19 ms·

StarLite 12.5-inch Linux tablet

629 points by focusedone 3y ago

bogwog 3y ago
Finally, a justification for Gnome!
- falsebeliefs 3y ago
  [dead]
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
These look fantastic, what's the catch? Who are Star Labs and why should I trust them? The "About Us" Section doesn't tell me who us is.
- bmelton 3y ago
  I was thinking it was extremely familiar before realizing I was remembering the fictional Star Labs wherein Barry Allen got his Flash powers from.
- thoughtsimple 3y ago
  Yeah but a 1 GHz N200 yeesh. Everything else looks great.
  - hedgehog 3y ago
    I haven't used one myself but the N200 looks pretty ok for a tablet that's supposed to run a long time on battery. Quad core Skylake-ish cores that turbo to 3.7GHz?
    - thoughtsimple 3y ago
      Notebook check says equivalent to a Core i5-8250U. That is not good in 2023. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Processor-N200-CPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.678940.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Processor-N200-CPU-Bench...
      - voidbert 3y ago
        It depends on what you're doing. My 4th low power i5 in my laptop and my i3 7100 in my main desktop are just fine for web browsing and development.
        hedgehog 3y ago
        Yes, and in this case 6W TDP and cheap enough for a $500 tablet seem like key drivers of the N200's design. Of course the Apple M1 is probably twice as fast at similar cost and power but compared to everything outside Apple the N200 looks pretty decent.
  - jacknews 3y ago
    If they make a Ryzen 7040 APU version, I'll take it as my daily driver.
    - puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
      7040 in its lowest TDP configuration is 15W. Intel N200 is 6W. Even accounting for some differences in how both companies measure TDP only one of these can be passively cooled in that sort of form factor. The lack of low-tdp products on AMD side was also one of the reasons given by pcengines to discontinue their embedded line. AMD's last 6W APU was the 2-core R1102G which is now a couple generations old.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    It's a tablet, not a workstation PC. I have a Surface Go w/ 4GB of memory running Fedora 37 that's plenty fast for what I use it for. Apparently this also supports hardware accelerated AV1 decoding and h265 encode/decode.
  - Osiris 3y ago
    Where did you get 1Ghz from? The N200 has a max clock of 3.7Ghz.
    - ssorc 3y ago
      From the Specification section of the website: > 1.00GHz quad-core Intel Alder Lake N200 > Turbo Boost up to 3.70GHz, with 6MB Smart Cache
- sithadmin 3y ago
  Star Labs is trustworthy (typing this on a Star Labs StarLike Mk IV right now), but small hardware brand. They're based in the UK.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dhucerbin 3y ago
    What’s your experience with StarLite IV? I’m thinking about buying it for heavy note taking - neovim/obsidian/browser (Google docs and excalidraw). What battery life I can expect? Is keyboard nice to type? Is stuff like sleep, Wi-Fi auto connect and bluetooth headphones really solved?
    - puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
      Not the parent but I have a StarLite IV as well. The keyboard is very nice. Short travel for keys but pleasant to use. I use iwd as the wireless deamon and wifi autoconnect works just fine. I do not have bluetooth headphones so cannot comment on that, but my bluetooth mouse works as expected. Battery life depends largely on how you use it. I have a minimal setup with alpine linux/i3 and just typing in a terminal with screen at 33% brightness results in battery-reported power consumption of just under 2W which is great. Obviously a browser like firefox will impact it quite a bit. Hardware-accelerated video playback works fine. There are a few minor downsides: the built-in speaker is quite awful (not a consideration for me), the webcam is not great and the microsd card reader is usb 2.0. UEFI secure boot is currently not supported on the coreboot fw. The documentation is sparse. One weird gotcha is that the power button is one of the keys on the keyboard, so to avoid suspending your device accidentally it will only fire an interrupt after you hold it for a couple seconds. Took me a while to figure out.
    - sithadmin 3y ago
      That's basically my use case, and I'm quite happy. Battery life for me usually is somewhere between 6-7 hours. The keyboard is pretty decent - not quite as good as a Macbook keyboard or similar low-profile keyboards (e.g. Logitech MX Keys line), but good enough, though the oddball arrow key configuration and sizing for the right-hand Shift and Fn keys is a frequent annoyance. Sleep and wifi auto-connect work well for me on Ubuntu 22.04 w/ KDE Plasma. Can't vouch for bluetooth headphone usage, because I don't really use bluetooth with this device.
- darrenf 3y ago
  I can't tell you who they are as individuals, but I can tell you I bought a Starbook from them in late 2021 and I love it. No problems whatsoever with performance, stability, anything. (No affiliation, although they do operate out of a barn within walking distance of my house!)
falsebeliefs 3y ago
[flagged]
- porkbeer 3y ago
  You can, it is explicitly supported along with a few distributions. But you just wanted to be snarky.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
WillAdams 3y ago
Nice! Is there an option for an active stylus?
- mkl 3y ago
  I think they'd be promoting it if there was. A pity.
  - WillAdams 3y ago
    Asked support and a stylus is supported by the digitizer --- they just don't make much of this fact, nor bundle one: >the touchscreen does support a pen/stylus which would be an active capacitive pen type. This would need to comply with MPP 2.0 or WGP.
- cl3misch 3y ago
  Wow, good point. I just expected it to support a stylus and was really hyped about buying one. Without a stylus, I don't think Linux on a tablet is really viable.
  - WillAdams 3y ago
    Even with a stylus, it's kind of clunky. Cellwriter is a reversion to the comb-based printed inputs of the early 90s. Maybe the QT option is better? https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/handwriting.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/handwriting.html (but it only shows printing)
hbcondo714 3y ago
> WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 I wonder if these can be upgraded to the latest versions?
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  "Wireless" is listed for StarLite in [1]. I'd be concerned about driver/firmware stability and heat dissipation, though. edit: Now that I look at it again, there are two different "Star Lite" entries, and I'm not sure which one is this tablet. [1] https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/faqs/is-it-possible-to-replace-the-ram-slash-ssd-slash-wireless https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/faqs/is-it-possible-to-r...
  - clhodapp 3y ago
    None of them. This is the Star Lite Mk V.
eternityforest 3y ago
Why did they have to use a micro HDMI port? Couldn't they have done dual USB-C and made one the DisplayPort output? MicroHDMI is not a very nice connector, it's a lot of pins under mechanical stress from the heavy, rigid HDMI people generally attach to it.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  DisplayPort has the huge advantage of being incredibly easy to passively convert into the ultra-legacy-weird-difficult HDMI, where-as the legacy-centric-pita-gross HDMI requires active absurd adapters to turn into DisplayPort. 100% more usb-c please, with alt modes. USB4 mandates every port be able to do DisplayPort output. I really hope we start to see phones and tablets which have >1 USB port. Lenovo has an absurd beast phone, a Legion phone, with both dual batteries and dual USB-c (USB3) ports. If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Hopefully happens sooner, and hopefully we see dual ports emerge midway to then too. Would be such a great capability set.
  - afavour 3y ago
    > If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Why? That’s an incredibly minor use case. If you’re expecting something this niche to become the norm then you’re destined to be disappointed.
    - mcny 3y ago
      We had USB 3 with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 in September 2013. It is now almost a decade. If rumors are true, Samsung will announce a USB 4 (thunderbolt 3) phone before the end of 2024. I agree with the grandparent. While most people don't care too much for eGPU (?), I'm sure if we let people innovate, good things will come. My dream is much smaller. I just want whatever hardware circuitry is required to accomplish the scenario where a phone that is plugged in to a good power source runs directly from the wall, shutting off battery charge completely, not trickle charging all day and night.
1MachineElf 3y ago
1st class Linux support tablet, coreboot firmware, & decent specs for ~$500? I consider that a great deal. I'm very keen on this.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Turskarama 3y ago
I can't help but feel like an x86 tablet is a non starter, the architecture is just too power thirsty compared to ARM.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  I have a tablet with a i5-7200u (2016) with a small-ish ~34WHr (originally, well worn since!) battery that gets 7 hours usage easy. How is this "power hungry"? For an ancient quad core & inefficient old storage drive. As with 90% of everything, people take a bunch of highly visible indicators to decide their opinions & then shit on anything & everything that doesn't meet their set conception. People hate Electron because they think of Slack, but Slack has shit ass architecture. Dump it's web data and you'll find dozens of multi-megabyte indexeddb databases with mostly duplicate data. It's just a shit app. You can build shit apps in anything. But vscode being slick fast & smooth doesn't register for anyone, seemingly carries no weight. The negative conceptions dominate & rule, are the things that get posted, actively, and with energy. It's a damned shame.
  - zlg_codes 3y ago
    I tried VSCode on a Librem 14 by Purism. It has a tenth gen Core i7 with 12 threads. With only very basic essential extensions like syntax, Git integration, and a Vim mode, I could type faster than the view updated. Electron may be great for people who want to write Web apps, but browsers are RAM and CPU hungry beasts compared to the GUI toolkits they're trying to replace. In short, which environments are running VSCode smoothly? Do I need next gen hardware to run a damn IDE smoothly? Web apps have some advantages, but performance is nowhere in that list.
    - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
      Your poor performance seems unexpected in extreme. Folks at work are on m1's with quite a lot of extensions & everything feels snappy. Having a huge git repo could poyentially hurt; would be interesting to test. Who knows maybe vim mode is partly to blame? I personally still mainly use vim, not vscode, so I don't know what usual suspects there are. It'd be awesome if there's good profiling that can show what plugins are taking significant time in the core loop. We have brutal eslint to apply but that for example all happens async. Once again, we're back where we started, of one bad situation - some random plugin somewhere - creating a lightning rod for disdain.
keyle 3y ago
Somewhat related - will we ever see linux on old iPads? Old iPads can't get updated anymore, they can't easily browse the web, apps can't get updated or reinstalled... Basically recycle material or dust catchers. I'd like to jail break or whatever my old iPads and have them as simple linux tablets.
- comechao 3y ago
  The 80s kid in me when I see such a powerful machine being just electronic waste cries
- anderspitman 3y ago
  Would love to see it, but my guess would be only if there's ever regulation to force Apple to allow it under climate concerns or right to repair type policy.
  - fjfuvucucuc 3y ago
    Or you know, you lot could stop giving them money.
    - kushie 3y ago
      oh, i don't think tech professionals or software enthusiasts are majority share holders of apple's bottom line
      - fjfuvucucuc 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - ikurei 3y ago
      Whenever I read this kind of comment, specially about Apple, I always wonder: What are you suggesting we do? If the answer is "just don't have a tablet and buy a FairPhone or a feature phone, have less tech", I think that's coherent. But if the answer is just "don't buy Apple, but continue to buy", I'd say they're all just as bad at best, way worse in general. Apple devices have a longer supported life, although others tend to be more hackable.
calgarymicro 3y ago
Do they design/manufacture these themselves, or are they rebadged from an ODM? And if if it's the latter, which ODM are they using?
- Klonoar 3y ago
  Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but they're actually one of the few vendors who design their own stuff - e.g, their Starbook line is their own, not some Clevo junk. The wait times last I checked are dreadful but that could've changed. I really like their approach though, whenever I can finally get away from Apple's stuff they're likely what I'll opt for (unless System76 knocks it out of the park with their custom one...).
paxys 3y ago
This looks amazing on paper, but plenty of linux phones/tablets do and end up being underwhelming for some reason or another. I'm going to reserve judgement till I can test out the full software and hardware compatibility and battery life (which will likely be never, because I doubt this will ever show up to a Best Buy near me).
roandepoan 3y ago
300cd/m is not a nice brightness for any screen
- layer8 3y ago
  300 cd/m is plenty for indoor use, unless you care about HDR.
- frou_dh 3y ago
  Some years ago people often advocated using 120 cd/m2 for colour calibrated panels, so it could be worse.
  - AlanYx 3y ago
    That still is the default calibration target for Calibrite/X-rite calibrators.
- flagged24 3y ago
  A shame for an otherwise interesting tablet. The HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook sets the benchmark for me with a 1200 nits matte screen.
naruhodo 3y ago
I'm not familiar with the state of the art at the moment. Is a 12 hour battery life "good" for a device used for light duties (web browsing)?
meeho 3y ago
No SIM card/4g/5g. Why is the state of telecom so bad on linux?
- zekrioca 3y ago
  Im curious: why would this be a Linux issue?
  - yanchep 3y ago
    My personal feeling is, there are more modems that do not work under Linux than those that do. Or are detected but happen to randomly stop working during the day.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    Because the manufacturers switched to making cheaper hardware and moved trade secrets and regulatory compliance into the Windows driver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem
- nicolaslem 3y ago
  Because carriers and hardware vendors don't want to play ball. Some carriers consider the user's modem as part of their network and want to control it, hardware vendors want to keep their precious firmware blobs and private APIs to themselves. Linux has all the drivers and infrastructure in place to use cell networks efficiently, carriers and vendors just don't want to be part of that. Source: my only Internet access at home comes from a LTE router running Debian I built myself.
  - meeho 3y ago
    Any guides or writeups i can follow to build a setup similar to yours?
    - nicolaslem 3y ago
      Unfortunately I never got around to writing it down and as it has been running pretty much unattended for the past three years it is not fresh in my mind. The gist is that since it is a router only (switch and access point are external appliances) it is not that difficult, there are plenty of resources on the web explaining how to turn a linux box into a router. I had to configure a bit of nftables, dhcpd, dnsmask and stubby and that's pretty much it. The server is a standard PC Engines APU4 and the modem in the mPCIe slot is an Huawei ME906s. As I alluded earlier, the hardest part is finding a good modem and getting it to work. Once the modem shows up as a network interface the hard part is done.
meeho 3y ago
Upto 12hrs battery life screen on or standby?
- mdp2021 3y ago
  Surely screen on (considering other not too distant products). But very probably: new battery, low screen brightness, network off... Reasonably less than 12h - say, 8h, 10h - probably well achievable.
LoveMortuus 3y ago
No USB-A ports and no plain old Debian option... Would be cool if they offered a blank keyboard option, because right now I would just have to pick any ISO language and because I used Slovenian layout, but if I bought it, as is, I couldn't look at the keyboard anyways... Also the display seems a bit dim at 300cd/m. And since it's touch, stylus (digitizer) would be very welcome.
- MerelyMortal 3y ago
  USB-A to USB-C adapters are cheap. USB-A is past its prime. Your post contains only negative points. There will never be a perfect device because everyone has different wants, so enjoy it for what it is.
  - LoveMortuus 3y ago
    I'm sorry, I guess I didn't fully express my thoughts. I'm genuinely excited about the device and had signed up to be notified when it's available. I will, of course, wait for the reviews, but at ~600€ with a keyboard, it's already leagues ahead of my current Chromebook, and this is running a "real" operating system! I expressed my issue with no USB-A ports because I prefer my devices to be self-sufficient (I hope that's the right word). My mouse that I've had for many many years has USB-A, all of my USB storage drives are USB-A, Wacom tablet is USB-A, external DVD drive is USB-A. What I'm trying to say is that all of my devices are USB-A, I have a USB charger only for my phone. And I do find it absurd having to use an adapter to use a mouse with my computer. I would be very slightly less bothered if the adapters at least came with device, but they don't, switch means that it's something I have to buy (no, I don't have any USB-C to USB-A adapters, because only my phone has a USB-C port). I don't believe USB-A is past its prime, I don't really even know what that's supposed to mean. I still love and use my 3.5mm headphone jack on my phone. With criticism, it's much easier to improve then if you only hear praise.
    - iSnow 3y ago
      Of course, your opinion is yours to have, but honestly, the world has moved on from USB-A for new computers/phones/peripherals. I just bought a couple of those: https://www.amazon.com/Basesailor-Thunderbolt-Converter-Generation-Microsoft/dp/B09SZ5NHF4 https://www.amazon.com/Basesailor-Thunderbolt-Converter-Gene... and they stay on the USB-A cable - the price is low enough that I can justify the expense for my 5 or so older peripherals. The USB-A socket is too big for the slim form-factor of ultrabooks and tablets, and it won't make a come-back.
nsonha 3y ago
Again with this stupid unlappable design
- jacknews 3y ago
  I disagree, it's potentially a much more versatile format. What's needed for use as a laptop (aside from a disregard for ergonomics) is a k/b with an extra battery for weight/balance, and actual friction hinges to hold the tablet at the desired angle. The tablet itself could then have smaller batteries and be lighter, maybe as an option.
  - nsonha 3y ago
    > a k/b with an extra battery for weight/balance, and actual friction hinges to hold the tablet at the desired angle. which doesn't exist. You can't just design half of a device and tell customers that 3rd parties will come up with the rest... in time.
    - mdp2021 3y ago
      Just a not fully considered thought, but maybe we could 3D-print hinges for this product? Or, BT keyboards with trackpads (they do not consume much power) including hinges could be in commerce.
      - nsonha 3y ago
        there are products like that but all of them (that I known) are designed for specific devices, either a Surface or an iPad (Brydge, Doqo) Let me know if you find something on the market that may work with this specific tablet.
xqcgrek2 3y ago
I would have preferred their new Star Lite was an updated 12" fanless Linux laptop rather than a tablet. Do any decent fanless 12" Linux laptops exist now?
- ConSeannery 3y ago
  What's the difference between a fanless laptop and a Linux OS tablet? A keyboard on hinges or something?
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    Looks like StarLite needs a kickstand behind it to keep the display up, the hinge likely has no stickiness whatsoever, it's just like a folded piece of the folio cover. Like a Microsoft Surface. Can't type in lap, hard to use in tight spaces like planes or busy coffee shops. I have a couple of Pixel Slates with Brydge keyboards that have actual good hinges, that's much closer to a laptop. Still more top-heavy than laptops.
chillbill 3y ago
I’m afraid i3/sway have spoiled me and now I find any other wm just awfully bulky to say the least, but also I can’t imagine how to use tiling wm without a keyboard. Are there any projects exploring the idea of tiling wm usage on tablets?
- bradrn 3y ago
  In some ways, tiling WMs are a natural fit for tablets — consider e.g. the iPad’s ‘split screen’ mode, where two windows take up the whole screen between them. It’s easy enough to imagine a WM where you can drag windows to move them around, and drag the splits between them to resize. On Linux, this kind of paradigm is implemented by e.g. Hyprland. I dislike it for desktop, but on a tablet I’d happily use it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- weikju 3y ago
  There is at least one: SXMO [0] . There are a few distributions where it's available, at least on the PinePhone, so it's not inconceivable at all that it would possible to use it on an Intel-bsaed tablet. 0: https://sxmo.org/ https://sxmo.org/ "Simple X Mobile" Extra quote from their docs: > Sxmo >= 1.6.0 runs both on Xorg (using dwm) as well as on Wayland (using sway). The X in our name historically referred to Xorg, but is now open to whatever interpretation you prefer (eXtensible, eXcellent, eXperimental, etc...) Note: I have yet to try it but I'm getting more interested now..
- KingMachiavelli 3y ago
  In my limited experience, sway is pretty easy to use on a tablet because it supports moving windows very will using a mouse/pointer. Obviously you need still need a on-screen keyboard and a lot of config to replace other swaycmds but it seems like a decent base WM for a tablet.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
MegaDeKay 3y ago
"5-years of updates - Backed by secure updates delivered via the LVFS." Hmmmm. Why a five year cutoff? Does this have some custom firmware not in mainline Linux that would preclude updates beyond five years?
- clhodapp 3y ago
  LVFS is how you ship firmware that installs permanently into flash on the hardware device (e.g. Coreboot). Hopefully, at least Coreboot itself stays buildable for the motherboard in the long term so you can keep locally building core system firmware for many more years to come. Star Labs themselves are not committing to continuing to ship pre-built binaries from their side for more than five years.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Most PC motherboards and laptops won't give you longer BIOS updates than 3-5 years. It's unfortunately the norm for FW support lifecyle.
xbar 3y ago
i have too many computers.... i have too many computers.... i have too many computers....
- okokwhatever 3y ago
  I feel your struggle pal!, I have too many computers too!
- kiddico 3y ago
  One more is unlikely to result in divorce. Probably.
- mdp2021 3y ago
  Product quality has fallen devastatingly in this historic phase: if there is a good product around, better to consider it while it is available.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Yes, but what about tablets?
seltzered_ 3y ago
So I've been using a Tablet PC running Linux for over two years as a primary device, my advice is that if your needs are more as a workstation get something with a reasonable CPU and fans. HP used to make a nice tablet PC, the Asus flow z13 is the second best choice. My specific setup is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm/how_long_have_you_been_using_an_ergo_mobile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm... Dell also has been selling a fanless XPS 13 tablet for the past year but I haven't heard of anyone using it. This said it's nice to see more vendors considering the tablet form factor with appropriate ports and display resolution.
Osiris 3y ago
No one has mentioned the 2880x1920 resolution display. That’s fantastic I’m this price range. $500 laptops are (nearly?) impossible to find with displays above 1080p.
- jwells89 3y ago
  My question is if that resolution is usable with 2x integer scaling (1440x960 effective screen real estate), because fractional scaling under Linux is still a bit rocky.
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    Fractional scaling works well on Plasma under Wayland if you're using an up to date distribution.
    - cricalix 3y ago
      Though other things don't work well. Like Plasma's whole toolbar with clock widget etc. It freezes, and you can't interact with the frozen widgets. Only answers are kill and restart, reboot, or switch back to X. It'll get there, but it's still not at a level I would say is daily driver (for me - I like my toolbar clock to actually tell me the current time). (Kubuntu with KDE project's PPA to be on latest stable)
      - heavyset_go 3y ago
        I'd try with a rolling release and see if you still encounter the problems. I use Plasma panels with the clock widget and haven't experienced freezes or had to restart anything.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      The DE itself, yes. This is true of GNOME as well once the hidden setting is enabled. Unfortunately there's still individual programs which don't behave correctly, which for now means that 1x or 2x displays are still best if a trouble-free, low-tinkering experience is the goal.
shortformblog 3y ago
As someone who gave the JingPad a spin, the Linux tablet market has been painfully difficult to pull off. At least this is based on Intel, ensuring that if the company goes belly up, it can be used for something other than a mirror.
- linmob 3y ago
  IIRC, Ubuntu Touch has been ported to the JingPad, so there is one supported OS option.
  - shortformblog 3y ago
    Yeah, it has, but it has serious limitations for future ports because of its hardware model. It’s using an SOC with proprietary PowerVR graphics which will limit its future ability. I wrote a whole thing about this about eight months ago: https://tedium.co/2022/11/30/fydetab-duo-jingpad-comparison/ https://tedium.co/2022/11/30/fydetab-duo-jingpad-comparison/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cookiengineer 3y ago
Honestly when I am looking at their other models like the StarBook and StarFighter, I have a weird feeling that I cannot repair them once the battery or other parts breaks down. They have an internal battery similar to the format of A1278 MacBooks, which makes my spidey sense go off that it's not easily repairable without breaking a ribbon flex cable. I don't need a bleeding edge gaming GPU, I don't need USB4, I don't need Thunderbolt. These are optional extras for me, I've given up on them already. Currently I am kind of stuck with the old T440p because of this, all other laptops that I bought in the last 10 years have died already with no chance of repairing or fixing them - either because of non available parts, or because literally the GPU melted down (happens more often on MacBooks than one might think, apparently). From Ultrabooks to even MacBooks, I've had them all, from Dell to HP, Apple and back... all died eventually and I switched back to my T440p in 2019. This old laptop still lives, can be repaired, has a replacement parts community [1], and doesn't break when I let it fall down on the floor. But it's now so outdated that I cannot even order battery packs anymore, because they will arrive with less than 20% capacity condition when they're being sold as "New" because they're even not produced anymore and are stored for too long. I think what I want is something like the MNT Reform laptop [2], where the battery cells are replaceable 18650 standard cells. But without the problems that come with ARM. I've been thinking about even getting an older Thinkpad just so that I can just let the guy from xyte.ch [3] build a better one out of it. Honestly I've spent more than 10k over the years for crappy Ultrabook laptops or MacBooks, which all died up on me and I'm sick of spending so much money when my laptop from 2013 still works. Why can't we have nice replaceable battery packs, RAM, and m2 SSDs anymore? I mean, not even the Framework laptop has a replaceable battery pack? WHY? Am I the only one wanting this? [1] https://www.thinkstore24.de https://www.thinkstore24.de [2] https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20221130010517/https://www.xyte.ch/ http://web.archive.org/web/20221130010517/https://www.xyte.c... (currently has php problems)
- cycomanic 3y ago
  AFAIK pretty much all (most?) the recent thinkpads have relatively easily replaceable batteries. I just replaced the battery in my X1 carbon (although it's a 2016 model so not so recent) and it was really straight forward.
PrivateButts 3y ago
A bit ago I did a bit of an experiment with an old surface tablet, where I threw some linux distros at it to see what the experience was. I tried Ubuntu, Manjaro, and Fedora, and all were extremely janky to downright broken. On screen keyboard was completely broken with Wayland, with some apps like Firefox just not popping it open, to others ignoring input. X had trouble with screen rotation. Fedora wouldn't let me past the login screen unless I connected a keyboard, which was compounded with a bug that was causing the screen to lock every sixty seconds. Manjaro ended up lasting the longest, but at that point I had just given up trying to fix things and reverted to using the Surface as a laptop with a touch screen. I don't know how much touch screen only computers are considered during development of desktop environments and display servers, my experience left me with the distinct feeling that I had gone way outside of the bounds of the target user of these applications. Maybe I just had bad luck. Hopefully if this is truly an under-served side of the Linux desktop experience, a successful product like this will help push the ball forward on improving support for this niche. I wonder how much the popularity of the Steam Deck is pushing the KDE team to improve touch screen support as well.
- resonious 3y ago
  I suspect this is largely because the Microsoft Surface products contain a lot of proprietary hardware components that aren't not well supported by the kernel. KDE and friends have pretty good touch screen support, but it's all for naught if you have no drivers.
  - fifteen1506 3y ago
    No OSK on X11 though, on KDE. Gnome has on both.
  - Fluorescence 3y ago
    I found Ubuntu Wayland touchscreen keyboard very broken on a Dell laptop with decent linux driver support. It's a real shame, worked perfectly with X.
  - paulcarroty 3y ago
    > Microsoft Surface products contain a lot of proprietary hardware components that aren't not well supported by the kernel and not repairable at all as Surface itself, being honest.
mayli 3y ago
"0 fan design" bios: fan mode: aggressive https://us.starlabs.systems/cdn/shop/files/CFR-01x2000.png?format=webp&v=1691596539&width=396 https://us.starlabs.systems/cdn/shop/files/CFR-01x2000.png?f...
- kiddico 3y ago
  I obviously don't have one, but presumably there's a fan header that they didn't use and didn't bother to remove the reference from the bios in case someone decides to use it...somehow... for some reason. idk, but a bios setting for fan speed isn't actually indicative of a fan. edit: could just be a really roundabout way to increase TDP
- kennydude 3y ago
  Same image as used on their laptop https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook
- ciupicri 3y ago
  The Hyper-Threading setting is also present even if Intel N200 doesn't have it.
tommica 3y ago
I'd love to get this - when I saw the price I was blown away, it really seems like a good deal! The visual presentation of it is really delicious.
okasaki 3y ago
It looks nice. The only thing I'd change is have a 4:3 screen (or at least 3:2). The extra height really matters on small screens.
azangru 3y ago
Has anyone tried their Starfighter? They've been selling it for about a year; but I have yet to see a proper review. Wait time of 4-5 months is a dealbreaker for me; but perhaps someone has gone through with it?
- schaefer 3y ago
  I haven't ordered or used a starfighter, but ages ago when the ryzen sku first went up I e-mailed the company. I was asking if they had any video of the removable camera being stowed in the base. I was having trouble imagining it. That video [1] was finally posted at the end of May. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tzeL2CJTd6g https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tzeL2CJTd6g
  - azangru 3y ago
    Cool! Thank you for sharing the video. Such a strange design choice!
tjoff 3y ago
Looks much better, and cheaper than I expected. Quality can't be fenomenal at that price point but it looks well thought out from the ground up. Impressive! And thank you for the 3:2 display aspect ratio <3 Gonna keep an eye on this one.
- mdp2021 3y ago
  > aspect ratio The specs say 16:10...
  - tjoff 3y ago
    Where? I couldn't find the specs for it, but the resolution is stated as 2880x1920 which ought to be 3:2.
    - mdp2021 3y ago
      At https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification yes the resolution seems to indicate 3:2, but they also write 16:10 - out of what, it is unclear. The tablet size is 11.15'' x 8'' , i.e. around 10:7 .
- yencabulator 3y ago
  I'm not really at all surprised by the price. It's more expensive than the base level Steam Deck, which is also a Linux touchscreen tablet (with some extra input hardware...), and that's Zen 2, 16 GB RAM, GPU, etc though with smaller&worse screen. Adding a comparable 512 GB SSD to the Deck makes it $649, compare against StarLite's non-preorder $713 price. A full Framework 13" laptop is $1049 and that's a hugely more powerful CPU etc.
nologic01 3y ago
I don't need another computer right now but this gives me a warm feeling that the Universe cares about me. May I dream that by the time I do need this they will also have a combo offer along with a fully integrated linux mobile?
- fsflover 3y ago
  > fully integrated linux mobile It already works fine with PureOS/Mobian.
mdp2021 3y ago
I had been monitoring that Intel N200, periodically checking news about low consumption chips: Jan 2023 ; 0.01µ tech ; cache 384 2048 6144 kb ; 6W TDP ; 4 cores and threads Previously used ( https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?page=2&q=Intel+n200 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?page=2&q=Intel+n... ) in some "Google Nissa" (could not find further details about what it is), "Micro-Star ADL-N Cubi N MS-B0A9" minicomputer, "Asus MiniPc PN42", "Lenovo IdeaPad 82XB"... With a 38Wh battery, 12 hours seem optimistic but achievable under many conditions of power economy.
- mdp2021 3y ago
  > "Google Nissa" (could not find further details about what it is) I could finally find some references: according to Ryan Whitwam ( https://hothardware.com/news/premium-chromebook-x-laptops-powered-by-amd-and-intel-are-coming-what-to-expect https://hothardware.com/news/premium-chromebook-x-laptops-po... ), > Chromebook X machines will have to be built on one of four hardware platforms with high-end x86 CPUs: AMD Zen 2+ (Skyrim), AMD Zen 3 (Guybrush), or Intel Core 12th Gen (Brya & Nissa). The Nissa chips are the Intel N-series so the N100, N200 and i3-N300
teddyh 3y ago
RYF certification or no sale.
- fluidcruft 3y ago
  What's RYF?
  - tedcrilly 3y ago
    Free Software Foundation certification program: https://ryf.fsf.org/ https://ryf.fsf.org/
mdp2021 3y ago
I would have included GPS: those tablets are good as maps.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  For what it's worth, some dedicated hotspot gadgets expose a GPS service over TCP (the protocol is often somewhat inaccurately called NMEA), and a standalone USB-connected GPS receiver can be <$20. For tablets, I believe often the GPS receiver is on the same chip as the cellular modem, so you don't tend to get GPS without that.
not_your_vase 3y ago
And what about the software? I mean software that can be used without mouse and keyboard? Currently the main problem is not the hardware, but we simply don't have usable software. I have been driving a PinePhone for many months (still do), but mostly with programs that I wrote for myself after a lot of frustrations about the available software, because having a keyboard and mouse is mandatory with 99.9% of the available Linux applications. So basic (UX) things are missing and/or fatally broken, it's not even funny. This makes a new n+1th Linux tablet a bit pointless in my eyes.
- wiz21c 3y ago
  Sometimes I want to buy a PinePhone. Do you mean that one can't send SMS, place phone calls, browse the web, read (not write) emails without a keyboard ? (these four are 99% of my phone usage).
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    Drew Devault (Sway and Sourcehut guy) wrote this on his experience with Linux phones: https://drewdevault.com/2023/06/16/Mobile-linux-retrospective.html https://drewdevault.com/2023/06/16/Mobile-linux-retrospectiv... tldr: it works and it's great, but it's not reliable in phone/SMS in the way a phone needs to be reliable.
    - wvh 3y ago
      I've been using the Nokia N9 and some of the Jolla Sailfish offspring to this day. The phone part has been very reliable. The rest of the ecosystem is very minimal, almost non-existent, but I can't complain about the basic phone functionality. With these ARM-style devices that are quite closed down and need their own respective device tree, mass adoption seems a requirement for a company and ecosystem to hit critical mass and be financially viable. I don't think a "Linux phone" is enough of a value proposition to hit that critical mass without any specific features that would appeal to a non-technical crowd and can't easily be replicated by the iOS or Android behemoths. So personally I think it's not that the open-source/Linux approach can't produce a phone that has good-enough basic functionality, but that there's no clear way to market and sell these phones to a sufficiently large crowd to offset the massive investment into a new platform. Linux as a whole might be far ahead of iOS and Android as a general computing platform, but a viable device would have to break through the mass production hardware (and marketing!) barrier.
hereonout2 3y ago
I can't see anything about storage, does this have an SSD and if so how large? Looks very interesting to me, I'm just not ready to give up storage like most of the Chromebook options.
- pja 3y ago
  It’s M.2 2242 Gen3 PCIe NVMe, 512Gb in the base spec, configurable up to 2Tb, but presumably end user replaceable. https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification
  - hereonout2 3y ago
    Missed that thanks, certainly piques my interest at this price
ZuLuuuuuu 3y ago
I really wonder its battery life with this new Intel processor. Both with average usage and also in idle mode. I had a tablet with Intel Atom CPU on it about 10 years ago, the performance and battery life was good during usage but it would stay only 4-5 days in idle before running out of battery (even if left it with 100% battery). But I can leave my iPad aside and come back to it 2 weeks later and it still holds most of its battery. Having said that, this tablet really looks nice and if it also turns out to have long battery life, I might give it a try.
- f6v 3y ago
  I checked reviews for Surface Pro and seems that battery has gotten worse over last couple years. You can expect ~5-6 hours of use. which to me renders the device useless.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
znpy 3y ago
I’m using my sister’s ipad and frankly the only good reason i see to get an ipad is the goodnotes app. It’s really a killer feature app. Is there a linux equivalent of goodnotes? Getting this tablet and running linux would be ideal as long as i could have something like goodnotes
urduntupu 3y ago
Is this any good for regular full stack programming, running a couple of docker containers?
- delphi4711 3y ago
  It has more than enough ram, but the cpu and gpu will probably slow you down, but that depends on what you are used to :). But it's sold out already.
- Havoc 3y ago
  Depends on what you put in the containers ;)
- mhitza 3y ago
  Yes, performance is very close to i5-8250U ( https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3042vs5178/Intel-i5-8250U-vs-Intel-N200 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3042vs5178/Intel-i5-825... ), which was release at the end of 2017. I have this in my laptop that I use for work, VM's, IDEs and containers are running all the time on my system. Works great, even if I have all CPU mitigations enabled, turbo boosting disabled, and running in powersave mode. What I do to avoid the fan from getting audible. However, with all the options I mentioned enable (especially enforcing a strict powersave profile/max frequency/etc) you'll get a bit of latency here and there; which I can put up with because I hate to hear the fans spin. With a fanless design, a better power profile (6W TDP vs 15W TDP), I wouldn't constrict my CPU to such extents. To compare it in relative performance terms, the Apple M1 is ~3.8x times more performant than it (if that helps).
qwerty456127 3y ago
Great. To me Gnome 3 always seemed a perfect tablet envoronment while fairly imperfect desktop environment so I always wanted a good tablet with it and never wanted it on desktop/laptop. I feel like buying this one. What inspires me even more is it seemingly having more than one USB-C port.
varispeed 3y ago
I was going to say "nope", but at below $500? Seems viable. I just don't like this tablet factor. It's a poorly engineered design - a flimsy top heavy structure that takes a lot of space? What could go wrong. I can't count how many times I accidentally knocked my Surface off the table or when I needed to type something quickly and didn't have enough space on the desk and getting that thing on the lap... eh.
nisegami 3y ago
I'm in the market for a tablet, but my primary use is media consumption so screen+speakers are of the highest importance. But that said, this still looks very promising. I signed up for email notifications, so it depends on when it becomes purchasable.
kaliqt 3y ago
Finally. A proper Linux PC tablet.
DrNosferatu 3y ago
Why not a Ryzen APU?
- nsteel 3y ago
  Can you have that fanless in this form factor?
snvzz 3y ago
... on Legacy ISA. I'd rather a RISC-V Pinetab-V, based on the same JH7110 as VisionFive 2.
- LeonM 3y ago
  > ... on Legacy ISA. Since when is x86 legacy? > I'd rather a RISC-V Pinetab-V, based on the same JH7110 as VisionFive 2. Have you actually used one of those? They are excruciatingly slow. Less performance than most Raspberry Pi. Maybe it works for your niche workflow, but for StarLite to succeed they'll have to build a _usable_ product. Also competitive ARM based alternatives (such as Snapdragon) require many closed source blobs to function.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    >Since when is x86 legacy? Since the first commercial RISC chips obsoleted x86 in the 80s. >Have you actually used one of those? Yes, JH7110 on VisionFive 2. >They are excruciatingly slow. Less performance than most Raspberry Pi. Not my experience, owning VisionFive 2 and all raspberry pi B boards (1,2,3,3+ and 4), all of which have been used heavily. The CPU is much faster than RPi3b+'s while using way less power. Only a little slower than RPi4, and this is assuming the RPi4 has a huge heatsink like mine does. JH7110 doesn't require a heatsink nor throttle under load, for it stays under 75C even when running builds 24/7, yet is designed to survive 125C. Whereas everything else in the SoC is better. Especially the GPU, which in the RPi4 is anemic, and can barely keep up even for 2d at 1080p. The experience is much better on VisionFive 2 for even simple tasks like web browsing, and it's not even close. Night and day. Nevermind the upstream support effort[0] getting this far in just a few months (indiegogo delivery was in March), and follows standard RISC-V boot/firmware interface specifications, whereas Raspberry Pi is all bespoke and never cared much about upstreaming support. >Also competitive ARM based alternatives (such as Snapdragon) require many closed source blobs to function. Here I just do not understand what point you're trying to make. 0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan
    - LeonM 3y ago
non-nil 3y ago
Just received notification and went to order. Shipping to my location (Nordic region) turned out to be expensive enough that I’ll have to pass on this for now and live with older hardware for a while yet. Too bad!
- c2h5oh 3y ago
  Odd - shipping to Central Europe starts at 32 euro
- hereonout2 3y ago
  The keyboard is also extra, which bumps the price up to more than I originally thought. Biggest downside is a 3-4 month lead time though, I'm too impatient for that unfortunately, especially given this would be a bit of a punt for me.
  - bogle 3y ago
    And you'll need the keyboard if you want BIOS passwords or full disk encryption. No OSK or bluetooth keyboard will be available until you're past those.
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      What about using a regular usb keyboard? With A to C adapter.
askbookz1 3y ago
It looks like a pretty cool device but, since I started working from home, I have no use for a ultralight device. I only have a laptop because that's what everybody gets but if I've moved it a mere meter around, that was too much.
bArray 3y ago
Reminds me of the Pine Tab (v1) with the contact pins at the bottom, fold-up keyboard, etc. Having an Intel processor would make me heaps more confident about good kernel support out of the box. The A64 by Pine is essentially abandoned for Linux kernel development. This device looks great, I would just take care expecting too much from that keyboard. It looks almost identical to the Pine Tab keyboard and that was not great.
- unregistereddev 3y ago
  Sadly, Pine has a long history of using poorly-supported chipsets and doing nothing to improve support. I want to like the company, and their hardware designs show a lot of promise, but ultimately they do not stand behind their product. It's truly a shame. Their products have potential and could build a huge hobbyist community behind them, but extremely few people have both the skills and the time to troubleshoot buggy kernel modules. I agree that StarLite's Intel processor will probably work a lot better.
  - bArray 3y ago
    > Sadly, Pine has a long history of using poorly-supported chipsets and doing nothing to improve support. It wouldn't even be difficult either, they could just charge slightly more and then pay a kernel developer to solve these problems. > Their products have potential and could build a huge hobbyist community behind them, but extremely few people have both the skills and the time to troubleshoot buggy kernel modules. It's not just buggy kernel modules, it's also significantly buggy hardware too. The only thing I would say they have got going for them is good connections for hardware and manufacturing which help them reduce costs, otherwise another player could easily take over.
kposehn 3y ago
As a long time iPad user I’m apprehensive. As others have noted, Linux based touch experiences have so far been lacking. That said, I love the thought of it. I’ve recently started using my iPad Pro as my daily driver (replacing a Mac Studio M1 Ultra no less) and haven’t looked back. The only gripe with iPadOS is it took me a while to get a smooth vscode setup for development - having that be easier out of the box with the StarLite is quite appealing.
- fsflover 3y ago
  > Linux based touch experiences have so far been lacking My Librem 5 works fine with the touch screen.
  - kposehn 3y ago
    I was referring to tablets but thanks for pointing out the Librem. I’ll check it out.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Of course an Apple fanboy shows up with this comment. ChromeOS on a tablet is a perfectly fine experience, gesture navigation and all. (And, very important to me, runs a "real browser", not some limited mobile variant. And the full Linux CLI environment.)
  - marcellus23 3y ago
    iPadOS Safari is just as capable as desktop Safari. Why do you think otherwise? Also, it’s not 2006 anymore, maybe stop calling people “fanboy” for preferring a different computer than you.
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      What motivated me to want a "real browser" was bookmark management. Managing & reorganizing bookmarks on mobile Chrome was frustrating. And I absolutely will label anyone a fanboy if they barge into a Linux conversation going "Rah rah Apple best Linux sucks" without actually contributing anything insightful, useful, or specific. Please don't just repeat the age old "Apple did it best" line, we already understand you think so. To people actually interested in the topic, all it seems like is you wanted to mention Apple for the sake of mentioning Apple, and that's why I called you a fanboy.
fsflover 3y ago
I wonder if it can run Qubes OS and PureOS.
MostlyStable 3y ago
I think this might be _exactly_ what I've been looking for. Linux tablet that's easy to open and replace parts? Yes please. It's overpriced for what I want it for (and almost definitely overpowered as well), but if the parts ecosystem allows it to last long enough, that might be worth it. Although if anyone has any ideas for a better fit, I'm open to suggestions: I just need a tablet to stay in the kitchen to display recipes. I plan on running a self hosted recipe database. So actual CPU muscle needed is pretty minimal, but I'd really rather have the repairability and am willing to overpay somewhat to get it.
tedcrilly 3y ago
I've been mulling over many tablet options recently with a goal to reduce the number of devices I travel with (terminal, email, playing HW accelerated video, reading comics). I considered everything from an iPad through a Surface with Linux and all the way to more exotic options like https://junocomputers.com/product/juno-tab-2/ https://junocomputers.com/product/juno-tab-2/ or https://www.fydetabduo.com/ https://www.fydetabduo.com/ but they all lacked something. I was close to going with a Google Pixel with Graphene OS but Google's atrocious pricing in Europe made me reconsider. This one finally made me pull the trigger, mostly because it is Linux-first and came with no "This is a beta product" or "generally works, but..." asterisks. Fingers crossed that it delivers.
- WillAdams 3y ago
  I was backed into a corner when it came time to replace my Samsung Galaxy Book 12 and had to by a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 --- really wish that there was something like to the Samsung Galaxy Tab Ultra 9 which ran Windows.
Saris 3y ago
This looks pretty good for $500, although a 300cd/m2 screen limits it to pretty much indoor areas out of direct sun.

629 points by focusedone 3y ago

bogwog 3y ago

Finally, a justification for Gnome!

falsebeliefs 3y ago
[dead]

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

These look fantastic, what's the catch? Who are Star Labs and why should I trust them? The "About Us" Section doesn't tell me who us is.

bmelton 3y ago
I was thinking it was extremely familiar before realizing I was remembering the fictional Star Labs wherein Barry Allen got his Flash powers from.
thoughtsimple 3y ago
Yeah but a 1 GHz N200 yeesh. Everything else looks great.
- hedgehog 3y ago
  I haven't used one myself but the N200 looks pretty ok for a tablet that's supposed to run a long time on battery. Quad core Skylake-ish cores that turbo to 3.7GHz?
  - thoughtsimple 3y ago
    Notebook check says equivalent to a Core i5-8250U. That is not good in 2023. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Processor-N200-CPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.678940.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Processor-N200-CPU-Bench...
    - voidbert 3y ago
      It depends on what you're doing. My 4th low power i5 in my laptop and my i3 7100 in my main desktop are just fine for web browsing and development.
      - hedgehog 3y ago
        Yes, and in this case 6W TDP and cheap enough for a $500 tablet seem like key drivers of the N200's design. Of course the Apple M1 is probably twice as fast at similar cost and power but compared to everything outside Apple the N200 looks pretty decent.
- jacknews 3y ago
  If they make a Ryzen 7040 APU version, I'll take it as my daily driver.
  - puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
    7040 in its lowest TDP configuration is 15W. Intel N200 is 6W. Even accounting for some differences in how both companies measure TDP only one of these can be passively cooled in that sort of form factor. The lack of low-tdp products on AMD side was also one of the reasons given by pcengines to discontinue their embedded line. AMD's last 6W APU was the 2-core R1102G which is now a couple generations old.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  It's a tablet, not a workstation PC. I have a Surface Go w/ 4GB of memory running Fedora 37 that's plenty fast for what I use it for. Apparently this also supports hardware accelerated AV1 decoding and h265 encode/decode.
- Osiris 3y ago
  Where did you get 1Ghz from? The N200 has a max clock of 3.7Ghz.
  - ssorc 3y ago
    From the Specification section of the website: > 1.00GHz quad-core Intel Alder Lake N200 > Turbo Boost up to 3.70GHz, with 6MB Smart Cache
sithadmin 3y ago
Star Labs is trustworthy (typing this on a Star Labs StarLike Mk IV right now), but small hardware brand. They're based in the UK.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dhucerbin 3y ago
  What’s your experience with StarLite IV? I’m thinking about buying it for heavy note taking - neovim/obsidian/browser (Google docs and excalidraw). What battery life I can expect? Is keyboard nice to type? Is stuff like sleep, Wi-Fi auto connect and bluetooth headphones really solved?
  - puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
    Not the parent but I have a StarLite IV as well. The keyboard is very nice. Short travel for keys but pleasant to use. I use iwd as the wireless deamon and wifi autoconnect works just fine. I do not have bluetooth headphones so cannot comment on that, but my bluetooth mouse works as expected. Battery life depends largely on how you use it. I have a minimal setup with alpine linux/i3 and just typing in a terminal with screen at 33% brightness results in battery-reported power consumption of just under 2W which is great. Obviously a browser like firefox will impact it quite a bit. Hardware-accelerated video playback works fine. There are a few minor downsides: the built-in speaker is quite awful (not a consideration for me), the webcam is not great and the microsd card reader is usb 2.0. UEFI secure boot is currently not supported on the coreboot fw. The documentation is sparse. One weird gotcha is that the power button is one of the keys on the keyboard, so to avoid suspending your device accidentally it will only fire an interrupt after you hold it for a couple seconds. Took me a while to figure out.
  - sithadmin 3y ago
    That's basically my use case, and I'm quite happy. Battery life for me usually is somewhere between 6-7 hours. The keyboard is pretty decent - not quite as good as a Macbook keyboard or similar low-profile keyboards (e.g. Logitech MX Keys line), but good enough, though the oddball arrow key configuration and sizing for the right-hand Shift and Fn keys is a frequent annoyance. Sleep and wifi auto-connect work well for me on Ubuntu 22.04 w/ KDE Plasma. Can't vouch for bluetooth headphone usage, because I don't really use bluetooth with this device.
darrenf 3y ago
I can't tell you who they are as individuals, but I can tell you I bought a Starbook from them in late 2021 and I love it. No problems whatsoever with performance, stability, anything. (No affiliation, although they do operate out of a barn within walking distance of my house!)

falsebeliefs 3y ago

[flagged]

porkbeer 3y ago
You can, it is explicitly supported along with a few distributions. But you just wanted to be snarky.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

WillAdams 3y ago

Nice! Is there an option for an active stylus?

mkl 3y ago
I think they'd be promoting it if there was. A pity.
- WillAdams 3y ago
  Asked support and a stylus is supported by the digitizer --- they just don't make much of this fact, nor bundle one: >the touchscreen does support a pen/stylus which would be an active capacitive pen type. This would need to comply with MPP 2.0 or WGP.
cl3misch 3y ago
Wow, good point. I just expected it to support a stylus and was really hyped about buying one. Without a stylus, I don't think Linux on a tablet is really viable.
- WillAdams 3y ago
  Even with a stylus, it's kind of clunky. Cellwriter is a reversion to the comb-based printed inputs of the early 90s. Maybe the QT option is better? https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/handwriting.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/handwriting.html (but it only shows printing)

hbcondo714 3y ago

> WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 I wonder if these can be upgraded to the latest versions?

0xcde4c3db 3y ago
"Wireless" is listed for StarLite in [1]. I'd be concerned about driver/firmware stability and heat dissipation, though. edit: Now that I look at it again, there are two different "Star Lite" entries, and I'm not sure which one is this tablet. [1] https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/faqs/is-it-possible-to-replace-the-ram-slash-ssd-slash-wireless https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/faqs/is-it-possible-to-r...
- clhodapp 3y ago
  None of them. This is the Star Lite Mk V.

eternityforest 3y ago

Why did they have to use a micro HDMI port? Couldn't they have done dual USB-C and made one the DisplayPort output? MicroHDMI is not a very nice connector, it's a lot of pins under mechanical stress from the heavy, rigid HDMI people generally attach to it.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
DisplayPort has the huge advantage of being incredibly easy to passively convert into the ultra-legacy-weird-difficult HDMI, where-as the legacy-centric-pita-gross HDMI requires active absurd adapters to turn into DisplayPort. 100% more usb-c please, with alt modes. USB4 mandates every port be able to do DisplayPort output. I really hope we start to see phones and tablets which have >1 USB port. Lenovo has an absurd beast phone, a Legion phone, with both dual batteries and dual USB-c (USB3) ports. If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Hopefully happens sooner, and hopefully we see dual ports emerge midway to then too. Would be such a great capability set.
- afavour 3y ago
  > If we get to 2030 and phones can't plug in to GPUs something is f-ed and the system is broken, tech has ossified grossly. Why? That’s an incredibly minor use case. If you’re expecting something this niche to become the norm then you’re destined to be disappointed.
  - mcny 3y ago
    We had USB 3 with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 in September 2013. It is now almost a decade. If rumors are true, Samsung will announce a USB 4 (thunderbolt 3) phone before the end of 2024. I agree with the grandparent. While most people don't care too much for eGPU (?), I'm sure if we let people innovate, good things will come. My dream is much smaller. I just want whatever hardware circuitry is required to accomplish the scenario where a phone that is plugged in to a good power source runs directly from the wall, shutting off battery charge completely, not trickle charging all day and night.

1MachineElf 3y ago

1st class Linux support tablet, coreboot firmware, & decent specs for ~$500? I consider that a great deal. I'm very keen on this.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Turskarama 3y ago

I can't help but feel like an x86 tablet is a non starter, the architecture is just too power thirsty compared to ARM.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I have a tablet with a i5-7200u (2016) with a small-ish ~34WHr (originally, well worn since!) battery that gets 7 hours usage easy. How is this "power hungry"? For an ancient quad core & inefficient old storage drive. As with 90% of everything, people take a bunch of highly visible indicators to decide their opinions & then shit on anything & everything that doesn't meet their set conception. People hate Electron because they think of Slack, but Slack has shit ass architecture. Dump it's web data and you'll find dozens of multi-megabyte indexeddb databases with mostly duplicate data. It's just a shit app. You can build shit apps in anything. But vscode being slick fast & smooth doesn't register for anyone, seemingly carries no weight. The negative conceptions dominate & rule, are the things that get posted, actively, and with energy. It's a damned shame.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  I tried VSCode on a Librem 14 by Purism. It has a tenth gen Core i7 with 12 threads. With only very basic essential extensions like syntax, Git integration, and a Vim mode, I could type faster than the view updated. Electron may be great for people who want to write Web apps, but browsers are RAM and CPU hungry beasts compared to the GUI toolkits they're trying to replace. In short, which environments are running VSCode smoothly? Do I need next gen hardware to run a damn IDE smoothly? Web apps have some advantages, but performance is nowhere in that list.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    Your poor performance seems unexpected in extreme. Folks at work are on m1's with quite a lot of extensions & everything feels snappy. Having a huge git repo could poyentially hurt; would be interesting to test. Who knows maybe vim mode is partly to blame? I personally still mainly use vim, not vscode, so I don't know what usual suspects there are. It'd be awesome if there's good profiling that can show what plugins are taking significant time in the core loop. We have brutal eslint to apply but that for example all happens async. Once again, we're back where we started, of one bad situation - some random plugin somewhere - creating a lightning rod for disdain.

keyle 3y ago

Somewhat related - will we ever see linux on old iPads? Old iPads can't get updated anymore, they can't easily browse the web, apps can't get updated or reinstalled... Basically recycle material or dust catchers. I'd like to jail break or whatever my old iPads and have them as simple linux tablets.

comechao 3y ago
The 80s kid in me when I see such a powerful machine being just electronic waste cries
anderspitman 3y ago
Would love to see it, but my guess would be only if there's ever regulation to force Apple to allow it under climate concerns or right to repair type policy.
- fjfuvucucuc 3y ago
  Or you know, you lot could stop giving them money.
  - kushie 3y ago
    oh, i don't think tech professionals or software enthusiasts are majority share holders of apple's bottom line
    - fjfuvucucuc 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - ikurei 3y ago
    Whenever I read this kind of comment, specially about Apple, I always wonder: What are you suggesting we do? If the answer is "just don't have a tablet and buy a FairPhone or a feature phone, have less tech", I think that's coherent. But if the answer is just "don't buy Apple, but continue to buy", I'd say they're all just as bad at best, way worse in general. Apple devices have a longer supported life, although others tend to be more hackable.

calgarymicro 3y ago

Do they design/manufacture these themselves, or are they rebadged from an ODM? And if if it's the latter, which ODM are they using?

Klonoar 3y ago
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but they're actually one of the few vendors who design their own stuff - e.g, their Starbook line is their own, not some Clevo junk. The wait times last I checked are dreadful but that could've changed. I really like their approach though, whenever I can finally get away from Apple's stuff they're likely what I'll opt for (unless System76 knocks it out of the park with their custom one...).

paxys 3y ago

This looks amazing on paper, but plenty of linux phones/tablets do and end up being underwhelming for some reason or another. I'm going to reserve judgement till I can test out the full software and hardware compatibility and battery life (which will likely be never, because I doubt this will ever show up to a Best Buy near me).

roandepoan 3y ago

300cd/m is not a nice brightness for any screen

layer8 3y ago
300 cd/m is plenty for indoor use, unless you care about HDR.
frou_dh 3y ago
Some years ago people often advocated using 120 cd/m2 for colour calibrated panels, so it could be worse.
- AlanYx 3y ago
  That still is the default calibration target for Calibrite/X-rite calibrators.
flagged24 3y ago
A shame for an otherwise interesting tablet. The HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook sets the benchmark for me with a 1200 nits matte screen.

naruhodo 3y ago

I'm not familiar with the state of the art at the moment. Is a 12 hour battery life "good" for a device used for light duties (web browsing)?

meeho 3y ago

No SIM card/4g/5g. Why is the state of telecom so bad on linux?

zekrioca 3y ago
Im curious: why would this be a Linux issue?
- yanchep 3y ago
  My personal feeling is, there are more modems that do not work under Linux than those that do. Or are detected but happen to randomly stop working during the day.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Because the manufacturers switched to making cheaper hardware and moved trade secrets and regulatory compliance into the Windows driver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem
nicolaslem 3y ago
Because carriers and hardware vendors don't want to play ball. Some carriers consider the user's modem as part of their network and want to control it, hardware vendors want to keep their precious firmware blobs and private APIs to themselves. Linux has all the drivers and infrastructure in place to use cell networks efficiently, carriers and vendors just don't want to be part of that. Source: my only Internet access at home comes from a LTE router running Debian I built myself.
- meeho 3y ago
  Any guides or writeups i can follow to build a setup similar to yours?
  - nicolaslem 3y ago
    Unfortunately I never got around to writing it down and as it has been running pretty much unattended for the past three years it is not fresh in my mind. The gist is that since it is a router only (switch and access point are external appliances) it is not that difficult, there are plenty of resources on the web explaining how to turn a linux box into a router. I had to configure a bit of nftables, dhcpd, dnsmask and stubby and that's pretty much it. The server is a standard PC Engines APU4 and the modem in the mPCIe slot is an Huawei ME906s. As I alluded earlier, the hardest part is finding a good modem and getting it to work. Once the modem shows up as a network interface the hard part is done.

meeho 3y ago

Upto 12hrs battery life screen on or standby?

mdp2021 3y ago
Surely screen on (considering other not too distant products). But very probably: new battery, low screen brightness, network off... Reasonably less than 12h - say, 8h, 10h - probably well achievable.

LoveMortuus 3y ago

No USB-A ports and no plain old Debian option... Would be cool if they offered a blank keyboard option, because right now I would just have to pick any ISO language and because I used Slovenian layout, but if I bought it, as is, I couldn't look at the keyboard anyways... Also the display seems a bit dim at 300cd/m. And since it's touch, stylus (digitizer) would be very welcome.

MerelyMortal 3y ago
USB-A to USB-C adapters are cheap. USB-A is past its prime. Your post contains only negative points. There will never be a perfect device because everyone has different wants, so enjoy it for what it is.
- LoveMortuus 3y ago
  I'm sorry, I guess I didn't fully express my thoughts. I'm genuinely excited about the device and had signed up to be notified when it's available. I will, of course, wait for the reviews, but at ~600€ with a keyboard, it's already leagues ahead of my current Chromebook, and this is running a "real" operating system! I expressed my issue with no USB-A ports because I prefer my devices to be self-sufficient (I hope that's the right word). My mouse that I've had for many many years has USB-A, all of my USB storage drives are USB-A, Wacom tablet is USB-A, external DVD drive is USB-A. What I'm trying to say is that all of my devices are USB-A, I have a USB charger only for my phone. And I do find it absurd having to use an adapter to use a mouse with my computer. I would be very slightly less bothered if the adapters at least came with device, but they don't, switch means that it's something I have to buy (no, I don't have any USB-C to USB-A adapters, because only my phone has a USB-C port). I don't believe USB-A is past its prime, I don't really even know what that's supposed to mean. I still love and use my 3.5mm headphone jack on my phone. With criticism, it's much easier to improve then if you only hear praise.
  - iSnow 3y ago
    Of course, your opinion is yours to have, but honestly, the world has moved on from USB-A for new computers/phones/peripherals. I just bought a couple of those: https://www.amazon.com/Basesailor-Thunderbolt-Converter-Generation-Microsoft/dp/B09SZ5NHF4 https://www.amazon.com/Basesailor-Thunderbolt-Converter-Gene... and they stay on the USB-A cable - the price is low enough that I can justify the expense for my 5 or so older peripherals. The USB-A socket is too big for the slim form-factor of ultrabooks and tablets, and it won't make a come-back.

nsonha 3y ago

Again with this stupid unlappable design

jacknews 3y ago
I disagree, it's potentially a much more versatile format. What's needed for use as a laptop (aside from a disregard for ergonomics) is a k/b with an extra battery for weight/balance, and actual friction hinges to hold the tablet at the desired angle. The tablet itself could then have smaller batteries and be lighter, maybe as an option.
- nsonha 3y ago
  > a k/b with an extra battery for weight/balance, and actual friction hinges to hold the tablet at the desired angle. which doesn't exist. You can't just design half of a device and tell customers that 3rd parties will come up with the rest... in time.
  - mdp2021 3y ago
    Just a not fully considered thought, but maybe we could 3D-print hinges for this product? Or, BT keyboards with trackpads (they do not consume much power) including hinges could be in commerce.
    - nsonha 3y ago
      there are products like that but all of them (that I known) are designed for specific devices, either a Surface or an iPad (Brydge, Doqo) Let me know if you find something on the market that may work with this specific tablet.

xqcgrek2 3y ago

I would have preferred their new Star Lite was an updated 12" fanless Linux laptop rather than a tablet. Do any decent fanless 12" Linux laptops exist now?

ConSeannery 3y ago
What's the difference between a fanless laptop and a Linux OS tablet? A keyboard on hinges or something?
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Looks like StarLite needs a kickstand behind it to keep the display up, the hinge likely has no stickiness whatsoever, it's just like a folded piece of the folio cover. Like a Microsoft Surface. Can't type in lap, hard to use in tight spaces like planes or busy coffee shops. I have a couple of Pixel Slates with Brydge keyboards that have actual good hinges, that's much closer to a laptop. Still more top-heavy than laptops.

chillbill 3y ago

I’m afraid i3/sway have spoiled me and now I find any other wm just awfully bulky to say the least, but also I can’t imagine how to use tiling wm without a keyboard. Are there any projects exploring the idea of tiling wm usage on tablets?

bradrn 3y ago
In some ways, tiling WMs are a natural fit for tablets — consider e.g. the iPad’s ‘split screen’ mode, where two windows take up the whole screen between them. It’s easy enough to imagine a WM where you can drag windows to move them around, and drag the splits between them to resize. On Linux, this kind of paradigm is implemented by e.g. Hyprland. I dislike it for desktop, but on a tablet I’d happily use it.
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weikju 3y ago
There is at least one: SXMO [0] . There are a few distributions where it's available, at least on the PinePhone, so it's not inconceivable at all that it would possible to use it on an Intel-bsaed tablet. 0: https://sxmo.org/ https://sxmo.org/ "Simple X Mobile" Extra quote from their docs: > Sxmo >= 1.6.0 runs both on Xorg (using dwm) as well as on Wayland (using sway). The X in our name historically referred to Xorg, but is now open to whatever interpretation you prefer (eXtensible, eXcellent, eXperimental, etc...) Note: I have yet to try it but I'm getting more interested now..
KingMachiavelli 3y ago
In my limited experience, sway is pretty easy to use on a tablet because it supports moving windows very will using a mouse/pointer. Obviously you need still need a on-screen keyboard and a lot of config to replace other swaycmds but it seems like a decent base WM for a tablet.
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MegaDeKay 3y ago

"5-years of updates - Backed by secure updates delivered via the LVFS." Hmmmm. Why a five year cutoff? Does this have some custom firmware not in mainline Linux that would preclude updates beyond five years?

clhodapp 3y ago
LVFS is how you ship firmware that installs permanently into flash on the hardware device (e.g. Coreboot). Hopefully, at least Coreboot itself stays buildable for the motherboard in the long term so you can keep locally building core system firmware for many more years to come. Star Labs themselves are not committing to continuing to ship pre-built binaries from their side for more than five years.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Most PC motherboards and laptops won't give you longer BIOS updates than 3-5 years. It's unfortunately the norm for FW support lifecyle.

xbar 3y ago

i have too many computers.... i have too many computers.... i have too many computers....

okokwhatever 3y ago
I feel your struggle pal!, I have too many computers too!
kiddico 3y ago
One more is unlikely to result in divorce. Probably.
mdp2021 3y ago
Product quality has fallen devastatingly in this historic phase: if there is a good product around, better to consider it while it is available.
yencabulator 3y ago
Yes, but what about tablets?

seltzered_ 3y ago

So I've been using a Tablet PC running Linux for over two years as a primary device, my advice is that if your needs are more as a workstation get something with a reasonable CPU and fans. HP used to make a nice tablet PC, the Asus flow z13 is the second best choice. My specific setup is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm/how_long_have_you_been_using_an_ergo_mobile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/comments/vzs8mm... Dell also has been selling a fanless XPS 13 tablet for the past year but I haven't heard of anyone using it. This said it's nice to see more vendors considering the tablet form factor with appropriate ports and display resolution.

Osiris 3y ago

No one has mentioned the 2880x1920 resolution display. That’s fantastic I’m this price range. $500 laptops are (nearly?) impossible to find with displays above 1080p.

jwells89 3y ago
My question is if that resolution is usable with 2x integer scaling (1440x960 effective screen real estate), because fractional scaling under Linux is still a bit rocky.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  Fractional scaling works well on Plasma under Wayland if you're using an up to date distribution.
  - cricalix 3y ago
    Though other things don't work well. Like Plasma's whole toolbar with clock widget etc. It freezes, and you can't interact with the frozen widgets. Only answers are kill and restart, reboot, or switch back to X. It'll get there, but it's still not at a level I would say is daily driver (for me - I like my toolbar clock to actually tell me the current time). (Kubuntu with KDE project's PPA to be on latest stable)
    - heavyset_go 3y ago
      I'd try with a rolling release and see if you still encounter the problems. I use Plasma panels with the clock widget and haven't experienced freezes or had to restart anything.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    The DE itself, yes. This is true of GNOME as well once the hidden setting is enabled. Unfortunately there's still individual programs which don't behave correctly, which for now means that 1x or 2x displays are still best if a trouble-free, low-tinkering experience is the goal.

shortformblog 3y ago

As someone who gave the JingPad a spin, the Linux tablet market has been painfully difficult to pull off. At least this is based on Intel, ensuring that if the company goes belly up, it can be used for something other than a mirror.

linmob 3y ago
IIRC, Ubuntu Touch has been ported to the JingPad, so there is one supported OS option.
- shortformblog 3y ago
  Yeah, it has, but it has serious limitations for future ports because of its hardware model. It’s using an SOC with proprietary PowerVR graphics which will limit its future ability. I wrote a whole thing about this about eight months ago: https://tedium.co/2022/11/30/fydetab-duo-jingpad-comparison/ https://tedium.co/2022/11/30/fydetab-duo-jingpad-comparison/

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cookiengineer 3y ago

Honestly when I am looking at their other models like the StarBook and StarFighter, I have a weird feeling that I cannot repair them once the battery or other parts breaks down. They have an internal battery similar to the format of A1278 MacBooks, which makes my spidey sense go off that it's not easily repairable without breaking a ribbon flex cable. I don't need a bleeding edge gaming GPU, I don't need USB4, I don't need Thunderbolt. These are optional extras for me, I've given up on them already. Currently I am kind of stuck with the old T440p because of this, all other laptops that I bought in the last 10 years have died already with no chance of repairing or fixing them - either because of non available parts, or because literally the GPU melted down (happens more often on MacBooks than one might think, apparently). From Ultrabooks to even MacBooks, I've had them all, from Dell to HP, Apple and back... all died eventually and I switched back to my T440p in 2019. This old laptop still lives, can be repaired, has a replacement parts community [1], and doesn't break when I let it fall down on the floor. But it's now so outdated that I cannot even order battery packs anymore, because they will arrive with less than 20% capacity condition when they're being sold as "New" because they're even not produced anymore and are stored for too long. I think what I want is something like the MNT Reform laptop [2], where the battery cells are replaceable 18650 standard cells. But without the problems that come with ARM. I've been thinking about even getting an older Thinkpad just so that I can just let the guy from xyte.ch [3] build a better one out of it. Honestly I've spent more than 10k over the years for crappy Ultrabook laptops or MacBooks, which all died up on me and I'm sick of spending so much money when my laptop from 2013 still works. Why can't we have nice replaceable battery packs, RAM, and m2 SSDs anymore? I mean, not even the Framework laptop has a replaceable battery pack? WHY? Am I the only one wanting this? [1] https://www.thinkstore24.de https://www.thinkstore24.de [2] https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20221130010517/https://www.xyte.ch/ http://web.archive.org/web/20221130010517/https://www.xyte.c... (currently has php problems)

cycomanic 3y ago
AFAIK pretty much all (most?) the recent thinkpads have relatively easily replaceable batteries. I just replaced the battery in my X1 carbon (although it's a 2016 model so not so recent) and it was really straight forward.

PrivateButts 3y ago

A bit ago I did a bit of an experiment with an old surface tablet, where I threw some linux distros at it to see what the experience was. I tried Ubuntu, Manjaro, and Fedora, and all were extremely janky to downright broken. On screen keyboard was completely broken with Wayland, with some apps like Firefox just not popping it open, to others ignoring input. X had trouble with screen rotation. Fedora wouldn't let me past the login screen unless I connected a keyboard, which was compounded with a bug that was causing the screen to lock every sixty seconds. Manjaro ended up lasting the longest, but at that point I had just given up trying to fix things and reverted to using the Surface as a laptop with a touch screen. I don't know how much touch screen only computers are considered during development of desktop environments and display servers, my experience left me with the distinct feeling that I had gone way outside of the bounds of the target user of these applications. Maybe I just had bad luck. Hopefully if this is truly an under-served side of the Linux desktop experience, a successful product like this will help push the ball forward on improving support for this niche. I wonder how much the popularity of the Steam Deck is pushing the KDE team to improve touch screen support as well.

resonious 3y ago
I suspect this is largely because the Microsoft Surface products contain a lot of proprietary hardware components that aren't not well supported by the kernel. KDE and friends have pretty good touch screen support, but it's all for naught if you have no drivers.
- fifteen1506 3y ago
  No OSK on X11 though, on KDE. Gnome has on both.
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  I found Ubuntu Wayland touchscreen keyboard very broken on a Dell laptop with decent linux driver support. It's a real shame, worked perfectly with X.
- paulcarroty 3y ago
  > Microsoft Surface products contain a lot of proprietary hardware components that aren't not well supported by the kernel and not repairable at all as Surface itself, being honest.

mayli 3y ago

"0 fan design" bios: fan mode: aggressive https://us.starlabs.systems/cdn/shop/files/CFR-01x2000.png?format=webp&v=1691596539&width=396 https://us.starlabs.systems/cdn/shop/files/CFR-01x2000.png?f...

kiddico 3y ago
I obviously don't have one, but presumably there's a fan header that they didn't use and didn't bother to remove the reference from the bios in case someone decides to use it...somehow... for some reason. idk, but a bios setting for fan speed isn't actually indicative of a fan. edit: could just be a really roundabout way to increase TDP
kennydude 3y ago
Same image as used on their laptop https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook
ciupicri 3y ago
The Hyper-Threading setting is also present even if Intel N200 doesn't have it.

tommica 3y ago

I'd love to get this - when I saw the price I was blown away, it really seems like a good deal! The visual presentation of it is really delicious.

okasaki 3y ago

It looks nice. The only thing I'd change is have a 4:3 screen (or at least 3:2). The extra height really matters on small screens.

azangru 3y ago

Has anyone tried their Starfighter? They've been selling it for about a year; but I have yet to see a proper review. Wait time of 4-5 months is a dealbreaker for me; but perhaps someone has gone through with it?

schaefer 3y ago
I haven't ordered or used a starfighter, but ages ago when the ryzen sku first went up I e-mailed the company. I was asking if they had any video of the removable camera being stowed in the base. I was having trouble imagining it. That video [1] was finally posted at the end of May. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tzeL2CJTd6g https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tzeL2CJTd6g
- azangru 3y ago
  Cool! Thank you for sharing the video. Such a strange design choice!

tjoff 3y ago

Looks much better, and cheaper than I expected. Quality can't be fenomenal at that price point but it looks well thought out from the ground up. Impressive! And thank you for the 3:2 display aspect ratio <3 Gonna keep an eye on this one.

mdp2021 3y ago
> aspect ratio The specs say 16:10...
- tjoff 3y ago
  Where? I couldn't find the specs for it, but the resolution is stated as 2880x1920 which ought to be 3:2.
  - mdp2021 3y ago
    At https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification yes the resolution seems to indicate 3:2, but they also write 16:10 - out of what, it is unclear. The tablet size is 11.15'' x 8'' , i.e. around 10:7 .
yencabulator 3y ago
I'm not really at all surprised by the price. It's more expensive than the base level Steam Deck, which is also a Linux touchscreen tablet (with some extra input hardware...), and that's Zen 2, 16 GB RAM, GPU, etc though with smaller&worse screen. Adding a comparable 512 GB SSD to the Deck makes it $649, compare against StarLite's non-preorder $713 price. A full Framework 13" laptop is $1049 and that's a hugely more powerful CPU etc.

nologic01 3y ago

I don't need another computer right now but this gives me a warm feeling that the Universe cares about me. May I dream that by the time I do need this they will also have a combo offer along with a fully integrated linux mobile?

fsflover 3y ago
> fully integrated linux mobile It already works fine with PureOS/Mobian.

mdp2021 3y ago

I had been monitoring that Intel N200, periodically checking news about low consumption chips: Jan 2023 ; 0.01µ tech ; cache 384 2048 6144 kb ; 6W TDP ; 4 cores and threads Previously used ( https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?page=2&q=Intel+n200 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?page=2&q=Intel+n... ) in some "Google Nissa" (could not find further details about what it is), "Micro-Star ADL-N Cubi N MS-B0A9" minicomputer, "Asus MiniPc PN42", "Lenovo IdeaPad 82XB"... With a 38Wh battery, 12 hours seem optimistic but achievable under many conditions of power economy.

mdp2021 3y ago
> "Google Nissa" (could not find further details about what it is) I could finally find some references: according to Ryan Whitwam ( https://hothardware.com/news/premium-chromebook-x-laptops-powered-by-amd-and-intel-are-coming-what-to-expect https://hothardware.com/news/premium-chromebook-x-laptops-po... ), > Chromebook X machines will have to be built on one of four hardware platforms with high-end x86 CPUs: AMD Zen 2+ (Skyrim), AMD Zen 3 (Guybrush), or Intel Core 12th Gen (Brya & Nissa). The Nissa chips are the Intel N-series so the N100, N200 and i3-N300

teddyh 3y ago

RYF certification or no sale.

fluidcruft 3y ago
What's RYF?
- tedcrilly 3y ago
  Free Software Foundation certification program: https://ryf.fsf.org/ https://ryf.fsf.org/

mdp2021 3y ago

I would have included GPS: those tablets are good as maps.

yencabulator 3y ago
For what it's worth, some dedicated hotspot gadgets expose a GPS service over TCP (the protocol is often somewhat inaccurately called NMEA), and a standalone USB-connected GPS receiver can be <$20. For tablets, I believe often the GPS receiver is on the same chip as the cellular modem, so you don't tend to get GPS without that.

not_your_vase 3y ago

And what about the software? I mean software that can be used without mouse and keyboard? Currently the main problem is not the hardware, but we simply don't have usable software. I have been driving a PinePhone for many months (still do), but mostly with programs that I wrote for myself after a lot of frustrations about the available software, because having a keyboard and mouse is mandatory with 99.9% of the available Linux applications. So basic (UX) things are missing and/or fatally broken, it's not even funny. This makes a new n+1th Linux tablet a bit pointless in my eyes.

wiz21c 3y ago
Sometimes I want to buy a PinePhone. Do you mean that one can't send SMS, place phone calls, browse the web, read (not write) emails without a keyboard ? (these four are 99% of my phone usage).
- Qwertious 3y ago
  Drew Devault (Sway and Sourcehut guy) wrote this on his experience with Linux phones: https://drewdevault.com/2023/06/16/Mobile-linux-retrospective.html https://drewdevault.com/2023/06/16/Mobile-linux-retrospectiv... tldr: it works and it's great, but it's not reliable in phone/SMS in the way a phone needs to be reliable.
  - wvh 3y ago
    I've been using the Nokia N9 and some of the Jolla Sailfish offspring to this day. The phone part has been very reliable. The rest of the ecosystem is very minimal, almost non-existent, but I can't complain about the basic phone functionality. With these ARM-style devices that are quite closed down and need their own respective device tree, mass adoption seems a requirement for a company and ecosystem to hit critical mass and be financially viable. I don't think a "Linux phone" is enough of a value proposition to hit that critical mass without any specific features that would appeal to a non-technical crowd and can't easily be replicated by the iOS or Android behemoths. So personally I think it's not that the open-source/Linux approach can't produce a phone that has good-enough basic functionality, but that there's no clear way to market and sell these phones to a sufficiently large crowd to offset the massive investment into a new platform. Linux as a whole might be far ahead of iOS and Android as a general computing platform, but a viable device would have to break through the mass production hardware (and marketing!) barrier.

hereonout2 3y ago

I can't see anything about storage, does this have an SSD and if so how large? Looks very interesting to me, I'm just not ready to give up storage like most of the Chromebook options.

pja 3y ago
It’s M.2 2242 Gen3 PCIe NVMe, 512Gb in the base spec, configurable up to 2Tb, but presumably end user replaceable. https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification
- hereonout2 3y ago
  Missed that thanks, certainly piques my interest at this price

ZuLuuuuuu 3y ago

I really wonder its battery life with this new Intel processor. Both with average usage and also in idle mode. I had a tablet with Intel Atom CPU on it about 10 years ago, the performance and battery life was good during usage but it would stay only 4-5 days in idle before running out of battery (even if left it with 100% battery). But I can leave my iPad aside and come back to it 2 weeks later and it still holds most of its battery. Having said that, this tablet really looks nice and if it also turns out to have long battery life, I might give it a try.

f6v 3y ago
I checked reviews for Surface Pro and seems that battery has gotten worse over last couple years. You can expect ~5-6 hours of use. which to me renders the device useless.
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znpy 3y ago

I’m using my sister’s ipad and frankly the only good reason i see to get an ipad is the goodnotes app. It’s really a killer feature app. Is there a linux equivalent of goodnotes? Getting this tablet and running linux would be ideal as long as i could have something like goodnotes

urduntupu 3y ago

Is this any good for regular full stack programming, running a couple of docker containers?

delphi4711 3y ago
It has more than enough ram, but the cpu and gpu will probably slow you down, but that depends on what you are used to :). But it's sold out already.
Havoc 3y ago
Depends on what you put in the containers ;)
mhitza 3y ago
Yes, performance is very close to i5-8250U ( https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3042vs5178/Intel-i5-8250U-vs-Intel-N200 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3042vs5178/Intel-i5-825... ), which was release at the end of 2017. I have this in my laptop that I use for work, VM's, IDEs and containers are running all the time on my system. Works great, even if I have all CPU mitigations enabled, turbo boosting disabled, and running in powersave mode. What I do to avoid the fan from getting audible. However, with all the options I mentioned enable (especially enforcing a strict powersave profile/max frequency/etc) you'll get a bit of latency here and there; which I can put up with because I hate to hear the fans spin. With a fanless design, a better power profile (6W TDP vs 15W TDP), I wouldn't constrict my CPU to such extents. To compare it in relative performance terms, the Apple M1 is ~3.8x times more performant than it (if that helps).

qwerty456127 3y ago

Great. To me Gnome 3 always seemed a perfect tablet envoronment while fairly imperfect desktop environment so I always wanted a good tablet with it and never wanted it on desktop/laptop. I feel like buying this one. What inspires me even more is it seemingly having more than one USB-C port.

varispeed 3y ago

I was going to say "nope", but at below $500? Seems viable. I just don't like this tablet factor. It's a poorly engineered design - a flimsy top heavy structure that takes a lot of space? What could go wrong. I can't count how many times I accidentally knocked my Surface off the table or when I needed to type something quickly and didn't have enough space on the desk and getting that thing on the lap... eh.

nisegami 3y ago

I'm in the market for a tablet, but my primary use is media consumption so screen+speakers are of the highest importance. But that said, this still looks very promising. I signed up for email notifications, so it depends on when it becomes purchasable.

kaliqt 3y ago

Finally. A proper Linux PC tablet.

DrNosferatu 3y ago

Why not a Ryzen APU?

nsteel 3y ago
Can you have that fanless in this form factor?

snvzz 3y ago

... on Legacy ISA. I'd rather a RISC-V Pinetab-V, based on the same JH7110 as VisionFive 2.

LeonM 3y ago
> ... on Legacy ISA. Since when is x86 legacy? > I'd rather a RISC-V Pinetab-V, based on the same JH7110 as VisionFive 2. Have you actually used one of those? They are excruciatingly slow. Less performance than most Raspberry Pi. Maybe it works for your niche workflow, but for StarLite to succeed they'll have to build a _usable_ product. Also competitive ARM based alternatives (such as Snapdragon) require many closed source blobs to function.
- snvzz 3y ago
  >Since when is x86 legacy? Since the first commercial RISC chips obsoleted x86 in the 80s. >Have you actually used one of those? Yes, JH7110 on VisionFive 2. >They are excruciatingly slow. Less performance than most Raspberry Pi. Not my experience, owning VisionFive 2 and all raspberry pi B boards (1,2,3,3+ and 4), all of which have been used heavily. The CPU is much faster than RPi3b+'s while using way less power. Only a little slower than RPi4, and this is assuming the RPi4 has a huge heatsink like mine does. JH7110 doesn't require a heatsink nor throttle under load, for it stays under 75C even when running builds 24/7, yet is designed to survive 125C. Whereas everything else in the SoC is better. Especially the GPU, which in the RPi4 is anemic, and can barely keep up even for 2d at 1080p. The experience is much better on VisionFive 2 for even simple tasks like web browsing, and it's not even close. Night and day. Nevermind the upstream support effort[0] getting this far in just a few months (indiegogo delivery was in March), and follows standard RISC-V boot/firmware interface specifications, whereas Raspberry Pi is all bespoke and never cared much about upstreaming support. >Also competitive ARM based alternatives (such as Snapdragon) require many closed source blobs to function. Here I just do not understand what point you're trying to make. 0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan
  - LeonM 3y ago

non-nil 3y ago

Just received notification and went to order. Shipping to my location (Nordic region) turned out to be expensive enough that I’ll have to pass on this for now and live with older hardware for a while yet. Too bad!

c2h5oh 3y ago
Odd - shipping to Central Europe starts at 32 euro
hereonout2 3y ago
The keyboard is also extra, which bumps the price up to more than I originally thought. Biggest downside is a 3-4 month lead time though, I'm too impatient for that unfortunately, especially given this would be a bit of a punt for me.
- bogle 3y ago
  And you'll need the keyboard if you want BIOS passwords or full disk encryption. No OSK or bluetooth keyboard will be available until you're past those.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    What about using a regular usb keyboard? With A to C adapter.

askbookz1 3y ago

It looks like a pretty cool device but, since I started working from home, I have no use for a ultralight device. I only have a laptop because that's what everybody gets but if I've moved it a mere meter around, that was too much.

bArray 3y ago

Reminds me of the Pine Tab (v1) with the contact pins at the bottom, fold-up keyboard, etc. Having an Intel processor would make me heaps more confident about good kernel support out of the box. The A64 by Pine is essentially abandoned for Linux kernel development. This device looks great, I would just take care expecting too much from that keyboard. It looks almost identical to the Pine Tab keyboard and that was not great.

unregistereddev 3y ago
Sadly, Pine has a long history of using poorly-supported chipsets and doing nothing to improve support. I want to like the company, and their hardware designs show a lot of promise, but ultimately they do not stand behind their product. It's truly a shame. Their products have potential and could build a huge hobbyist community behind them, but extremely few people have both the skills and the time to troubleshoot buggy kernel modules. I agree that StarLite's Intel processor will probably work a lot better.
- bArray 3y ago
  > Sadly, Pine has a long history of using poorly-supported chipsets and doing nothing to improve support. It wouldn't even be difficult either, they could just charge slightly more and then pay a kernel developer to solve these problems. > Their products have potential and could build a huge hobbyist community behind them, but extremely few people have both the skills and the time to troubleshoot buggy kernel modules. It's not just buggy kernel modules, it's also significantly buggy hardware too. The only thing I would say they have got going for them is good connections for hardware and manufacturing which help them reduce costs, otherwise another player could easily take over.

kposehn 3y ago

As a long time iPad user I’m apprehensive. As others have noted, Linux based touch experiences have so far been lacking. That said, I love the thought of it. I’ve recently started using my iPad Pro as my daily driver (replacing a Mac Studio M1 Ultra no less) and haven’t looked back. The only gripe with iPadOS is it took me a while to get a smooth vscode setup for development - having that be easier out of the box with the StarLite is quite appealing.

fsflover 3y ago
> Linux based touch experiences have so far been lacking My Librem 5 works fine with the touch screen.
- kposehn 3y ago
  I was referring to tablets but thanks for pointing out the Librem. I’ll check it out.
yencabulator 3y ago
Of course an Apple fanboy shows up with this comment. ChromeOS on a tablet is a perfectly fine experience, gesture navigation and all. (And, very important to me, runs a "real browser", not some limited mobile variant. And the full Linux CLI environment.)
- marcellus23 3y ago
  iPadOS Safari is just as capable as desktop Safari. Why do you think otherwise? Also, it’s not 2006 anymore, maybe stop calling people “fanboy” for preferring a different computer than you.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    What motivated me to want a "real browser" was bookmark management. Managing & reorganizing bookmarks on mobile Chrome was frustrating. And I absolutely will label anyone a fanboy if they barge into a Linux conversation going "Rah rah Apple best Linux sucks" without actually contributing anything insightful, useful, or specific. Please don't just repeat the age old "Apple did it best" line, we already understand you think so. To people actually interested in the topic, all it seems like is you wanted to mention Apple for the sake of mentioning Apple, and that's why I called you a fanboy.

fsflover 3y ago

I wonder if it can run Qubes OS and PureOS.

MostlyStable 3y ago

I think this might be _exactly_ what I've been looking for. Linux tablet that's easy to open and replace parts? Yes please. It's overpriced for what I want it for (and almost definitely overpowered as well), but if the parts ecosystem allows it to last long enough, that might be worth it. Although if anyone has any ideas for a better fit, I'm open to suggestions: I just need a tablet to stay in the kitchen to display recipes. I plan on running a self hosted recipe database. So actual CPU muscle needed is pretty minimal, but I'd really rather have the repairability and am willing to overpay somewhat to get it.

tedcrilly 3y ago

I've been mulling over many tablet options recently with a goal to reduce the number of devices I travel with (terminal, email, playing HW accelerated video, reading comics). I considered everything from an iPad through a Surface with Linux and all the way to more exotic options like https://junocomputers.com/product/juno-tab-2/ https://junocomputers.com/product/juno-tab-2/ or https://www.fydetabduo.com/ https://www.fydetabduo.com/ but they all lacked something. I was close to going with a Google Pixel with Graphene OS but Google's atrocious pricing in Europe made me reconsider. This one finally made me pull the trigger, mostly because it is Linux-first and came with no "This is a beta product" or "generally works, but..." asterisks. Fingers crossed that it delivers.

WillAdams 3y ago
I was backed into a corner when it came time to replace my Samsung Galaxy Book 12 and had to by a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 --- really wish that there was something like to the Samsung Galaxy Tab Ultra 9 which ran Windows.

Saris 3y ago

This looks pretty good for $500, although a 300cd/m2 screen limits it to pretty much indoor areas out of direct sun.