[Linux-aus] ARM laptops

[Les Kitchen]

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.