bit scared about my free time if any update will break the caller or SMS app.

bArray 4y ago

> This product family will never run Linux, as developers will need to develop a new firmware from scratch. This is obviously not a problem for the earbuds, but a big limitation for the player Perhaps not Linux, but I suspect there would be a place here for a Unix-like platform that feels familiar. If for example we could get wide-adoption of something like the JVM or wasm3 [0] on these platforms, code could become quite portable, despite wildly different architectures. For example, Apache's NuttX [1] (that I first learned from Lupyuen [2], a guy making great progress working with Pine64 products). > Processing wise, this chip is well sufficient for TWS headphones, but very inadequate for an audio player. It will not drive a good screen, it nor run high-resolution flacs or (probably?) support a high-quality, high-bandwidth codec. In fact, a first generation iPod Nano (retailing for $149 in 2006) had 16MB RAM, so over 16 times what the PinePod would offer. In fact, even the features of any custom firmware are limited from so little memory I wouldn't call it time just yet. Displays can be interacted with intelligently (to reduce pixel bandwidth) and ultra high quality audio codecs offer diminishing returns, especially when you don't have a DAC or headphones to make the most of them. My advice to Pine64 would be this: 1. Consolidate your product lines. The Pinebook is just a slower Pinebook Pro, just go with the Pinebook Pro. The PineTab is just a Pinebook without the keyboard, again I would consolidate this with the Pinebook Pro and just make the keyboard detachable. 2. The SBCs should just go straight into the device, thus creating a clear upgrade path for future products. If you want a PineBook Pro running Quartz, just swap the boards (of course with daughter boards for USB expansion, display driver, power, etc). 3. Don't be afraid to kill off products. The Pinebook and PineTab have never seen a new release. The PinePhone appears to be taking a back seat to the PinePhone Pro. The PineCube is basically DoA due to the processing power struggling to process the camera image. More generally, try to do fewer things, but do them well. [0] https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3 https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3 [1] https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/ https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/ [2] https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/sensor https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/sensor

megous 4y ago
Pinephone is not taking backseat to Pinephone Pro. If they kill off Pinephone, they'll have no smartphone that actually works and will piss off anyone who did a lot of work on software thinking this device is LTS as they promised.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

> Most of the competition, at this point, is doing it: SHIFT, Purism, Framework, MNT Research, and Raspberry Pi are moving towards more openness, not less, as time passes. I'm happy to consider that Pine should be doing better, but in what world is Raspberry Pi doing any better? AFAIK they still require closed blobs to boot, and it was my understanding that the company doesn't even consider this something to fix.

dmitrygr 4y ago

> It will not drive a good screen, it nor run high-resolution flacs or (probably?) support a high-quality, high-bandwidth codec. What is this drivel? 900KB of RAM is plenty for all of the above and then some, if you know how to use it. An MP3 decoder's runtime footprint can fit into 16KB of RAM, aac needs just a bit more. A ui can be made of constant image pieces that never need to live in RAM, leaving ram only for things like rendering text. Years ago i made an mp3 player with an OLED screen that properly rendered English, Cyrillic, and accented latin characters in a proportional font, all on a cortex-m3 microcontroller with 64KB flash and 32KB ram.

trs-80 4y ago

I would really like to see someone raise the same questions this article does at the next community Q&A.

schmorptron 4y ago

I wish MediaTek open-sourced their drivers so we could see a PineBook Pro with a relatively capable processor, that thing with a higher res screen and a Dimensity 9000 would be amazing.