[HN Gopher] Acer Aspire 1 ARM Laptop Has Nearly Complete Upstrea...
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Acer Aspire 1 ARM Laptop Has Nearly Complete Upstream Linux Support
Author : rbanffy
Score : 203 points
Date : 2023-12-21 12:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.phoronix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.phoronix.com)
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| 4x A710 and 4x A510 cores. There's been Axx5 variants of both
| since but still a fairly compelling offering. $200 is a lot more
| than an rpi5, but a much more modern set of cores and it's a full
| computer (screen, keyboard, case).
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| 4GB memory sucks tho.
|
| Various RK3588 boards out there now have pretty good
| performance (better than RPi5), great I/O support, and up to
| 32GB RAM (good luck getting the 32GB tho). Orange Pi 5 Pro is
| one but the one I ordered is this:
|
| https://www.youyeetoo.com/products/friendlyelec-cm3588
|
| RK3588 + a carrier board with 4 x M.2 slots and 2.5Gb Ethernet.
|
| Just wish they'd made it in a mini-ITX form factor instead of
| their bespoke thing.
| NewJazz wrote:
| OK but you're not going to get graphics on an rk3588 with
| mainline kernel and mesa.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Actually it seems that an open-source driver for the GPU of
| RK3588 will be soon available:
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/news/Panthor-DRM-Newer-Mali
|
| Until then, the binary libraries provided by Arm can be
| used.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Agreed that the ram size is problematic. If there was a gen 3
| m.2 slot I'd probably be ok living off zram. But this just
| seems too confined to be useful, in spite of having cores
| that should be better.
|
| I also looked around & it seems like an Intel n6000 just
| wallops it in most benchmarks. Disappointing.
| nottorp wrote:
| > a carrier board with 4 x M.2 slots and 2.5Gb Ethernet.
|
| Does it have pcie? Or those hang off usb?
| rjsw wrote:
| The RK3588 does have PCIe.
| adrian_b wrote:
| RK3588 has 4 lanes of PCIe 3 and a variable number of PCIe
| 2 lanes (variable because they share pins with other
| interfaces).
|
| Most boards with RK3588 use the 4 PCIe 3 lanes for an SSD
| M.2 socket.
|
| A carrier for 4 SSDs could use a more expensive PCIe switch
| for high performance, or it could split the 4 lanes to the
| sockets for low cost.
|
| The main competitor of RK3588, Intel N100, is claimed to
| have up to 9 PCIe 3 lanes.
|
| Nevertheless, I believe that they must share pins with
| other interfaces, because all the computers that I have
| seen with Intel Alder Lake N are starved for PCIe lanes and
| in none of them the M.2 socket uses 4 lanes, but usually
| only 2, or even only 1, so their SSDs have reduced speed,
| lower than in most RK3588 computers (but the N100 Gracemont
| cores are significantly faster than the Cortex-A76 cores of
| RK3588).
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah the board I ordered just splits them to 4 M.2
| sockets.
|
| My intent is to fill them with SSDs and use it as a NAS &
| Plex server. Or at least trial that and see how it goes.
|
| Right now I'm using an old (2011) Mac Mini for this, and
| it's fine, but just one SSD drive, and I'm guessing the
| power consumption on this will be lower.
| nottorp wrote:
| Oh... luxury!
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| They are nice. Like a small PC. There's even a company
| making an (overpriced) mini-ITX compatible PC style
| motherboard with it.
|
| They even have an onboard neural network accelerator.
| Though I perused the "documentation" for it and the SDK
| and I can't see how a person who doesn't read Chinese
| could make use of it.
|
| If you look at people's Geekbench scores, they're
| actually really promising:
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%9
| 3&q...
|
| In multicore performance it's almost as fast as my AMD
| Ryzen 7 PRO 6850H based Thinkpad.
|
| Waaaay faster than an RPi5.
| nottorp wrote:
| I dont think they need to win in benchmarks to be usable.
| As long as the storage breaks the spi shackles and gets
| at least one.lousy.pice.lane.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Depends on your intended use. I'm evaluating for use as
| home lab servers. I'll try this one for NAS/Plex, and if
| it works well I will buy another to use as an (external)
| server. For that purpose, multicore CPU performance (and
| I/O) really matters.
|
| For typical things that people use Raspberry Pis for
| (turning blinking lights on and off with GPIO or
| whatever), yeah, not as relevant.
|
| Just have to figure out an enclosure for it. It'd be
| amazing to put a few of these in a 19" rackmount case.
| I'd try Eurorack but it sounds like the carrier board
| width is 116mm, which is too wide for the 100mm height of
| a Eurorack card.
| nottorp wrote:
| I have a cool and quiet fetish. I'm extatic that my M2
| Mac mini only uses at most 30 W and I've limited my x86
| box in the bios to use at most 65 W.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The M series CPUs are really a technological marvel. I
| had an M1 MBP for work for a job I had for a bit and it
| was amazing.
|
| It's really a shame that workstation-class ARM systems
| (or RISC-V, whatever) remain unavailable outside of the
| MacOS ecosystem.
| Zuiii wrote:
| The Acer Aspire 1 is getting really old at this point. Are there
| any modern ARM (or even RISCV!) laptops that are usable out-of-
| the-box with upstream Linux kernels/distributions?
|
| (My laptop is dying and I need a new quality laptop that has good
| Linux support and battery-life.)
| pa7ch wrote:
| M2 and M1 chips are pretty well supported by Asahi/Fedora linux
| now.
| nextos wrote:
| Sadly support is fairly good but IMHO not there yet for a
| daily driver: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support.
| Microphone and external displays are not working. Plus, you
| rely on macOS for firmware updates.
|
| An AMD ThinkPad has nearly the same performance, and much
| better software support thanks to x86_64. The compromise is
| decent but not great battery range (7-10 hours), mostly
| because of an older fabrication process.
|
| With that said, I prefer the quality of MacBooks and Apple
| customer service here in EU is miles ahead of Lenovo
| (outsourced, crazy prices). So a viable alternative would be
| awesome. Some Intel MacBook Airs used to be fantastic Linux
| devices.
| hedora wrote:
| Note that HDMI out supposedly works on the pro, so the
| missing functionality is just the microphone, touchid, and
| thunderbolt/usb4. (Unless you have a usb3 display or really
| like dongles).
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am happy to dock my laptop to one usb-c dock and not
| have to deal with hdmi, mouse, keyboard and jack output
| every time I come to my office.
|
| For most users Linux Asahi is only usable as a daily
| driver in non pros contexts on Mac Laptop and you'd be
| better of dedicating a computer (a mac mini?) for the
| office.
| caskstrength wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "pretty well" even though I applaud Asahi
| team for their efforts.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > The Acer Aspire 1 (A114-61) is an aging ARM laptop design
| built on the Snapdragon 7c Gen1.
|
| Agreed: it's old. But from inside Qualcomm, I can report that
| there's a clear change in priorities. Upstream was important
| before but now it's absolutely paramount. This message is
| unambiguous, from the CEO. I saw that Snapdragon 8 Gen3 (a
| phone -- not laptop -- SoC) got patches posted relatively close
| to its introduction. Given that, I hope that we'll see the same
| thing for Snapdragon X Elite.
|
| I don't have any access to the kernel team's plans so I have no
| idea what their schedule is like.
| greesil wrote:
| That's super awesome to hear. I am continuously surprised by
| how long it takes companies to pivot to compete effectively
| with Apple. The M1 came out in 2020? ARM support is part of
| the puzzle but the architecture lags so badly. And it's not
| just Qualcomm. Intel, Samsung, Google, Marvel, you get the
| picture.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Interestingly, Qualcomm was shipping its ARM-based/Windows
| laptop chips prior to Apple's intro of the M1 Macbook. But
| they have failed to make a dent in the market. I think
| having something that amounts to ~parity in performance is
| not good enough to help lure customers to a new ISA. Like
| the M1, you have to give customers a really great story
| about switching.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| ARM devices running Windows didn't even focus on or reach
| performance parity before; it was mostly a winning-on-
| price strategy (but the savings were not quite worth it).
| greesil wrote:
| These companies think in terms of evolution and BOM cost,
| not revolution.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Apple is pretty unique there, right? They are the only
| ones selling macOS devices, so if you want macOS, you are
| eventually going to go to M-series. And they have enough
| control over the stack that, when they say it'll go
| smoothly compatibility-wise, most people treat that as at
| least... plausible, for most use cases.
| kube-system wrote:
| Not only does Apple move their existing users to the new
| chip eventually, but M series launches have usually
| resulted in upticks in market share.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I think having something that amounts to ~parity in
| performance is not good enough to help lure customers to
| a new ISA.
|
| Most people use computers to Get Stuff Done(tm).
|
| Windows RT can't run Win32 and ARM can't run x86, at
| least not without significant caveats; people can't use
| Windows computers like that to Get Stuff Done(tm).
|
| M* Apple on the other hand can run most x86 era MacOS
| software; people who were using Intel Macs to Get Stuff
| Done(tm) can use newer M* Apple Macs to Get Stuff
| Done(tm).
|
| Computers are tools, their sole purpose is to enable
| their users to Get Stuff Done(tm). It is the natural
| order of the universe that Windows ARM computers, unable
| to Get Stuff Done(tm), completely and properly failed to
| capture market share.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| I thought that info is outdated by multiple years?
| Windows on ARM can run x86 (since windows 10) and also
| x64 (since windows 11) just fine. The problem is that the
| devices you can buy are somewhat underpowered for the
| price, e.g. a surface pro with ARM is more expensive and
| less performant than the intel-based one (and they still
| don't offer an amd-based one)
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-
| arm-x8...
|
| > M* Apple on the other hand can run most x86 era MacOS
| software;
|
| Except for dropping 32bit libraries and all that?
|
| > people who were using Intel Macs to Get Stuff Done(tm)
| can use newer M* Apple Macs to Get Stuff Done(tm).
|
| Nope. Quite a few of those people needed bootcamp to get
| some software to run. Bootcamp is dead now and you are
| encouraged to run virtualized windows on arm; does
| x86/x64 emulation work properly inside such a VM?
| nottorp wrote:
| Rosetta has nothing to do with VMs. You run win 11 arm in
| an arm VM and it's the windows 11 inside that has its own
| x86 emulation :)
|
| Not that that helps in making everything work, but I just
| had to correct who's emulating what.
|
| > Except for dropping 32bit libraries and all that?
|
| 32 bit libraries were dropped by Apple years ago when
| they were still all x86. Still an ass move, but again had
| to correct.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > You run win 11 arm in an arm VM and it's the windows 11
| inside that has its own x86 emulation :)
|
| That was the question. For instance, as far as I
| understand WSL generally does not work inside VMs
| (because WSL2 or 1 or whatever number transparently uses
| another VM itself). So I wasn't sure whether WoW64 does
| work inside VMs, glad to hear it does.
|
| The claim was that you have great backward compatibility
| due to Rosetta ... except that due to 32 bit libraries
| that is not actually as useful as claimed. Not sure what
| your correction is?
| nottorp wrote:
| > except that due to 32 bit libraries that is not
| actually as useful as claimed. Not sure what your
| correction is?
|
| 32 bit apps were dropped in Mac OS Catalina in 2019,
| before the M1 was even hinted at. You had an x86 only Mac
| OS with no 32 bit support already.
|
| Also 32 bit apps were marked as deprecated in High
| Sierra, some time in 2018.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Is that supposed to be a long time? If the claim is that
| you should get a mac for superior backward compatibility,
| then 5 years sounds very short.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| I cannot say for windows, but apple provides rosetta 2
| for linux, to be run in a vm [1].
|
| However, some would argue that if you need windows
| software, then you should not buy a mac in the first
| place. And I would argue it's microsoft's job to get
| windows running on M*, not apple's.
|
| 1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualizati
| on/run...
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Except for dropping 32bit libraries and all that?
|
| That has got nothing to do with ARM. Apple decided to
| drop support for 32 bit apps several years before they
| introduced M1.
|
| You still can emulate it.
| bpye wrote:
| > Windows RT can't run Win32 and ARM can't run x86, at
| least not without significant caveats; people can't use
| Windows computers like that to Get Stuff Done(tm).
|
| Whilst what you say is true for Windows RT, Windows 11 on
| ARM64 absolutely can run x86 and x64 software [0]. Kernel
| mode software needs to be built for ARM64 but most user
| mode software should just work.
|
| For what it's worth x86 emulation predates Apple's
| Rosetta 2, and x64 emulation was made available at about
| the same time [1].
|
| [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/arm/overview#suppo...
|
| [1] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-
| insider/2020/12/10/introdu...
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Isn't the windows' x86 emulator excruciatingly slow? If
| memory serves, people considered it barely usable. I
| remember videos from the time where even dragging a
| window was something to behold.
|
| This is where apple made it transparent: rosetta 2 is
| completely invisible thanks to the introduction of the
| x86 memory model on M* chips that all other Arm socs
| lack, and that rosetta 2 leverages.
| smw wrote:
| It's pretty reasonable if you run windows in a vm on
| apple silicon! (This probably doesn't help)
| circuit10 wrote:
| I'm not sure how accurate it is but according to this
| video they're pretty close nowadays: https://youtu.be/uY-
| tMBk9Vx4
| solarkraft wrote:
| You may say that and it may be true now, but on launch
| there were issues and those are enough to hurt confidence
| that things will work (hence no buy). Microsoft loves
| messing up launches, Apple absolutely nailed theirs.
| nottorp wrote:
| > The M1 came out in 2020?
|
| ... but i bet it had been in development for 5+ years
| before that. Not to mention it's an iteration of the
| earlier Apple phone chips.
|
| > ARM support is part of the puzzle but the architecture
| lags so badly.
|
| One thing to note about this laptop is the storage is eMMC.
| Even whatever's in the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi
| only has one pcie lane, and they didn't bother including a
| M.2 nvme slot for storage?
|
| They're all still in the phone with crap storage mindset.
| It's not so relevant how fast your CPU is (and it's
| probably reasonably fast) if the software runs off storage
| that's slower and has more latency than sata...
| nextos wrote:
| Do you know the exact model that is supported? Acer Aspire 1
| A114-61-S94P (Acer P/N: NX.A4DEB.002) currently retails for
| EUR250, and it looks like a great device for many usecases.
|
| But it has 8 GB RAM / 128 GB eMMC. Other posts suggest the
| first generation (4 GB / 64 GB) is the only one that is
| supported. For instance, https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/A
| cer_Aspire_1_A114-61_(ac...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| How's the emulation layer like ?
|
| I tired running Steam on ARM Linux with Box64, I have
| nightmares from the experience.
| whoIsYou wrote:
| That could be a total gamechanger. With their new ARM chip's
| performance, if they are really prioritizing upstream
| contributions I could absolutely see a world where my next
| laptop is has a qualcom chip and runs linux. I have generally
| viewed Qualcomm as little more than pattent trolls for...
| pretty much the entire time I have been aware of their
| existence. It seems like they are intent on changing that and
| I hope they do!
| solarkraft wrote:
| That's quite surprising to me because I remember the pain of
| building / updating Android distributions, often held back by
| old kernels. Qualcomm did have their own relatively well
| available kernel version, but it still significantly differed
| from mainline.
| rsolva wrote:
| Would this make running linux on mobile phones, old and new,
| more realistic in the not-to-distant future?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I'm not seeing Qualcomm upstream support for their old
| phone/tablet SoC's to the kernel mainline, that work is
| still being done by the pmOS folks and other community
| members. New phones will probably benefit more.
| hedora wrote:
| The pinebook pro comes close, but I can't get over the speaker
| whine and poor suspend life. Also, I think the aspire one might
| have higher specs.
| whatevaa wrote:
| I have physically disconnected speakers in my pinebook, it's
| that bad.
| snvzz wrote:
| Pinetab-V
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd describe the pinetab 2 or V as "usable out-
| of-the-box" yet
| snvzz wrote:
| JH7110 has the best upstream support among Linux capable
| RISC-V SoCs.
|
| Any PineTab-V specific hardware, however, might add extra
| complication.
|
| Out of the box is just not a thing yet.
| amatecha wrote:
| MNT Reform? Pretty sure it runs regular ol' Debian. Bonus:
| completely open-source hardware.
| https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform
| bpye wrote:
| I really want to like the MNT Reform and especially the MNT
| Pocket Reform - but it's really hard to justify such a big
| perf delta with my M1 MBP.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| With it being modular there's always the potential for CPU
| upgrades in the future. But yes, it's much less performant
| than a modern x86 or Apple Silicon device. Performance
| isn't the primary goal, though admittedly it would be nice.
|
| This will of course never happen but imagine if there were
| an M1 CPU module for it.
|
| Qualcomm is maybe more realistic but from what I've heard
| it seems like they won't even talk to you if you're not
| ordering in huge quantities.
| vilunov wrote:
| Unless they become bankrupt and no new modules will be
| released. It's hard to place faith in the future of a
| company like that, especially when I need a powerful CPU
| right now.
| bpye wrote:
| Granted - the hardware is open so it doesn't have to be
| the original manufacturer coming up with new CPU modules.
| vilunov wrote:
| This substitute manufacturer has to be financially
| motivated to do so, i.e. there should be enough potential
| customers
| ThibJP wrote:
| The x13s is "almost" fully upstream, there is a dedicated
| ubuntu kernel/iso for it which only add tweaks for mac address
| and other small issues.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Take your pick:
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:ChromeOS
| onyxringer wrote:
| Honest question. Is this unusual?
| robotnikman wrote:
| Unfortunately yes
| adastra22 wrote:
| For Windows laptops, yes. Lenovo, System76, Framework et al are
| generally well supported out of the box.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Do those have any ARM devices to offer? The question was
| about ARM particularly. Of course Intel runs Linux, apart
| from some peripherals.
|
| (Honest question, have not bought a computer for ages and not
| followed the market)
| mjg59 wrote:
| For ARM laptops intended to run Windows? Yes. Vendors can
| abstract away portions of their hardware design behind a HAL
| module that Windows will use in a way that can't be done on
| x86, and if the vendor doesn't make an effort to get code into
| upstream Linux then it simply won't boot. The ARM world is much
| more loosely defined than the x86 world. The vast majority of
| x86 laptops will largely work with a modern kernel.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Literally everything about this is disappointing. "Almost" full
| support, for an "aging" machine, as long as you "don't need raw
| performance", and "the 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage may be a
| letdown". It's like they wrote an article about my love life.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| It opens up for faster support once there is a new model
| though. So it seems more of a long term good than a short term
| one.
| usr1106 wrote:
| I use a 7 year old 2 GB / 32 GB Intel Atom for random surfing
| and travelling. Running Linux of course. Probably ARM would be
| even better.
|
| It's not fully as snappy as a big machine and you would not be
| able to run a couple of containers / Electron apps / a modern
| IDE on it. But it's fully usable for 99% of users / use cases.
|
| This planet cannot support many GBs for every human. So called
| modern computing is an incredible waste of resources, Android
| being amongst the worst.
|
| Edit: Sorry for claiming 1 GB RAM first. Didn't remember
| correctly, fixed after turning it on and checking.
| jbm wrote:
| > This planet cannot support many GBs for every human
|
| Interesting perspective, do you have evidence to support
| this?
|
| Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer
| ones, I don't see how this is a real thing.
| usr1106 wrote:
| No exact calculation about GBs, just a general gut feeling
| that current resource consumption in the industrialized
| world is completely unsustainable. With smarter usage only
| a fraction of resources is needed for still decent user
| experience.
| amatecha wrote:
| In terms of reduction of usage of resources, using an
| already-existing computer is considered better than
| manufacturing new hardware. OECD suggests[0] embracing a
| circular economy to reduce production of waste and
| consumption of resources. Notably, in the province I
| reside, 98% of electricity is provided by renewable
| resources[1]. The electrical grid is already there, and the
| computer I already have is also already there. Generally
| speaking, no more resource extraction or pollution of the
| planet is necessary for me to continue on my computing
| activities with my existing hardware.
|
| All I have time to write right now, but check out the
| concept of permacomputing and frugal computing... [2][3]
|
| [0]
| https://www.oecd.org/environment/waste/OECD-G20-Towards-a-
| mo... (p.24)
|
| [1] https://choose.bchydro.com/why-choose-bc/clean-energy
|
| [2] http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html /
| https://permacomputing.net
|
| [3] https://limited.systems/articles/frugal-computing/
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Circular can also mean recycling and resource recovery.
| That's what makes it a circle (-: But it's nice that you
| live near hydro, and you don't need a more powerful
| computer.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >Circular can also mean recycling and resource recovery.
|
| In theory it can, in practice todays computers will be
| unrecyclable e-waste.
| usr1106 wrote:
| > Older computers almost always use more electricity than
| newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing.
|
| This computer is not on 24/7, but only very limited hours.
| So manufacturing a new one would a relatively high share.
|
| Energy is the reason why I wrote ARM would probably be even
| better. But the Atom is pretty good too. The machine is
| fanless and when it was new the battery lasted nearly 7
| hours (not for watching videos of course). Now that it's
| pretty old and still on it's first battery it still lasts
| several hours. Enough to read some news and do some trip
| planning.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Older computers almost always use more electricity than
| newer ones
|
| The differences are marginal; my 7 year old i5 really
| doesn't use that much more power than a modern i5, if it
| even uses more power in the first place (I don't have a
| good way to measure this, and with sleep states and whatnot
| you really need to measure this to be sure).
|
| A few years ago I calculated how much impact it would be if
| everyone would run a 30W server at their home 24/7; I
| originally started doing that because someone said that
| "everyone should just self-host these things at their
| home", and I wanted to demonstrate that this would have a
| horrible environmental impact. And turned out my initial
| thoughts were wrong, and impact was so small that actually,
| it didn't matter, and I didn't even both posting my
| comment.
|
| And even if there would be a difference, energy of
| manufacture tends to outweigh energy usage of usage.
| There's a long chain of mining, transport, etc. etc. behind
| all of that I didn't calculate this, but usually the energy
| differences really do need to be quite substantial to
| justify the energy usage of manufacture.
|
| Maybe I was horribly wrong and made a mistake; I didn't re-
| do the calculations for this comment out of laziness. But I
| do strongly encourage anyone to actually calculate or look
| up what the impact is, because initial "it's bad for the
| environment"-feelings could very well be wrong, and no one
| is served if attention, money, and effort is spent in the
| wrong places.
| znpy wrote:
| > A few years ago I calculated how much impact it would
| be if everyone would run a 30W server at their home 24/7;
| I originally started doing that because someone said that
| "everyone should just self-host these things at their
| home", and I wanted to demonstrate that this would have a
| horrible environmental impact.
|
| This is non-sensical.
|
| Up to ten years ago most lightbulbs consumed 40-60 watts
| EACH and no one bat an eye.
|
| Heck, the cristmas lights on my Christmas tree absorb ~60
| watts with the default pattern (i know because i measured
| it). I had to manually set a light pattern that consumed
| only 20W. And no one is crying about Christmas lighting.
|
| Consuming 30W 24/7 for home is absolutely feasible, all
| modern homes can do that just by replacing a single old
| tungsten-based lightbulb with a led one.
| arp242 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say, or
| even what exactly you're commenting on? It's almost like
| you stopped reading my post half-way through.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >Older computers almost always use more electricity than
| newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing.
|
| The vast majority of energy needed for computers is in the
| manufacturing. As [1] shows, the embodied energy in laptops
| has stayed largely constant over the last decade. The best
| thing you can do for the environment is to keep using an
| old laptop instead of throwing it out and replacing it,
| even if the new laptop draws fewer watts from the wall.
|
| [1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-
| stoppe...
| schemescape wrote:
| Mind sharing more details on your setup? (Distribution,
| window manager, and, most importantly, browser)
|
| I have something similar (but an _even older_ netbook). I 'm
| using Alpine, i3, and mostly w3m (or Midori if JavaScript is
| needed). Given that Windows 10 on the netbook was completely
| unusable, it's impressive how functional it is with Linux.
|
| It cannot handle modern bloat, however. Firefox just eats up
| memory until the machine freezes and I can't run a single
| Electron app for too long. Sadly, those make up far more than
| 1% of my use cases.
|
| Overall, it's nice for distraction-free computing. I learned
| Common Lisp and Emacs exclusively on that little netbook. I
| probably would have gotten distracted by some shiny web page
| partway through if I'd been using my more capable desktop.
|
| Edit to clarify: I'm curious what all you're able to
| accomplish with your similarly spec'd machine.
| usr1106 wrote:
| It's mostly a standard Xubuntu with full disk encryption
| (just in case the machine gets stolen while travelling) i3
| might be even better. I use that at work, but was too lazy
| to configure it on this machine.
|
| I have desnapped it though and download Firefox directly
| from Mozilla. There is no Chromium on it.
|
| Edit: I know that it would choke on opening an ever growing
| number of Firefox tabs. I just close them. And I don't run
| the machine for more than a couple of hours before shutting
| it down. Don't use suspend at all.
|
| Edit2: It uses swap. Don't remember whether that was the
| standard setup or whether I added it myself. Of course you
| cannot rely on swap for responsive operation, but it helps
| parking some unused data because the desktop/distro is not
| optimized at all. And it helps you to get over a tight
| situation when you forget to close something. When it slows
| down it's a nice reminder to do so.
| schemescape wrote:
| Thanks! Good to know that Firefox is working for you,
| even with only 1 GB of memory. I'll need to ponder why my
| experience was so much worse...
|
| Edit to add, in case anyone's curious: suspend works for
| me (but not hibernate).
| usr1106 wrote:
| It works, but do applications just grow their memory
| consumption over time? I woudn't be overly surprised.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Please note that I had to correct the 1GB to 2GB. Sorry
| for giving incorrect data first.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Firefox can indeed work with only 1GB, although so little
| RAM imposes some restrictions on the OS and desktop used.
| Here are two VM examples: Alpine Linux and DietPi, both
| using XFCE as desktop manager, with Firefox plus HN front
| page loaded and one terminal window.
|
| https://ibb.co/4PXrGtF
|
| https://ibb.co/DwcTrQp
| schemescape wrote:
| Is that a setup you use regularly, with other apps? How
| is your swap space configured?
|
| My lived experience on Alpine, with _no_ desktop
| environment on 1 GB is that Firefox needs more memory
| than that. Browsing the super-lightweight HN site is
| probably ok, though!
| squarefoot wrote:
| That one was just a test on a VM.
| anthk wrote:
| Install zram: sudo modprobe zram
| sudo zramctl --find --size 1024M sudo mkswap
| /dev/zram0 sudo swapon /dev/zram0 --priority
| -1
| anthk wrote:
| Setup ZRAM in Alpine and you'll be amazed.
| Narishma wrote:
| I think zswap is better than zram in general.
| anthk wrote:
| Both are almost the same concept, but YMMV on
| performance. ZRAM has an easy setup at least.
| Piraty wrote:
| For travel is use a 10" intel atom + 4G RAM convertible
| tablet with touch screen (Lenovo brand) that runs Void
| Linux + Gnome. If it had 2G of RAM i'd run xfce but that
| would harm the detached-keyboard use-case. Once it's past
| LUKS passphrase prompt in initramfs, i can use it with the
| touch-screen only for simple tasks. It's fine for use with
| a decent amount of tabs in firefox, reading mail in
| thunderbird and writing code in vim if i have to.
| winrid wrote:
| You can also just get a used laptop that's 3-4 years old with
| 8-16gb of ram, and SSD, and some i7 or equivalent CPU for
| $300. They're insanely fast. Used laptops are dirt cheap. You
| can then just sell it after a few years and get another
| 3-year-old used one. Still great use of resources.
| d3w4s9 wrote:
| "insanely fast"
|
| Benchmark please.
|
| You know what? You can get a new laptop with the latest i3
| that is way faster than a 4 year old i7 for a little more
| than that, and it comes with a warranty. Yes, warranty is
| actually useful for many people. And most Windows laptops
| are worth little after 3 years, so this $300 laptop
| probably is only good for donations after a few more years.
|
| (If you have any questions, check out reviews, benchmarks
| and eBay. I speak from my own experience.)
| rjsw wrote:
| A refurbished Lenovo T495 is well within the price stated
| and feels fast enough to me.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| You can use lower grade hardware than that. But how is the
| user experience?
|
| I am used to everything loading in an instant. I rather waste
| money than waste time. Money I can make, time I can't.
| usr1106 wrote:
| It's not about money. It's about using the planet in a
| responsible way. Unfortunately ruining the planet and
| harming many of its inhabitants is very cheap for many in
| industrialized countries.
| d3w4s9 wrote:
| Answer the question, please.
|
| I am never going to waste time on things like compilation
| when the laptop next to it can do it faster, yet convince
| myself "oh but it is better for the planet". I don't know
| what kind of idiot does that.
|
| (Which is why I did not hesitate to replace my laptop
| when I found that a new laptop would be 1.5x-2x faster in
| everyday tasks.)
| Qwertious wrote:
| >You can use lower grade hardware than that. But how is the
| user experience?
|
| It depends on the software. When the developers are
| targeting the "average user", then everyone who uses
| hardware that's significantly older than average will be
| punished accordingly. This doesn't mean it's actually hard
| to support that old hardware, it just means that
| performance isn't a priority.
|
| If everyone used old hardware for longer, then the software
| would support old hardware better.
|
| Also, latency has been going _up_ over time rather than
| down: https://danluu.com/input-lag/
|
| This is more of a social problem than a technical one.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Well, depends on the software _and_ the workload. Some
| things just are not feasible with underpowered hardware,
| no matter how the software is written. Compiling large
| projects, or testing them with VM 's, is the kind of
| thing one might legitimately want to use a high-end
| device for. But if all you do is write office documents,
| or use SSH to connect to some remote hosts, pretty much
| anything will work.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| I invest significant resources in my desktop. But my
| laptops? For the last 5 years or so I've used exclusively
| pre-owned chromebooks, cost about 50 dollars on mercari.
| Flash aftermarket firmware, install linux, and I'm in
| business. Its usually a celeron with 4 gb of ram, although
| my first was 2 gb. They're plenty snappy. Youtube loads
| pretty much instantly. Playing actual real games is
| probably a step too far, but as a second screen to just
| have and use around the house there isn't really any
| compromise.
| walteweiss wrote:
| The very same for me, I have 5 MacBooks collecting dust
| (some are broken, some aren't), but 2GB Samsung 11"
| Chromebook is my favourite. It broke recently.
|
| Any models you would recommend to check? I haven't been
| in look for Chromebooks for years (like 5 years). I would
| rather buy small and tiny, and also very cheap. As my
| use-case is just slacking with it around the house.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| When I need a new one I'm just looking at what's
| available for a decent price (usually local on Mercari,
| sometimes eBay) and then checking the list of supported
| models for the not-ChromeOS firmware at
| https://wiki.mrchromebox.tech/Supported_Devices
|
| If it's supported and I'm comfortable with the method for
| disabling write-protect then I pull the trigger.
|
| I usually install xubuntu, but on a couple models I've
| found Ubuntu/Debian based distros have some issues with
| the trackpad, but Fedora running XFCE works fine, so you
| may want to go straight to that if you're comfortable
| with Red Hat.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > But it's fully usable for 99% of users / use cases
|
| I doubt that's true at all. For starters 2GB ram is unusable
| if you want to have multiple tabs with resource heavy sites
| like YT open
|
| > This planet cannot support many GBs for every human
|
| Why? I'm pretty sure it can
| usr1106 wrote:
| Google is a major lead for destroying the planet.
|
| Ads waste incredible resources at the edge and in the
| cloud. 99% completely useless because people just hate
| them. And the remaining less than 1% even more harmful,
| manipulating people to buy nonsense products nobody needs.
|
| So yes I occasionally watch a Youtube video if it seems
| really useful. But that's not a tab I would keep open a
| second longer than absolutely needed.
| anthk wrote:
| UBlock Origin does magic. Also, Libredirect it's good
| once it's properly setup for some broken redirects.
| anthk wrote:
| 2GB of RAM are perfectly usable with ZRAM and UBlock
| Origin.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I have an aging 1.3GB smartphone running a modern Lineage
| OS, and it does many things surprisingly well - even runs
| a VPN in the background whilst surfing with Mull/Firefox.
|
| One limitation I often encounter is that a site with lots
| of HD XL images, or JS demos with 3D libraries force a
| lot of background apps to be killed.
|
| In most cases this is also fine, but keeping a VPN alive
| whilst browsing media heavy sites is becoming a factor
| that I'm thinking of retiring this beloved phone
| walteweiss wrote:
| What model do you have? It looks old, as just 1.3 Gb (why
| is 1.3, and not 1.5 or 2, weird number), but modern OS. I
| have a Nexus 6P, 3 Gb of ram and is still relatively
| snappy, but stuck on an obsolete OS (Android 8, and
| LineageOS is the same) quite forever.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I was rounding down, it's actually 1.4GB (according to
| 'free -h') but advertised as 1.5GB.
|
| https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_a3_(2016)-7791.php
|
| Currently runs Android 11, but there are Lineage Android
| 12 builds in alpha. I might update if I feel the need.
| dfgfek wrote:
| >This planet cannot support many GBs for every human.
|
| It can and it does.
| GTP wrote:
| The issue is more about people changing their devices too
| often: I remember from years ago (so possibly outdated)
| that the average person changes smartphone every two years
| and laptop every 3/4 years. What OP is saying is that most
| people could totally work with an older laptop that doesn't
| have 16GB+ of RAM. Especially since most people are using
| cloud services anyway.
| throwaway167 wrote:
| I get some Electron hate, but...
|
| my 9 year old laptop, a 2nd gen i5 running, albeit with 4G
| RAM, can handle quite a few Electron apps. At the same time
| as Gnome, Postgres, the Java hunk that is Jabref, some python
| apps, Thunderbird and Firefox. Electron's really the minnow.
| hengheng wrote:
| I don't know, I could say the same about my two-generations-
| old smartphone with a Bluetooth keyboard. Except that it has
| 12 GB / 256 GB.
|
| Works a treat for 99% of users and use cases.
| scythe wrote:
| I think I had one of these. As I recall, it had an SD card
| slot, so I just put a 256 GB SD card in there and used it as
| the main storage. I had some compile-from-source Linux
| distribution on there, or maybe that was my NetBSD experiment.
| It worked okay.
|
| Then the internal WiFi card broke after a year and couldn't be
| replaced. I couldn't be bothered to mess with a USB WiFi -- it
| was supposed to be for convenience! So it went to the thrift
| store after that.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| True. My phone is more powerful than that and it is a shame I
| can't hook an external display to it, a keyboard and a mouse
| and use it as a PC.
|
| Well, I can, but all I get to use are Android apps.
| ponorin wrote:
| You may be lucky and have a phone that's reasonably well
| supported on alternative mobile linux os. postmarketOS has
| the most device support (but their criteria of inclusion is
| very low), UBPorts and Sailfish have some as well.
| geraldhh wrote:
| i share your disappointment
|
| > but all I get to use are Android apps.
|
| given that winxp runs inside most browsers, i'd rekon there
| is some kind of vm technology available to escape the android
| ecosystem.
| pjmlp wrote:
| There are plenty of great Android apps, and with DEX makes a
| more modern OS, it is about time to move beyond POSIX clones.
| yt-anthr-acc-hn wrote:
| > time to move beyond POSIX clones.
|
| Not when android manufacturers/google refuse to give me the
| type of control that open posix systems provide. Android is
| a useless hostle system for people like me (and it's not
| because of improved security).
| pjmlp wrote:
| Open POSIX systems, basically GNU/Linux, aren't going to
| last beyond the lifetime of our generation.
|
| If you feel inclined to mention the BSDs, how are those
| upstream contributions from Apple and Sony going?
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Not when android manufacturers/google refuse to give me
| the type of control that open posix systems provide.
|
| Can you provide an example of how Android does not give
| you the control that you seek, how it is useless, or how
| is it hostile? From my point of view Android is much more
| suited for being an OS targeting consumer usage than a
| POSIX clone. POSIX comes from a world with much different
| requirements that do not work in the modern world.
| graphe wrote:
| Just use Chromecast.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I have a folding bluetooth keyboard that I regularly use with
| my Android phone to write documents using one of the various
| editors.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yeah, when I saw the specs I wondered why you'd prefer this
| over a Chromebook (
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:ChromeOS describes
| devices with caveats, but often acceptable)
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Chromebooks with original chromeOS work awesome under the
| hood, fast startup, no standby/resume glitching, very long
| battery life - but the user facing side of the OS is just
| horrible. And with using stock software, you are very
| limited.
|
| Unless you boot a full linux in a VM, but that comes with a
| worse performance.
|
| In developer mode, it is a perfect travel laptop for me as I
| mostly just need node and chrome dev tools.. but it would be
| nice, to run just any linux software, without using a VM.
| (and without having your OS deep integrated with google)
|
| So I would love to have my chromebook with a true linux - but
| then the glitches will come again in my experience .. even
| the stuff that is marked as "works" often won't work the same
| as with ChromeOS. And I don't feel like picking up that fight
| again.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| Still better than mine
| xxs wrote:
| >the 4GB of RAM letdown... It's like they wrote an article
| about my love life
|
| What would be the 4GB analogy in that case? Stamina before
| swap?
| stavros wrote:
| Never remembers your birthday.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Have you considered replacing the machine with a new and
| improved one every year or two?
|
| Sorry, couldn't resist.
| geraldhh wrote:
| definitely worth considering, thou the replacement usually
| involves trading known, worked-around bugs for unknow and
| unmitigated ones, the fresh theming may make up for the
| inconveniences.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1172/
| CoolCold wrote:
| probably EmacsOS can be run on that laptop. No guarantee
| one will be able to edit files though (but that's the
| same as on other computers and Emacs ) :)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Eventually I gave up, it is Windows with VM, macOS, Android or
| ChromeOS.
|
| My Asus 1215B still has Ubuntu on it, latest LTS, since the
| broadcom driver was replaced, several distributions ago, the
| free alternative never managed to hold a wlan connection stable
| enough for long downloads, I have always to plug into LAN.
|
| Even Crostini running alongside ChromeOS has restrictions
| regarding hardware support.
| madduci wrote:
| The ARM ecosystem is depressing.
|
| Outside some couple of well maintained boards (you know which
| one), the rest is just kept together "working* by using some
| obscure patches around some specific tags or git repositories,
| that meanwhile get deleted or archived. And if you want also
| GPU acceleration, then you might be out of luck in many, many
| cases
|
| I wish the world would keep staying on x86 as much as possible,
| since it's battle-tested and has broader support than ARM.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Many forget x86 is only as it is due to IBM's failure to keep
| it theirs, and Microsoft's hardware requirements for their
| OSes.
| chasil wrote:
| Can you imagine how awful things would be if the 80286 on
| the Microchannel bus had won?
|
| This was the target for IBM OS/2, and they had little
| interest in the flat memory model of the 80386.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Different, awful not really, OS/2 was a great OS, full of
| cool features.
|
| OOP based, SOM, Smalltalk as one of the main application
| languages, CSet++.
| rollcat wrote:
| > The ARM ecosystem is depressing.
|
| My homelab/PC setup is roughly 60% ARM/x86, with ARM powering
| my main rig. I wouldn't care to keep the x86 stuff around,
| except I need to keep building/testing on x86, and most of
| these machines are still far from EOL.
|
| If you'd also consider appliances like Switch or Apple TV,
| then a combined ~99% of my gaming is also on ARM. (Waiting to
| see how Stormgate will fare here.)
|
| > Outside some couple of well maintained boards (you know
| which one) [...]
|
| Vote with your wallet. The Raspberry Pis are back in stock,
| and they're great.
|
| Need more power? The new Macs are absolutely great. I'm
| eyeing Asahi Linux too. It seems it can't do USB-C video yet,
| which is how I've so far avoided having a KVM switch.
|
| > [...] "the 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage may be a letdown"
| [...]
|
| Sounds very decent for something you'd throw in your backpack
| for a quick trip to the server room.
|
| Of course YMMV on each and every use case, 3 years ago I was
| the one throwing rocks at ARM Macs, but we've come a very,
| very long way.
| cstrahan wrote:
| > Need more power? The new Macs are absolutely great. I'm
| eyeing Asahi Linux too. It seems it can't do USB-C video
| yet, which is how I've so far avoided having a KVM switch.
|
| Unless something changed very recently, Asahi can't do
| _any_ external video on the Mac Books (only HDMI on the Mac
| Mini, and maybe not all variants thereof).
|
| External video on Asahi Linux is the only thing keeping me
| from considering a Mac Book Pro purchase. I simply can't
| stomach working without a 27" 4K monitor.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| The x86 ecosystem is just as messy. It's just being kept
| together thanks to decades of work of correcting quirks and
| workarounds for crappy hardware.
| oblio wrote:
| Heh, and they didn't mention the actual battery life.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| For $50, I bought a used Acer Aspire 5 Full HD 1080 laptop (MD
| Ryzen 3 3350U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 2.10 GHz), 4.00 GB
| RAM, 118GB drive with Windows 11 Home. I upgraded it to 17GB
| RAM, 2TB drive with Ubuntu 23.10. Screams past both my Windows
| and MacBook laptops with "superior" credentials (and prices). I
| hardly ever use Windows or macOS any more.
| momentary wrote:
| 17GB of ram - why such a strange amount?
| justinclift wrote:
| Maybe a typo?
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Sorry, you are absolutely correct. I felt it was wrong
| when I typed it - the weird thing is that `free -g`
| returns 17, which is what I checked before typing. But in
| actuality there is 20GiB - bank:0 has 16GiB and bank:1
| has the original 4GiB (confirmed by `sudo lshw -c
| memory`).
| ciupicri wrote:
| How does it behave when you play AV1 videos on YouTube?
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| AV1 is impressive.
| mynameisnoone wrote:
| My PlexAmp RPi has more RAM and storage. Why would anyone buy
| this?
| jpcfl wrote:
| packaging
| yunohn wrote:
| IME most devices end up with only "nearly complete" Linux
| support. I have spent nearly 2 decades using Linux, and it's
| always been this way...
| jtriangle wrote:
| Yeah, not quite sure why this is being lauded as anything but
| pedestrian... I run several very old laptops like 1st gen i3
| old, and they work fine, 0.3mp webcams even work, that's always
| basically been the case as long as your old hardware isn't
| super weird.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| For ARM, nearly complete support is very much not the norm.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| This is talking about ARM devices not x64, so the comparison
| would be an android tablet having "nearly complete" Windows
| support. I am not aware of even one current gen tablet you
| could claim that for, but maybe you know of one?
| yunohn wrote:
| My original comment was more about the fact that Linux
| support for almost everything is always /stuck/ at "nearly
| complete".
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Not really and misunderstanding what is meant for the sake
| of a pun. For the wording used in the article, your case is
| usually stuck at "complete" but very unpolished. E.g. all
| ports, sound, power etc. will work (fingerprint probably
| not), but sound might not be great, sleep might still use
| too much power, mic quality is bad,... (source: also using
| linux for 20 years).
|
| For the remaining polish, that is not surprising. That is
| also usually not the case with windows itself but rather
| additional work by the manufacturer. E.g. a few years ago I
| bought some lenovo laptop without windows. Installed a
| fresh copy of windows and sound, color profiles, mic
| quality etc. are decidedly unpolished out of the box,
| unknown devices in the device manager, ... . Spending some
| time to get all this from lenovo then fixed these issues,
| but again that was not done by windows. So I would also not
| have high expectations of polish for windows on chromebooks
| or "asahi windows".
| yunohn wrote:
| I've always found modern Lenovo laptops to have a proper
| Windows integration - you can install a fresh copy of
| Windows 10/11 and the OS will automatically find and
| install drivers (and even BIOS) updates via the standard
| update mechanism.
|
| In fact, I only recommend/buy Lenovo laptops for family
| members now and reinstall stock Windows for them to
| remove all possible bloatware without losing any hardware
| support.
| heax wrote:
| That is so true. The best supported Linux laptop nowadays is
| the Win11 laptop of your choice with WSL.
| happymellon wrote:
| Blatantly untrue.
|
| All my x86 laptops have worked fine. It's only ARM because
| the hardware is extremely proprietary.
| coffeeaddict1 wrote:
| There are some things that simply do not work under Linux
| because of lack of driver support. An example is
| fingerprint readers. I agree that most x86 laptops are
| usable under Linux.
| happymellon wrote:
| Fingerprint reader works fine on mine. But then I bought
| Lenovo because they support their hardware including
| making drivers for their fingerprint readers.
| coffeeaddict1 wrote:
| It's a hit and miss unfortunately. On my Lenovo Yoga 920,
| it doesn't work for example because there is no driver
| support. Similary on my Acer laptop too.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Honestly, I'm inclined to agree with you. When our employer
| wanted to transition away from Linux desktops (which I'd used
| for 10 years to that point) to Windows Laptops I pushed back
| and got a MacBook Pro. I felt like being unix-y made things
| easier with deep integration of the shell.
|
| However, I recently bought myself a Windows laptop (for games
| and miscellaneous other things). When I've tried doing a bit
| of development on it I've been pleasantly surprised. The WSL2
| integration works well enough that it actually is probably
| easier than my development environment on MacOS where I have
| to worry about lots of subtle differences (and since getting
| it replaced with an M1 MBP due to the battery expanding -
| some not so subtle differences).
| pjmlp wrote:
| Actually since Virtual Box and VMWare got good enough on
| Windows around 2010, but having one less thing to install,
| pay license for, is definitely welcoming.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| What would be the best ARM laptop to buy today? Is there anything
| close to M3 macbook pros?
| DannyBee wrote:
| No. Especially not as we get more of the accelerators working.
|
| I would actually stick with the m2 if you were trying to do it
| today.
|
| I now have the m3 booting Linux (but like USB does not work for
| real yet because apple changed power controllers to spmi based)
| but really good support is probably 6 months out since main
| focus is getting a good m2 release out the door (since that is
| where most users are)
| forinti wrote:
| I feel that selling machines with 4GB nowadays is almost
| criminal. Even 8GB is bad if you can't upgrade.
|
| Anyway, I won't consider Acer because I had a terrible experience
| with my son's laptop, because the hinges are just designed to
| break. To be fair, Acer fixed it even after the warranty had
| expired, but I can't get over how fragile the thing is.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It depends. Win 11 and Mac OS really need more than 8GB for a
| comfortable UX, but if you're running a lightweight Linux
| desktop 4GB is okay for casual browsing, and 8GB lets you do a
| lot of things wrt. useful work. These would've been considered
| very respectable specs a decade ago. Make sure to avoid
| Electron apps and you're good.
| geraldhh wrote:
| i share your optimism towards older hardware, but
|
| > Make sure to avoid Electron apps and you're good.
|
| not practical in a lot of office/productivity scenarios
| worksonmine wrote:
| > not practical in a lot of office/productivity scenarios
|
| Most of them come with a web version, use that, it's what I
| do and never have any problems. And if a company only
| provides an Electron app with no web version the choice of
| Electron makes no sense and their product should be
| considered a toy, not a tool.
| arp242 wrote:
| I ran on a 4G machine until very recently, and from
| experience I know you're right. You can still run "Electron
| apps" by the way, just not 6 of them, and not in combination
| with 28 Firefox tabs and full HD movie in the background. I
| did have some problems at times, but my dev usage isn't
| typical. I currently have 8G and I never have any problems.
|
| But also: these machines don't ship with a Linux desktop,
| lightweight or otherwise. You need to judge these machines
| as-sold, and almost all are sold with Windows as the only
| option, and 4G really does seem so low I would argue it's
| just not fit for purpose as a general purpose device, and
| really shouldn't be sold as such. It's like a car that's
| advertised as a general-purpose car that can only drive
| 80km/h. Is it a perfectly functional car? Sure! But also: not
| really what people expect, and not really fit for purpose.
| It's fine to sell this if people know what they're buying,
| but most people don't really know what they're buying with
| "4G RAM".
|
| Whether that is a sorry state of affairs or not doesn't
| matter, it's the reality of it.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Running linux mint on 4th generation i5 with 4GB RAM worked
| ok but 8GB was really more comfortable (as in never worry
| about RAM no more) and you can easily get some for cheap so
| it's definitely a quick easy win.
|
| But the dramatic speed difference ? HDD to SSD. That one
| upgrade allowed to be a dev on that old machine for three
| more years, until the motherboard died last year, RIP. I
| got almost 10 years out of that hardware with two cheap and
| easy upgrades. Nice.
|
| On the other hand I don't recommend hardware older that
| 2013 as you get in performances that are really not
| comfortable or capped upgrade :
|
| That one Late 2007 Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook was usable but
| Linux was a pain to install on, RAM was capped at 4GB and
| it was not comfortable performance wise. Cheaper hardware
| for the same era is barely usable for casual tasks.
|
| Another thing I didn't mention with the 4th generation i5
| laptop is that the plastics are always the first thing that
| break and it's a bit of a pain to have to replace it
| although it's cheap. Went with Framework 12th generation
| now and I am definitely intending to keep 10 years too. It
| feels much more sturdy, it's very nice. You just need a
| nice physical shell with upgradeable parts imho.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >It's like a car that's advertised as a general-purpose car
| that can only drive 80km/h.
|
| Trying to get the analogy: it can 'only' do 80, or there
| are lower speeds possible and 80 is the max? I wouldn't
| mind a car like that...to and from work at the moment the
| most i need is about 45 tops.
| d3w4s9 wrote:
| "casual browsing"
|
| A random person on the street probably has a dozen tabs on
| their home laptop with two Youtube videos open.
| pjmlp wrote:
| XUbuntu as well.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| sorry to hear about that, i've been using an acer aspire v
| nitro as a workhorse for the last ~8 years and this thing is
| unstoppable
| cassepipe wrote:
| I feel you. On all my older laptops, the physical shell (around
| hinges specifically) is always what has died first.
|
| Decided I would only go with a metal case after my old laptop's
| mobo died. Hesitated between a M1 and Framework but went with
| the Framework. It's sturdy and contrary to the M1, I'll be able
| to upgrade it (I could already if I wanted to actually). Maybe
| not the best performance per buck on the market but hey it's
| plenty enough, even for a dev, even for some gaming.
| jjice wrote:
| I love my Framework 13. I've never had a non-work laptop with
| a metal chasis but I'm in heaven. 2.8 lbs too. Feels like
| those high quality machines I always envied in college when I
| was too cheap to buy a decent machine (which would have
| absolutely been worth it, looking back).
|
| Apple does have great build quality though. Having your
| machine _feel_ well built and sturdy really does feel good.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Does working on a relatively old ARM laptop mean that more modern
| laptops may be become easier to support/develop drivers for?
| stuaxo wrote:
| Usually.
|
| Maybe someone should send the Devs whatever the next generation
| of this laptop is.
| franga2000 wrote:
| > The EC functionality on the Acer Aspire 1 is implemented in
| ACPI but sadly ACPI cant be used to boot Linux on these Qualcomm
| devices
|
| It would be interesting to hear mors about this part. Why is ACPI
| not an option? Last I heard, ACPI on ARM was solved, at least for
| UEFI boot. And if Windows can used it, why not Linux?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| What I think they're saying is that ACPI does not provide
| hardware discovery (Plug'n'Play) on this hardware like it does
| on most x86. So you need to ship an accurate device-tree.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Why is every ARM system such a snowflake that it needs special
| code to run?
| pjmlp wrote:
| All systems are like that, x86 PCs are the exception due to the
| way clones came to be.
| josephcsible wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelming_exception
| pjmlp wrote:
| Grammar police in the room, yo!
| AureliusMA wrote:
| i believe the point being made is: all systems need a lot
| of work, with x86-as-the-norm being the real oddity
| oblio wrote:
| Every hardware platform is like that. PCs are the exception and
| they're slowly being strangled.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| That seems like a very bad thing for the long term?
| oblio wrote:
| It is.
| AureliusMA wrote:
| being strangled is indeed bad for life
| the_biot wrote:
| Because they're massive SoCs with tons of onboard peripherals
| that aren't hooked up through some bus with discovery, like
| PCIE. You need tons of (often custom) drivers for those
| peripherals + device tree map to tell the kernel how to hook up
| all those drivers.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Because there's no platform standard or unifying governing body
| to define a boot interface, device enumeration interface or
| power management interface. The PC has UEFI and ACPI which
| somewhat suck in their implementation or usability but have the
| big advantage of just existing everywhere there's an x86 CPU.
| denysvitali wrote:
| The sad part about all of this is that generally the
| contributions for these kind of things do not come from the
| vendor, but from "volunteers".
|
| See for example the kernel patches done to support the Surface
| Pro X: https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x
|
| Half of them are from Maximilian Luz (@qzed, student), the other
| half are from Bjorn Andersson (@andersson, Linaro).
|
| All of the hard work is done by them, instead of Qualcomm /
| Microsoft. The same applies for the rest of the ARM ecosystem :(
|
| Another great example is Asahi Linux: the port was only possible
| because someone decided to reverse engineer the work of Apple -
| not because Apple wanted it.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It's to be expected though.
|
| Companies are usually set up to only care about profit and
| there's very little profit to be made by providing for niche
| uses, so it's going to fall on the enthusiasts to do the work.
|
| I just wish that companies were more helpful when volunteers
| contact them.
| heads wrote:
| There are quite a few comments here saying this system is too out
| of date for modern use as a Linux laptop. What is a better
| alternative?
|
| It's not like I'm unaware what the answer might be. I have a very
| long list of manufacturers of nice laptops and for most of these
| I also have watch individual reviews of each, sometimes even
| after multiple months of use.
|
| What I really need though is one person (or team) to sit down and
| try them all for multiple months and then pick a winner. Ideally
| with something breaking (or the reviewer pretending it had
| broken) and the manufacturers ability to fix it being included in
| the rating. Does such a comparison exist?
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