From andrew at sands.gen.nz Fri Oct 6 09:46:19 2023 From: andrew at sands.gen.nz (Andrew Sands) Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2023 11:46:19 +1300 Subject: [Linux-aus] Any Grafana / Influxdb gurus out there? Message-ID: <2db81e41-5bce-40aa-a901-1419a2fa7f6d@app.fastmail.com> Hi all listdwellers, I have a cobbled togehter IoT monitoring system and am gathering data in an InfluxDB database and have a number of rudimentary Grafana based graphs working. However, in Grafana I'm graphing the energy measurements from InfluxDB that are supplied from three current clamps. What I've been trying to get sorted out in my head is how I graph a calculated datapoint on my graph. One on the energy readings is for the main circuit and the other two monitor sub-circuits. What I'd like to graph is a data point that subtracts the combined sub-circuit values from the main circuit value? I've tried the 'googling' thing but get confused by the transformation thing suggested. Looking for pointers, thoughts and suggestions. Anyway, thanks for reading and have an awesome day. :-) Andrew From a.nielsen at shikadi.net Fri Oct 6 17:23:33 2023 From: a.nielsen at shikadi.net (Adam Nielsen) Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2023 16:23:33 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Any Grafana / Influxdb gurus out there? In-Reply-To: <2db81e41-5bce-40aa-a901-1419a2fa7f6d@app.fastmail.com> References: <2db81e41-5bce-40aa-a901-1419a2fa7f6d@app.fastmail.com> Message-ID: <20231006162333.04620065@gnosticus.teln.shikadi.net> > However, in Grafana I'm graphing the energy measurements from > InfluxDB that are supplied from three current clamps. What I've been > trying to get sorted out in my head is how I graph a calculated > datapoint on my graph. One on the energy readings is for the main > circuit and the other two monitor sub-circuits. I'm using Grafana quite a bit in my day job, but with TimescaleDB (PostgreSQL) behind it instead of InfluxDB. Generally I've found with Grafana that for anything beyond the basics you're better off switching the panel into text query mode and writing the SQL or equivalent yourself. This way you can put calculations into the query to subtract one data source from another, however depending on your data structure you can run into difficulties if the timestamps don't line up exactly. It can become quite complicated to get it exactly right depending on the underlying database schema. With TimescaleDB you can use a function called TIME_BUCKET which will shift your timestamps (and interpolate the data) so that even if your readings are taken a few seconds or minutes early or late, you'll end up with values all at the same exact timestamp that makes it easier to do the kind of addition or subtraction that you describe. Presumably InfluxDB can do the same thing but unfortunately I haven't used it enough to be able to offer any advice there. I'd look into the Influx query language to see if you can write a statement there that performs the calculations you are after. Cheers, Adam. From russell at coker.com.au Thu Oct 12 23:54:45 2023 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2023 23:54:45 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] ARM laptops Message-ID: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> I could get some cheap ARM laptops from China if there is interest. $120 each for laptops with FullHD screen and the same SoC as the PinePhonePro. It should be a quite OK laptop for low end use (web browsing, terminal, word processing, etc) and it's also a good development platform for work targetting the PinePhone series of devices and similar systems. If we do this then once we get them to Australia you can collect them from me in Melbourne or Canberra, otherwise there will be local postage costs on top which might bring it to $140 per unit. The devices in question will not be new but they will not have had much if any use. Apparently they are part of a bundled deal in China where most customers want the other parts of the bundle and just sell the laptops cheaply. I think that they are already running Linux but you would want to wipe them before use. The installation instructions for the PinePhonePro should work. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ From bob.hepple at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 08:03:30 2023 From: bob.hepple at gmail.com (Bob Hepple) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 07:03:30 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] ARM laptops In-Reply-To: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> Message-ID: Interesting but I'm in Qld, so can we have the link so we can order them ourselves? Or is there a minimum qty required to get that price? Cheers Bob On Thu, 12 Oct 2023 at 22:55, Russell Coker via linux-aus < linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote: > I could get some cheap ARM laptops from China if there is interest. $120 > each > for laptops with FullHD screen and the same SoC as the PinePhonePro. It > should be a quite OK laptop for low end use (web browsing, terminal, word > processing, etc) and it's also a good development platform for work > targetting > the PinePhone series of devices and similar systems. > > If we do this then once we get them to Australia you can collect them from > me > in Melbourne or Canberra, otherwise there will be local postage costs on > top > which might bring it to $140 per unit. > > The devices in question will not be new but they will not have had much if > any > use. Apparently they are part of a bundled deal in China where most > customers > want the other parts of the bundle and just sell the laptops cheaply. > > I think that they are already running Linux but you would want to wipe > them > before use. The installation instructions for the PinePhonePro should > work. > > -- > My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ > My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to > linux-aus-unsubscribe at lists.linux.org.au > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From simon at darkmere.gen.nz Sun Oct 15 14:46:06 2023 From: simon at darkmere.gen.nz (Simon Lyall) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2023 16:46:06 +1300 (NZDT) Subject: [Linux-aus] Getting to Everything Open in Gladstone Message-ID: I was looking at various options. Thought I'd share what I've found so far. Gladstone is around 500km North of Brisbane. Driving distance 530km. Flying ====== $100 - Bonza from Gold Coast and Melbourne (twice a week roughly) $200 - $300 each way to Brisbane, several times per day on Qantas or Virgin. Flight time around 1h 10m Some indication there are not a lot of seats at the above rate on Qantas/Virgin. Some information on Bonza flights below. They are a new airline so adding and removing routes regularly. You need to get their app since that is the only place where they publish the routes and timetable. https://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/how-to-book-bonza-flights/ Train ===== https://www.queenslandrailtravel.com.au/ $90 - $140 each way. Roughly 2 per day taking around 6 hours. However there appears to be track work scheduled during April 2024 so highly likely that this will not be available. If you book this you will end up on a Bus. There exact days track work is happening is still to be published. Scheduled Bus ============= Greyhound appears to be the only scheduled service https://www.greyhound.com.au/buses/brisbane-to-gladstone $79 Buses at 12pm and 2pm. Taking around 12 hours (ie arrive around midnight) There might be an option for a chartered bus that would take closer to the driving time (say 7 hours). This would need some research and a group of interested people. Driving ======= Around 6 hours from Brisbane. Conclusion ========== Flying or Driving seem the only realistic options. * Flying seems to be the default option. Book early to lock in cheap fares * Driving seems to be viable, especially if you can share driving duties * Scheduled Buses slow and at inconvenience times * The Train is probably not available due to track work -- Simon Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.simonlyall.com/ "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar From mike.carden at gmail.com Sun Oct 15 16:26:03 2023 From: mike.carden at gmail.com (Mike Carden) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2023 16:26:03 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Getting to Everything Open in Gladstone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That's a good summary Simon, thanks for doing that. It so happens that this week I drove a big chunk of the road from Brisbane to Gladstone. I flew from Canberra to Brisbane, hired a car[0] and drove to Bundaberg which is about 200km short of Gladstone. Two things stand out about that drive. One is the fact that there is an amazing quantity of roadworks going on with choke points, speed restrictions (down to 40km/h), temporary traffic lights and general mayhem around all of that activity. The other is that it's a very busy route for heavy haulage trucking with more semi trailers and B-Doubles per kilometre than I have seen in years. And many of the big truck drivers are VERY impatient. I like to set the cruise control to the speed limit and just get on with it, but more than once I had nudged the speed in a 100 zone up to around 110 because a truck with 90 signs stuck to its front filled my mirrors to the point that I couldn't see its windscreen nor its rego plate. So don't expect a particularly relaxing drive if you choose to take on the Bruce Highway. -- MC [0] Brisbane domestic airport car hire is tortuous [1]. You need to leave the arrivals area, go up either a lift or a moving walkway to an overpass in the sky, traverse to a three storey car park, get a lift to the ground floor, then find the particular hire car company you have booked through. And on the way back, you need to know that you have to take the International Airport exit from Airport Drive to find the Service Centre to refuel your hire car before then heading to the domestic airport Car Rental Return area. [1] It's easier at the International Airport which is just down the road. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From xrobau at gmail.com Sun Oct 15 16:49:19 2023 From: xrobau at gmail.com (Rob Thomas) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2023 15:49:19 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Getting to Everything Open in Gladstone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'll be spending some time next week going though all the ways to get up here, but as far as I know, there is NOT going to be any track work blocking trains getting up here. Sadly the Tilt Train (160kph) is most likely still going to be out of service then, but I've had unofficial confirmation that there is currently no track work planned between Brisbane and Gladstone for April, so the Spirit of Queensland should still be running 10 times a week. Oh, and for those that ARE planning on driving, don't trust your speedo, as almost all of them are deliberately set to display higher speeds than you're actually travelling, leading to getting a pile of cars and trucks lined up behind you 8) Use the GPS on your phone to get an accurate reading, and DO NOT EXCEED IT. The highway patrol do not have any sense of humour these days! --Rob On Sun, 15 Oct 2023, 3:26 pm Mike Carden via linux-aus, < linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote: > That's a good summary Simon, thanks for doing that. > > It so happens that this week I drove a big chunk of the road from Brisbane > to Gladstone. I flew from Canberra to Brisbane, hired a car[0] and drove to > Bundaberg which is about 200km short of Gladstone. > > Two things stand out about that drive. One is the fact that there is an > amazing quantity of roadworks going on with choke points, speed > restrictions (down to 40km/h), temporary traffic lights and general mayhem > around all of that activity. The other is that it's a very busy route for > heavy haulage trucking with more semi trailers and B-Doubles per kilometre > than I have seen in years. And many of the big truck drivers are VERY > impatient. > > I like to set the cruise control to the speed limit and just get on with > it, but more than once I had nudged the speed in a 100 zone up to around > 110 because a truck with 90 signs stuck to its front filled my mirrors to > the point that I couldn't see its windscreen nor its rego plate. So don't > expect a particularly relaxing drive if you choose to take on the Bruce > Highway. > > -- > MC > > [0] Brisbane domestic airport car hire is tortuous [1]. You need to leave > the arrivals area, go up either a lift or a moving walkway to an overpass > in the sky, traverse to a three storey car park, get a lift to the ground > floor, then find the particular hire car company you have booked through. > And on the way back, you need to know that you have to take the > International Airport exit from Airport Drive to find the Service Centre to > refuel your hire car before then heading to the domestic airport Car Rental > Return area. > > [1] It's easier at the International Airport which is just down the road. > > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to > linux-aus-unsubscribe at lists.linux.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From info at petermoulding.com Sun Oct 15 17:26:21 2023 From: info at petermoulding.com (Info) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2023 17:26:21 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Getting to Everything Open in Gladstone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <69598cfd-4f1f-48c6-862d-1bdda8e192fd@petermoulding.com> Gladstone is 15 hours drive from here on the Central Coast. I would look at going up the A3 to visit the Bunya Mountains National Park and back down on the A5 to visit Guluguba on the way back. 6 days of travel. 5 hours drive + 3 hours bush walk each day. Of course, anyone who has already visited Kroombit Tops National Park and similar might just fly. Perhaps a local could recommend the best spots to do stuff on the way into Gladstone from those other roads. On 15/10/23 14:46, Simon Lyall via linux-aus wrote: > > I was looking at various options. Thought I'd share what I've found so far. > > Gladstone is around 500km North of Brisbane. Driving distance 530km. > > Flying > ====== > > $100 - Bonza from Gold Coast and Melbourne (twice a week roughly) > $200 - $300 each way to Brisbane, several times per day on Qantas or > Virgin. Flight time around 1h 10m > > Some indication there are not a lot of seats at the above rate on Qantas/Virgin. > > Some information on Bonza flights below. They are a new airline so adding > and removing routes regularly. You need to get their app since that is > the only place where they publish the routes and timetable. > > https://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/how-to-book-bonza-flights/ > > Train > ===== > > https://www.queenslandrailtravel.com.au/ > > $90 - $140 each way. Roughly 2 per day taking around 6 hours. > > However there appears to be track work scheduled during April 2024 so > highly likely that this will not be available. If you book this you will > end up on a Bus. There exact days track work is happening is still to be > published. > > Scheduled Bus > ============= > > Greyhound appears to be the only scheduled service > > https://www.greyhound.com.au/buses/brisbane-to-gladstone > > $79 > > Buses at 12pm and 2pm. Taking around 12 hours (ie arrive around midnight) > > There might be an option for a chartered bus that would take closer to the > driving time (say 7 hours). This would need some research and a group of > interested people. > > > Driving > ======= > > Around 6 hours from Brisbane. > > > Conclusion > ========== > > Flying or Driving seem the only realistic options. > > * Flying seems to be the default option. Book early to lock in cheap fares > * Driving seems to be viable, especially if you can share driving duties > * Scheduled Buses slow and at inconvenience times > * The Train is probably not available due to track work > From linux at m0les.com Sun Oct 15 18:03:38 2023 From: linux at m0les.com (Miles Goodhew) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2023 18:03:38 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Getting to Everything Open in Gladstone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <107df36b-2ee3-4c3d-8a2d-cbb120dc30d0@app.fastmail.com> All, Possible alternative: Get to Rockhampton somehow and take one of two daily 1:20 Greyhound busses down? $50-ish one way. M0les. On Sun, 15 Oct 2023, at 16:26, Mike Carden via linux-aus wrote: > That's a good summary Simon, thanks for doing that. > > It so happens that this week I drove a big chunk of the road from Brisbane to Gladstone. I flew from Canberra to Brisbane, hired a car[0] and drove to Bundaberg which is about 200km short of Gladstone. > > Two things stand out about that drive. One is the fact that there is an amazing quantity of roadworks going on with choke points, speed restrictions (down to 40km/h), temporary traffic lights and general mayhem around all of that activity. The other is that it's a very busy route for heavy haulage trucking with more semi trailers and B-Doubles per kilometre than I have seen in years. And many of the big truck drivers are VERY impatient. > > I like to set the cruise control to the speed limit and just get on with it, but more than once I had nudged the speed in a 100 zone up to around 110 because a truck with 90 signs stuck to its front filled my mirrors to the point that I couldn't see its windscreen nor its rego plate. So don't expect a particularly relaxing drive if you choose to take on the Bruce Highway. > > -- > MC > > > [0] Brisbane domestic airport car hire is tortuous [1]. You need to leave the arrivals area, go up either a lift or a moving walkway to an overpass in the sky, traverse to a three storey car park, get a lift to the ground floor, then find the particular hire car company you have booked through. And on the way back, you need to know that you have to take the International Airport exit from Airport Drive to find the Service Centre to refuel your hire car before then heading to the domestic airport Car Rental Return area. > [1] It's easier at the International Airport which is just down the road. > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to > linux-aus-unsubscribe at lists.linux.org.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From xrobau at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 16:50:21 2023 From: xrobau at gmail.com (Rob Thomas) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:50:21 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Getting to Everything Open in Gladstone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is a bit of a shock to me, as when I was talking to them about this earlier this year, they were quite certain that this trackwork was going to be much earlier 8-( The screenshot above is from https://www.queenslandrailtravel.com.au/serviceupdates/Pages/default.aspx - scroll down, and then click forward to April. So, it now looks like Bonza or Qantas it is for getting up here, OR, arriving on/before the 11th for those that want to take the train. --Rob On Sun, 15 Oct 2023 at 19:29, Simon Lyall wrote: > On Sun, 15 Oct 2023, Rob Thomas via linux-aus wrote: > > I'll be spending some time next week going though all the ways to get up > here, but as far as I know, there is NOT > > going to be any track work blocking trains getting up here. > > Sadly the Tilt Train (160kph) is most likely still going to be out of > service then, but I've had unofficial > > confirmation that there is currently no track work planned between > Brisbane and Gladstone for April, so the > > Spirit of Queensland should still be running 10 times a week. > > Looks like most of the services are subject to the maintenance. At least > as far as the booking site is concerned. I'll attach a screenshot. > > -- > Simon Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.simonlyall.com/ > "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell at coker.com.au Fri Oct 20 15:31:11 2023 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2023 15:31:11 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Flounder Oct Hack day - SEL4 Message-ID: <3248069.oiGErgHkdL@cupcakke> https://flounder.linux.org.au/events/oct-2023-sel4/ October event, SE L4 Hack day. SE L4 is the most highly assured OS kernel. So let?s try getting it running. No lecture, just playing with it and seeing what we can do. Meeting will be at http://b.coker.com.au. No need to register just click on the link on the day. Meeting is at midday Melbourne time on the 21st of Oct. That's 01:00UTC. Sorry for the short notice. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ From ljk+la at ljk.id.au Sat Oct 21 16:30:43 2023 From: ljk+la at ljk.id.au (Les Kitchen) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2023 16:30:43 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] ARM laptops In-Reply-To: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> Message-ID: <9791943b-9902-4404-b217-7675a6fb3cff@app.fastmail.com> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 23:54, Russell Coker via linux-aus wrote: > I could get some cheap ARM laptops from China if there is interest. $120 each > for laptops with FullHD screen and the same SoC as the PinePhonePro. It > should be a quite OK laptop for low end use (web browsing, terminal, word > processing, etc) and it's also a good development platform for work targetting > the PinePhone series of devices and similar systems. Thanks for posting that. Sorry for being slow responding. Do you have any more details about the specs of these devices, like cores, RAM, storage, ports? And how they sit compared with the PinePhone Pro phone and the Pinebook Pro laptop (which uses pretty nearly the same SoC)? Or links to where that information might be found? Thanks. ? Smiles, Les. From mike.carden at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 16:59:02 2023 From: mike.carden at gmail.com (Mike Carden) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2023 16:59:02 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops (was: ARM laptops) In-Reply-To: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> Message-ID: I'm typing this on a circa 2010 Lenovo X201 laptop which I bought second hand in late 2012. It has an Intel i5 M 580 (4) @ 2.667GHz CPU and 7728MiB of RAM. By modern standards it's a tad chunky, but its keyboard is perhaps still the best laptop keyboard ever made with proper full-throw keys. Like many laptops did back in the day, this one has an external battery that you can unclip and swap, with IIRC a couple of sizes available. The original battery faded out a couple of years ago so I spent about AUD$90 to have a new one delivered and it has been excellent. The original 500G spinning disk was still working but quite slow when a few months ago I spent about $100 online for a 1TB SSD which was a five-minute swap. Keen to experience what the Cool Kids are running now, I installed System 76's POP!_OS (a Debian/Ubuntu derivative) on the new drive and I am rather impressed. A quick look online suggests that ancient X201s are about AUD$100 at the moment. Add a new battery and a new SSD and for around AUD$300 you might get yourself one of the best laptops ever made. -- MC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ljk+la at ljk.id.au Sat Oct 21 19:55:24 2023 From: ljk+la at ljk.id.au (Les Kitchen) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2023 19:55:24 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops (was: ARM laptops) In-Reply-To: References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> Message-ID: <3c47f331-4143-43ac-9048-0bced0cb0004@app.fastmail.com> Hi MC! On Sat, Oct 21, 2023, at 16:59, Mike Carden via linux-aus wrote: > I'm typing this on a circa 2010 Lenovo X201 laptop which I > bought second hand in late 2012. It has an Intel i5 M 580 (4) > @ 2.667GHz CPU and 7728MiB of RAM. By modern standards it's a > tad chunky, but its keyboard is perhaps still the best laptop > keyboard ever made with proper full-throw keys. Your post inspired me to reply on my Lenovo Thinkpad X200 (around 2008 vintage), though I first read it on my much newer MNT Reform (see below). I bought the X200 off a free-software buddy for $20, then spent about $200 upgrading to 8G RAM and 500GB SSD and new 9-cell battery. I've had a similar experience: excellent keyboard (having real PgUp, PgDn, etc., keys is a big win), easily swappable battery, repairability. A very nice machine for almost all everyday use. I've even put in an ExpressCard to get USB3, though that works only a fresh boot, and seems not to wake up properly after hibernation, and I haven't had time to fix that. I guess the overall comment is that one route for getting a cheap laptop is to buy an old machine second-hand, and upgrade the hardware as needed ? if the design allows it, which is sadly not true of most new laptops. Russell's suggestion serves well if you particularly need to work on ARM or even a particular SoC like the RK3399 (Pinebook Pro) or RK3399S (PinePhone Pro). In daily use I mainly cycle through four laptops: the abovementioned Thinkpad X200; a 2007-vintage "Santa Rosa" Macbook (black polycarbonate, hand-me-down from my son) similarly upgraded; newer a Pinebook Pro (with 1TB NVMe upgrade); and newest an MNT Reform (a very nice machine, with very good keyboard and built-in trackball, but a much more expensive proposition). Running Debian on all but the Pinebook Pro (Manjaro). The older two machines have only 1280?800 displays, but that serves well enough for most use. Even though it's expensive, the MNT Reform is a very interesting machine. Besides the keyboard and trackball (and the very solid construction with repairability in mind), of particular note is that the CPU and RAM are on a daughterboard, and the machine runs off a bank of eight standard 18650 LiFePO4 cells, instead of a bespoke battery. MNT are already selling daughterboards with faster CPUs and more RAM. Well worth looking into as a machine with a long life (good for the environment) and with a commitment to Free Software (good for everything ;-) ). If you do want to keep running laptops of the age with easily removable batteries, then I've found https//www.betterbatt.com.au/ a very reliable source of reasonably priced, third-party batteries. No connection with them aside from being a customer for over eight years. And if you do want to keep such old laptops running with up-to-date software, then pretty much the only option, as most of you know, is to install some FOSS operating system, because mainstream vendors drop software support after only a few years. Such is the way of the world. ? Happy Hacking, Les. From stephen.hocking at gmail.com Mon Oct 23 13:29:56 2023 From: stephen.hocking at gmail.com (Stephen Hocking) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:29:56 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops (was: ARM laptops) In-Reply-To: <3c47f331-4143-43ac-9048-0bced0cb0004@app.fastmail.com> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> <3c47f331-4143-43ac-9048-0bced0cb0004@app.fastmail.com> Message-ID: Laptops running Linux are a bit of a hobby of mine - I enjoy the GPD series a lot, having had the Pocket 2 & 3 and the MiniPC unit, all of which would fit into a pocket, as the name suggests. The Pocket 3 would be the ideal one, if someone had figured out what bits to bang in the return from deep sleep mode, as the display doesn't turn back on. It has some funky add-ons including a HDMI capture card with a USB-C port that allows the unit to act as a kind of KVM to another PC. My daily driver is an Acer Chromebook 514, as it runs the Android apps that control my telescopes (Vespera, Dwarf2 and hopefully soon the SeeStar S50). I use the Linux sub-system a lot on the Chromebooks. I've been amusing myself booting AIX 4.3.3 on a hacked version of QEMU on the chromebook. This would have been seriously useful back when I was working on IRIS at DIAC. On Sat, 21 Oct 2023 at 19:57, Les Kitchen via linux-aus < linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote: > Hi MC! > > On Sat, Oct 21, 2023, at 16:59, Mike Carden via linux-aus wrote: > > > I'm typing this on a circa 2010 Lenovo X201 laptop which I > > bought second hand in late 2012. It has an Intel i5 M 580 (4) > > @ 2.667GHz CPU and 7728MiB of RAM. By modern standards it's a > > tad chunky, but its keyboard is perhaps still the best laptop > > keyboard ever made with proper full-throw keys. > > Your post inspired me to reply on my Lenovo Thinkpad X200 > (around 2008 vintage), though I first read it on my much newer > MNT Reform (see below). > > I bought the X200 off a free-software buddy for $20, then spent > about $200 upgrading to 8G RAM and 500GB SSD and new 9-cell > battery. > > I've had a similar experience: excellent keyboard (having real > PgUp, PgDn, etc., keys is a big win), easily swappable battery, > repairability. A very nice machine for almost all everyday use. > I've even put in an ExpressCard to get USB3, though that works > only a fresh boot, and seems not to wake up properly after > hibernation, and I haven't had time to fix that. > > I guess the overall comment is that one route for getting a > cheap laptop is to buy an old machine second-hand, and upgrade > the hardware as needed ? if the design allows it, which is sadly > not true of most new laptops. Russell's suggestion serves well > if you particularly need to work on ARM or even a particular SoC > like the RK3399 (Pinebook Pro) or RK3399S (PinePhone Pro). > > In daily use I mainly cycle through four laptops: the > abovementioned Thinkpad X200; a 2007-vintage "Santa Rosa" > Macbook (black polycarbonate, hand-me-down from my son) > similarly upgraded; newer a Pinebook Pro (with 1TB NVMe > upgrade); and newest an MNT Reform (a very nice machine, with > very good keyboard and built-in trackball, but a much more > expensive proposition). Running Debian on all but the Pinebook > Pro (Manjaro). The older two machines have only 1280?800 displays, > but that serves well enough for most use. > > Even though it's expensive, the MNT Reform is a very interesting > machine. Besides the keyboard and trackball (and the very solid > construction with repairability in mind), of particular note is > that the CPU and RAM are on a daughterboard, and the machine > runs off a bank of eight standard 18650 LiFePO4 cells, instead > of a bespoke battery. MNT are already selling daughterboards > with faster CPUs and more RAM. Well worth looking into as a > machine with a long life (good for the environment) and with a > commitment to Free Software (good for everything ;-) ). > > If you do want to keep running laptops of the age with easily > removable batteries, then I've found > https//www.betterbatt.com.au/ a very reliable source of > reasonably priced, third-party batteries. No connection with > them aside from being a customer for over eight years. > > And if you do want to keep such old laptops running with > up-to-date software, then pretty much the only option, as most > of you know, is to install some FOSS operating system, because > mainstream vendors drop software support after only a few years. > Such is the way of the world. > > ? Happy Hacking, Les. > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to > linux-aus-unsubscribe at lists.linux.org.au -- "I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return" W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell at coker.com.au Mon Oct 23 21:47:57 2023 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2023 21:47:57 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] ARM laptops In-Reply-To: <9791943b-9902-4404-b217-7675a6fb3cff@app.fastmail.com> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> <9791943b-9902-4404-b217-7675a6fb3cff@app.fastmail.com> Message-ID: <4943921.0VBMTVartN@xev> On Saturday, 21 October 2023 16:30:43 AEDT Les Kitchen via linux-aus wrote: > On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 23:54, Russell Coker via linux-aus wrote: > > I could get some cheap ARM laptops from China if there is interest. $120 > > each for laptops with FullHD screen and the same SoC as the PinePhonePro. > > It should be a quite OK laptop for low end use (web browsing, terminal, > > word processing, etc) and it's also a good development platform for work > > targetting the PinePhone series of devices and similar systems. > > Thanks for posting that. Sorry for being slow responding. > > Do you have any more details about the specs of these devices, > like cores, RAM, storage, ports? And how they sit compared with > the PinePhone Pro phone and the Pinebook Pro laptop (which uses > pretty nearly the same SoC)? Or links to where that information > might be found? I don't know because they aren't designed to be sold outside China and they are only made to be sold as part of a bundled product. Probably very much like the PineBookPro. When I first wrote about this I wasn't aware of Pine64 having a laptop with the same specs as the phone, $300 for a machine guaranteed to work is in some ways a better option than $100 for something with less confidence of it working. Since the time I first wrote about it things changed a bit and the possibilities for getting them cheaply decreased - probably other people did the same as me. So that decreases the value when compared to the PineBookPro. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ From russell at coker.com.au Mon Oct 23 22:18:00 2023 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2023 22:18:00 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops (was: ARM laptops) In-Reply-To: References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> Message-ID: <3516094.V25eIC5XRa@xev> On Saturday, 21 October 2023 16:59:02 AEDT Mike Carden via linux-aus wrote: > I'm typing this on a circa 2010 Lenovo X201 laptop which I bought second > hand in late 2012. It has an Intel i5 M 580 (4) @ 2.667GHz CPU and 7728MiB > of RAM. By modern standards it's a tad chunky, but its keyboard is perhaps > still the best laptop keyboard ever made with proper full-throw keys. I had an X301 I got for free for a while and it was nice. After the battery died on that I moved to the Thinkpad X1 Carbon series as I wanted small and light but decided that if I was going to pay I'd get something a little faster. On eBay you can get Thinkpad X1 Carbon series laptops for under $300 with SSD and good battery (which incidentally you can't easilt replace). The older ones like the X301 and X201 are hardly worth the savings. If you get a new SSD and battery then you are getting into the price range of an X1 Carbon but with a lower resolution screen, less RAM, and slower CPU. On Saturday, 21 October 2023 19:55:24 AEDT Les Kitchen via linux-aus wrote: > Even though it's expensive, the MNT Reform is a very interesting > machine. Besides the keyboard and trackball (and the very solid > construction with repairability in mind), of particular note is > that the CPU and RAM are on a daughterboard, and the machine > runs off a bank of eight standard 18650 LiFePO4 cells, instead > of a bespoke battery. MNT are already selling daughterboards > with faster CPUs and more RAM. Well worth looking into as a > machine with a long life (good for the environment) and with a > commitment to Free Software (good for everything ;-) ). https://mntre.com/index.html The MNT Reform looks nice but starts at E1,199 which is a lot. I've paid more than that for laptops in the past, but now that there are so many cheaper options and so many nice laptops that are hardly used on eBay it's hard to justify. Buying a new laptop for $300 every time an important part breaks is cheaper than E1,199 for something that can be repaired easily. MNT are ARM based laptops which are good for developing portable code, but I think a PineBookPro is better for that as you can run phones in the same way. https://frame.work/au/en The Framework laptops have an interesting design as well, but at around $1,369 (I think Australian dollars) it's cheaper than MNT but still a bit expensive. Also it doesn't have a trackpoint as an option which is a big deal for me. They have Intel and AMD CPUs so seem very similar to regular dekstop/laptop systems which means it's easier to get it working but not as good for portability or power use. On Monday, 23 October 2023 13:29:56 AEDT Stephen Hocking via linux-aus wrote: > My daily driver is an Acer Chromebook 514, as it runs the Android apps that Some of the Chromebooks provide really good value for money on the hardware specs. If there are some that are easy to jailbreak and run Debian on then that might be nice. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ From ljk+la at ljk.id.au Tue Oct 24 12:02:15 2023 From: ljk+la at ljk.id.au (Les Kitchen) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 12:02:15 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] ARM laptops In-Reply-To: <4943921.0VBMTVartN@xev> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> <9791943b-9902-4404-b217-7675a6fb3cff@app.fastmail.com> <4943921.0VBMTVartN@xev> Message-ID: <3d899bbe-0025-49a3-8e56-83638c9ebefa@app.fastmail.com> On Mon, Oct 23, 2023, at 21:47, Russell Coker via linux-aus wrote: > On Saturday, 21 October 2023 16:30:43 AEDT Les Kitchen via linux-aus wrote: >> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 23:54, Russell Coker via linux-aus wrote: >> > I could get some cheap ARM laptops from China if there is interest. $120 ... >> Do you have any more details about the specs of these devices, >> like cores, RAM, storage, ports? And how they sit compared with ... > I don't know because they aren't designed to be sold outside China and they > are only made to be sold as part of a bundled product. Probably very much > like the PineBookPro. When I first wrote about this I wasn't aware of Pine64 > having a laptop with the same specs as the phone, $300 for a machine > guaranteed to work is in some ways a better option than $100 for something > with less confidence of it working. > > Since the time I first wrote about it things changed a bit and the > possibilities for getting them cheaply decreased - probably other people did > the same as me. So that decreases the value when compared to the PineBookPro. Thanks for that, Russell. And thanks for your original post (and the research work behind it). Yeah, the Pinebook Pro is a known quantity, with good community support around it. I'm pretty happy with mine. I also got the NVMe adapter. Installing it is pretty straightforward, though you need to take some care to avoid pinching cables. So now I've got a 1TB Kingston NVMe drive, currently used just for storage. I'm mainly running the stock Manjaro off the internal eMMC card (either out of laziness or lack of time ? take your pick), with occasional adventures into Armbian or some Debian port off the (bootable) micro-SD card. You can set up to boot off eMMC then run off root filesystem on NVMe, but I haven't got around to doing that. (Similar story with my MNT Reform ? see my later post.) One non-obvious plus of the Pinebook Pro is that you can power it through either the barrel connector or USB-C PD through its USB-C port. Good to have both options. For the price, Pine64 don't guarantee a perfect LCD screen. Mine has some ragged black dots along the right-hand side of the top edge. But that's barely noticeable, and otherwise the screen (FHD) is perfect. Aside from the hackability, I guess the Pinebook Pro is much like a Chromebook in hardware ? but with thought for repairability. ? Smiles, Les. From ljk+la at ljk.id.au Tue Oct 24 13:39:10 2023 From: ljk+la at ljk.id.au (Les Kitchen) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 13:39:10 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops (was: ARM laptops) In-Reply-To: <3516094.V25eIC5XRa@xev> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> <3516094.V25eIC5XRa@xev> Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 23, 2023, at 22:18, Russell Coker via linux-aus wrote: > On Saturday, 21 October 2023 16:59:02 AEDT Mike Carden via linux-aus wrote: >> I'm typing this on a circa 2010 Lenovo X201 laptop which I bought second ... > I had an X301 I got for free for a while and it was nice. After the battery > died on that I moved to the Thinkpad X1 Carbon series as I wanted small and > light but decided that if I was going to pay I'd get something a little > faster. > On eBay you can get Thinkpad X1 Carbon series laptops for under $300 with SSD > and good battery (which incidentally you can't easilt replace). The older > ones like the X301 and X201 are hardly worth the savings. If you get a new > SSD and battery then you are getting into the price range of an X1 Carbon but > with a lower resolution screen, less RAM, and slower CPU. ... > The MNT Reform looks nice but starts at E1,199 which is a lot. I've paid more > than that for laptops in the past, but now that there are so many cheaper > options and so many nice laptops that are hardly used on eBay it's hard to > justify. > > Buying a new laptop for $300 every time an important part breaks is cheaper > than E1,199 for something that can be repaired easily. MNT are ARM based > laptops which are good for developing portable code, but I think a PineBookPro > is better for that as you can run phones in the same way. Well, yes, but that's not the whole story. Sure, there's the immediate cost. For the price of one MNT Reform I could buy half-dozen Pinebook Pros. But there's the broader issue of the costs to the environment and to future generations of the mining of raw materials and the manufacturing of new electronic devices. And really, the Pinebook Pro itself shouldn't be the point of comparison, because it is quite repairable and sturdily made (if not as much so as the MNT Reform, and is in a way better value, much as the Pinephone is better value than the Purism Librem-5). The real contrast should be with the many non-repairable mainstream consumer devices. It's one of the failings of capitalism that those costs aren't really accounted for in normal business and commercial operations. A lot of the minerals and resources are likely to be worth much more in the future, and are sold off too cheaply now, IMHO. Same for petroleum and coal, hundreds of millions of years in the making. They'll be worth more in decades to come as chemical feedstocks, and it's a waste just to burn them for energy (even aside from greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming). Part of it is a balancing act between the interests of future generations and the interests of those currently living, with a lot of uncertainties. But too often future interests aren't given enough weight. If you think of it as an optimization search problem, the unruly processes of capitalism are probably pretty good at finding local optima, but can get stuck in a local optimum that is far from any more global optimum, and need some external push to get out, I guess by governments. If I spend some money and effort to upgrade an old machine, or pay (possibly a lot more) to get a machine that's repairable and will have a long life, then that's at least showing that such things are possible. Voting with my wallet as I can afford it. This is somewhat separate from the matter of user control (not corporate control) by running Free Software, but it is all intertwined. And at a more mundane level, if I have a machine that I know works well, then I'll feel more comfortable replacing a failed component, or upgrading, then taking the risk of buying a whole new machine, which might be a lemon. Even if it fails within the warranty period, it's still a hassle, and after that you're on your own. It depends on what your use is, but short of demanding things like high-end gaming and bioinformatics, etc., fairly modest computing machinery can handle well enough what most people do. And given human visual acuity at usual viewing geometry, there's little or no benefit from going beyond FHD screen resolution. I might be wrong, but I feel that we've reached something of a plateau in real everyday computing requirements, and will likely be there for a while. A fair bit of my laptop use is essentially as an X-terminal (via VNC) to my main home server. For that, not so much is demanded of the laptop itself. As they used to say in church (and may well still do, for all I know): Here endeth the sermon. :-) Thank you for your patience... > https://frame.work/au/en > > The Framework laptops have an interesting design as well, but at around $1,369 > (I think Australian dollars) it's cheaper than MNT but still a bit expensive. ... Yeah, thanks for the reminder of that. I'd looked at the Framework machines a few years ago, and thought they looked very interesting at the time, but had forgotten about them. Yeah, that is their AU website, so I guess the prices are in AUD, which would make them cheaper than the MNT Reform. ? Smiles, Les. P.S. > My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ > My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ I really should read your blog more often. Thanks for putting it up. From russell at coker.com.au Tue Oct 24 19:52:31 2023 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 19:52:31 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] RISC-V Message-ID: <2939797.VdNmn5OnKV@cupcakke> RISC-V is the newest CPU architecture and as it's available for free while the ARM company has a market cap of over $50 billion at the moment presumably because they are expected to get something in excess of $5.5 billion a year in ARM license fees. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/risc-v-laptop-looks-like-thinkpad I think that RISC-V is a platform that can be fun to develop on, educational, and good for the community. The above article about a $299 RISC-V mini laptop is interesting, it's not my favourite form factor but some people really like it and 16G of RAM is impressive. https://sipeed.com/licheepi4a The above page from the licheepi manufacturer gives specs of the LicheePi (like Raspberry Pi), LicheeCluster, LicheePad, and LicheeConsole (the mini laptop). The mini laptop has nice motherboard specs including WiFi6, BT5.4, and 16G of DDR4 RAM. It also strangely is advertised as running VS Code, MS doesn't mention support for RISC-V in VS Code so I wonder if that is under emulation. It is let down by having a 1280*800 screen (lower than all desirable phones). The tablet has a 1920*1200 screen and 16G of RAM which is unusually large for a tablet and has connectivity options that match what you expect from a laptop not a tablet. It's 1cm thick which is unusual for a tablet, but other than that it's specs compete well with regular Android tablets. https://pine64.com/product/pinetab-v-10-1-8gb-128gb-risc-v-based-linux-tablet-with-detached-backlit-keyboard/ Pine64 also has a RISC-V laptop for $209US but it has only a 1280*800 display. https://linux.org.au/grants-program/ I think it would be good if we could get a group of people who are interested in doing FOSS development on the RISC-V platform and apply for a LA grant to buy a collection of hardware. The grants program is open until the end of November so if we could get a group of 5+ people who are interested in developing it then I think we could make some good progress. Yifei I would appreciate some input from you on the sipheed stuff because most of the web site appears to be in Chinese and I couldn't even find prices. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ From euan at dekock.net Tue Oct 24 20:18:38 2023 From: euan at dekock.net (Euan de Kock) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:18:38 +0800 Subject: [Linux-aus] RISC-V In-Reply-To: <2939797.VdNmn5OnKV@cupcakke> References: <2939797.VdNmn5OnKV@cupcakke> Message-ID: Hi Russel, Another very interesting RISC-V company is the Milk-V company: https://milkv.io they have range of boards from the Milk-V Duo which is a US$ 9.00 board capable of running a basic Linux kernel with good video support, right up to the Milk-V Pioneer - a 64 core 2Ghz server class board (Mini-ATX). Some of their kit is still under development, but it's getting pretty exciting in the RISC-V space. A lot of the newer ESP-32 microcontrollers like the C2 are also based on RISC-V which gives it a lot of groundswell in embedded devices. Regards, Euan. On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 4:52?PM Russell Coker via linux-aus < linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote: > RISC-V is the newest CPU architecture and as it's available for free while > the > ARM company has a market cap of over $50 billion at the moment presumably > because they are expected to get something in excess of $5.5 billion a > year in > ARM license fees. > > https://www.tomshardware.com/news/risc-v-laptop-looks-like-thinkpad > > I think that RISC-V is a platform that can be fun to develop on, > educational, > and good for the community. The above article about a $299 RISC-V mini > laptop > is interesting, it's not my favourite form factor but some people really > like > it and 16G of RAM is impressive. > > https://sipeed.com/licheepi4a > > The above page from the licheepi manufacturer gives specs of the LicheePi > (like Raspberry Pi), LicheeCluster, LicheePad, and LicheeConsole (the mini > laptop). > > The mini laptop has nice motherboard specs including WiFi6, BT5.4, and 16G > of > DDR4 RAM. It also strangely is advertised as running VS Code, MS doesn't > mention support for RISC-V in VS Code so I wonder if that is under > emulation. > It is let down by having a 1280*800 screen (lower than all desirable > phones). > > The tablet has a 1920*1200 screen and 16G of RAM which is unusually large > for > a tablet and has connectivity options that match what you expect from a > laptop > not a tablet. It's 1cm thick which is unusual for a tablet, but other > than > that it's specs compete well with regular Android tablets. > > > https://pine64.com/product/pinetab-v-10-1-8gb-128gb-risc-v-based-linux-tablet-with-detached-backlit-keyboard/ > > Pine64 also has a RISC-V laptop for $209US but it has only a 1280*800 > display. > > https://linux.org.au/grants-program/ > > I think it would be good if we could get a group of people who are > interested > in doing FOSS development on the RISC-V platform and apply for a LA grant > to > buy a collection of hardware. The grants program is open until the end of > November so if we could get a group of 5+ people who are interested in > developing it then I think we could make some good progress. > > Yifei I would appreciate some input from you on the sipheed stuff because > most > of the web site appears to be in Chinese and I couldn't even find prices. > > -- > My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ > My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to > linux-aus-unsubscribe at lists.linux.org.au > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell at coker.com.au Wed Oct 25 22:07:59 2023 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 22:07:59 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops (was: ARM laptops) In-Reply-To: References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> <3516094.V25eIC5XRa@xev> Message-ID: <2005626.PIDvDuAF1L@xev> On Tuesday, 24 October 2023 13:39:10 AEDT Les Kitchen via linux-aus wrote: > > Buying a new laptop for $300 every time an important part breaks is > > cheaper > > than E1,199 for something that can be repaired easily. MNT are ARM based > > laptops which are good for developing portable code, but I think a > > PineBookPro is better for that as you can run phones in the same way. > > Well, yes, but that's not the whole story. Sure, there's the > immediate cost. For the price of one MNT Reform I could buy > half-dozen Pinebook Pros. But there's the broader issue of the > costs to the environment and to future generations of the mining of > raw materials and the manufacturing of new electronic devices. Ideally the costs to the environment would be in line with the cost to purchase. I know that isn't the case, but with some suitable taxes it could be. > A lot of the minerals and resources are likely to be worth much > more in the future, and are sold off too cheaply now, IMHO. > Same for petroleum and coal, hundreds of millions of years in > the making. They'll be worth more in decades to come as > chemical feedstocks, and it's a waste just to burn them for > energy (even aside from greenhouse-gas emissions and global > warming). As a general rule you can make anything chemically if you have enough energy. There is algae to make bio-Diesel, electrolysis making hydrogen and then the haber process to make ammonia (for fuel cells and for other reactions), long chain hydrocarbons can be cracked and short chains can be joined to make any length you like. Not as cheap and easy as just mining coal and petrochemicals but not impossible. > If you think of it as an optimization search problem, the unruly > processes of capitalism are probably pretty good at finding > local optima, but can get stuck in a local optimum that is far > from any more global optimum, and need some external push to get > out, I guess by governments. One problem we have is late stage capitalism where rich people and corporations don't seek local optimums they seek changes to laws to give them money. > If I spend some money and effort to upgrade an old machine, or > pay (possibly a lot more) to get a machine that's repairable and > will have a long life, then that's at least showing that such > things are possible. Voting with my wallet as I can afford it. Another option is to buy second hand. Windows users generally aren't interested in systems with 8G of RAM but they run Linux nicely. > It depends on what your use is, but short of demanding things > like high-end gaming and bioinformatics, etc., fairly modest > computing machinery can handle well enough what most people do. Yes and ebay has a lot of it going cheap. > And given human visual acuity at usual viewing geometry, there's > little or no benefit from going beyond FHD screen resolution. I I think that perhaps the limit is the DPI that phones are at. Which would mean that a 13" laptop could usefully have a 4K screen - as some of the Thinkpad X1 Carbon series do. > might be wrong, but I feel that we've reached something of a > plateau in real everyday computing requirements, and will likely > be there for a while. A fair bit of my laptop use is > essentially as an X-terminal (via VNC) to my main home server. > For that, not so much is demanded of the laptop itself. Yes, for most of what I do (apart from Chrome and compiles) a PinePhonePro is almost at the level of satisfying all my needs. > > My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ > > My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ > > I really should read your blog more often. Thanks for putting > it up. https://planet.luv.asn.au/ I'm running the latest iteration of Planet Linux Australia. There don't seem to be a lot of posts, so it would be good if more people started blogging and sent me their feed URLs. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ From info at petermoulding.com Thu Oct 26 09:24:09 2023 From: info at petermoulding.com (Info) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 09:24:09 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops In-Reply-To: <2005626.PIDvDuAF1L@xev> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> <3516094.V25eIC5XRa@xev> <2005626.PIDvDuAF1L@xev> Message-ID: <65909a59-2292-4029-8655-0ddc78e0fd3d@petermoulding.com> On 25/10/23 22:07, Russell Coker via linux-aus wrote: > Another option is to buy second hand. Windows users generally aren't > interested in systems with 8G of RAM but they run Linux nicely. A read of popular Linux forums shows lots of converts to Linux because their machines could not run Windows 10. The same is happening with Windows 11. Those old machines usually need only an old rotating rust disk replaced with SSD, a much lower hit on the environment when compared to replacing the whole machine. And there are the thousands of corporate machines replaced to accommodate Windows. Some have the disk removed and are sold ready for the SSD and Linux. Many go into a shredder for recovery of the copper. :( I used to buy a new router almost every year to get a new feature or because the plastic devices break. Now I use a Raspberry Pi as I can simply upgrade the software or replace a wireless component with the latest chip/antenna. The bulk of the hardware will remain the same forever. From paul at clyne.com.au Sat Oct 28 10:45:19 2023 From: paul at clyne.com.au (Paul Clyne) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2023 10:45:19 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Acer Inconia W501 Tablet Message-ID: I have an Acer iconia W501 tablet (currently running Debian bookworm - slowly) that I do not have a need for. Perhaps you have a burning passion for underpowered hardware or have something that this would be perfect for. If you would like it, then drop me a line (I'll ask you to either collect from Maitland NSW or pay postage) You do not get the charger (as I got it without one and have been using my universal charger whilst playing...) Cheers Paul From russell at coker.com.au Sun Oct 29 18:58:26 2023 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2023 18:58:26 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Inexpensive laptops In-Reply-To: <65909a59-2292-4029-8655-0ddc78e0fd3d@petermoulding.com> References: <2172393.Mh6RI2rZIc@xev> <2005626.PIDvDuAF1L@xev> <65909a59-2292-4029-8655-0ddc78e0fd3d@petermoulding.com> Message-ID: <5967587.alqRGMn8q6@xev> On Thursday, 26 October 2023 09:24:09 AEDT Info via linux-aus wrote: > A read of popular Linux forums shows lots of converts to Linux because their > machines could not run Windows 10. The same is happening with Windows 11. > Those old machines usually need only an old rotating rust disk replaced > with SSD, a much lower hit on the environment when compared to replacing > the whole machine. Windows 11 mostly requires secure boot to be enabled, I say mostly because it is possible to run without but that's beyond the ability of most users. That makes a huge range of early DDR4 systems incompatible with Windows 11. > And there are the thousands of corporate machines replaced to accommodate > Windows. Some have the disk removed and are sold ready for the SSD and > Linux. Many go into a shredder for recovery of the copper. :( The company I work for has 4 year support contracts with Dell after which the hardware is a candidate for replacement. So Windows compatibility wasn't really an issue as most such hardware had already been replaced. Of course replacing hundreds of systems just because they are 4yo is even worse than replacing ones that don't support the latest version of Windows. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/