[HN Gopher] Review of Linux on Minisforum V3 AMD Ryzen Tablet
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Review of Linux on Minisforum V3 AMD Ryzen Tablet
Author : transpute
Score : 57 points
Date : 2024-06-23 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mudkip.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (mudkip.me)
| ofrzeta wrote:
| "Until recently, if I wish to do some programming in a coffee
| shop or during a family trip, my only options are the corporate-
| provisioned MacBook or my iPad Pro 2020, neither of which is
| ideal." - why not buy a Macbook Air? It's more or less the same
| price and form factor as the iPad but has a keyboard. You can get
| a Macbook Air M1 for around 800 USD now.
| rty32 wrote:
| Touch screen and pen support seem to be very important to the
| author, based on the article. Taking company device for
| personal use is also apparently a no-no.
| nolok wrote:
| My Lenovo Carbon X1 has a touch screen option and is quite
| awesome. The Dell XPS serie also offers touchscreen options.
|
| Overall it feels like the author is not much aware of the
| higher range in the non Apple laptop class beside Surface.
|
| Not a big problem per se, but article like that are always
| following a journey / story so it sort of should be
| mentioned.
| transpute wrote:
| Looking forward to Linux touch-enabled Dell XPS Arm 2-in-1
| based on Qualcomm Oryon.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| The author is complaining about the 2K of the minisforum
| being on the lower end. Most lenovo tablets/convertibles
| still ship with 1080p or worse screen except for the >3k$
| variants.
|
| Lenovo is, for some reason, a friggin joke when it comes to
| screen resolution and quality. Their consumer laptops tend
| to have better resolutions on-paper than their pro lines.
| Good luck finding anything better than 1080p on 12
| inches...
|
| I am perfectly aware of the non-Apple tablet market and I
| also think Surface is literally the best there is, as
| crappy MS is. Because no one else is even trying. The
| screen, aspect ratio, writing feel, builtin kickstand, ...
| transpute wrote:
| Does Apple have exclusive deals, investments or IP
| licensing with tablet display vendors? Apple is also the
| only vendor with 4:3 aspect ratio tablet displays.
| chrisco23 wrote:
| The 4:3 thing as you say. I've been wanting a tablet just
| for displaying sheet music. I asked some forum once but
| was told pretty much the same, only Apple. Why?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Android manufacturers not understanding market.
| transpute wrote:
| When your largest competitor for 10+ years has 4:3
| screens, why not copy?
| etra0 wrote:
| I have my org's macbook pro, a personal macbook air, and a
| tablet. I wish the later two could simply be merged. I like how
| performant and silent the MBA is but there are lots of
| situation where simply using a tablet is more comfortable, and
| carrying all three devices is simply not feasible.
|
| The Surface has always been in my eyes but from what I've seen
| the linux support is not as trivial with newer models.
| nolok wrote:
| If what you want is a good 2 in 1 I personally heard only
| good things about the Lenovo Yoga that my SO is using.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I have one of those for work. It's pretty amazing, but I
| have to run Windows on it. My IdeaPad, though, runs Fedora
| for three years now, and I am typing this on it:
| https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400
| LorenDB wrote:
| I daily openSUSE Tumbleweed on a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, and
| while I don't use the 2-in-1 functionality a lot, I've
| found it to be a solid experience.
| transpute wrote:
| _> a personal macbook air, and a tablet. I wish the latest
| two could simply be merged_
|
| Un-crippling of Apple Silicon iPads with Magic Keyboards,
| which have a superset of MacBook Air features, can happen
| via: - Competition from Linux on Qualcomm
| Oryon tablets and 2-in-1 - New Apple leadership -
| EU regulation to unlock dual-boot of other operating systems,
| like Linux/BSD - Future jailbreak
| etra0 wrote:
| That's also my wish. The Asahi project somehow gives me a
| bit of hope but I remember the authors saying that porting
| it to an iPad is simply not possible because of some
| booting mechanisms, and dev'in on a jailbroken device was
| not its preference, which is understandable.
| transpute wrote:
| Those who saved blobs for iOS 16.3.1 can run VMs on their
| jailbroken Apple Silicon iPad.
|
| https://x.com/utmapp/status/1708907045314035986
| Apple removed Hypervisor support from XNU in iOS 16.4.
| Here is a diff of iOS 16.3.1 and iOS 16.4. What this
| means is that even if a jailbreak/TrollStore comes out
| for iOS 16.6.1/17.0, there will not be UTM virtualization
| support, even on M1/M2 iPads.
|
| MacOS app to save blobs:
| https://github.com/airsquared/blobsaver
| bpye wrote:
| An iPad as is has never really appealed, but if I could run
| macOS in a VM - or something to that effect - I would be very
| tempted.
|
| Sadly it doesn't seem that Apple are really interested in
| offering that.
|
| I have used various Surface devices as well - and whilst they
| are fine with the keyboard attached, I've never loved the
| touch experience on Windows.
| jwells89 wrote:
| This is a highly intriguing device, but if it's to replace a
| MacBook or especially an iPad, battery life is going to have to
| be a great deal better. I'd be willing to sacrifice some raw
| muscle if that's what it takes to achieve that - even if it
| "only" performed as well as the original M1, that'd be more than
| enough if that meant also life north of the 12 hour mark.
|
| Though it's not mentioned in the review, good standby time is
| also important. Not only is it irritating to find one's
| tablet/laptop dead when pulled out for use, the sleeping battery
| drain typical of x86 laptops since the advent of "modern" standby
| runs through your battery's cycles much more quickly than
| necessary.
| robotnikman wrote:
| It would be great to have more ARM devices which support linux,
| but until there is a common ARM boot process that everyone
| follows and the situation with device trees and propriety
| driver binaries gets solved, x86 is going to have to be the way
| to go for most Linux first devices. With x86 you can basically
| load any distro you want with ease no matter what the CPU.
| transpute wrote:
| Perhaps 2024 is The Year (tm) of Arm SystemReady laptops
| based on Qualcomm.
| p_l wrote:
| Given how Qualcomm is responsible for ARM MS Surfaces being
| "not really compliant" with even what Microsoft mandated...
|
| ... I won't hold my breath for Qualcomm to be bringer of
| SystemReady. I might end up too blue.
| transpute wrote:
| _> ARM MS Surfaces being "not really compliant" with
| even what Microsoft mandated..._
|
| 2024 Microsoft Surface?
| wmf wrote:
| Yeah, there's some bullshit about device trees vs. ACPI.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| For any if the problems mentioned in the parent's post, ARM
| would not be any any better. Failure to enter sleep is a
| software problem, usually not a hardware one. If anything it
| would be worst; note how most of these posts tend to look at
| firmware sleep modes with rosy glasses.
| freedomben wrote:
| > Not only is it irritating to find one's tablet/laptop dead
| when pulled out for use, the sleeping battery drain typical of
| x86 laptops since the advent of "modern" standby runs through
| your battery's cycles much more quickly than necessary.
|
| It really blows my mind that this is the case. If Intel or AMD
| doesn't want their architecture to be discarded they _need_ to
| fix this. They should be on full alert working on this problem,
| yet it seems like nobody even cares. Maybe they deserve the
| defeat that is coming, though I 'd much prefer they learn.
| devbent wrote:
| IMHO it isn't an AMD or Intel problem, it is a "every driver
| and piece of hardware on the machine has to cooperate with
| low power modes" problem.
|
| Apple owns the stack and iterates slowly.
|
| Most laptops change to some of their chips (wifi, graphics,
| etc) every year. But it can easily take a couple of years of
| experience working with a shop and writing drivers for it to
| fix every power usage bug.
|
| For many years (!!) Microsoft actually kept the same wireless
| chipset in their Surface machines. Was it the latest and
| greatest? No, but it worked!
|
| Then or course you have software. For years Firefox had a bug
| where if any open tab has GPU accelerated content, it would
| prevent the entire machine from going to sleep.
|
| If Microsoft clamps down on that sort of behavior it'll break
| someone's software (complaints about laptops going to sleep
| fall into 1 of 2 camps, it happens too often or it doesn't
| happen enough !)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I _think_ what we 're discussing is "S0 sleep" vs S3 sleep,
| AKA "machine stays running and pretends to sleep while
| hopefully saving enough power to be okay" vs "the only
| thing getting power is RAM and the chip(s) that will wake
| the machine back up when you hit a button". So yes, largely
| an AMD/Intel problem; while other hardware parts are
| somewhat relevant, they're secondary. At least, that's how
| I think it goes; happy to be wrong. I'm sufficiently behind
| the curve that all I have is second-hand accounts,
| including people complaining that S0 sleep doesn't even
| work right on Windows.
| apantel wrote:
| Wow I never actually thought about what is happening at
| the hardware level during sleep. The thought of a trickle
| charge going to RAM to keep the data alive while
| everything else sleeps is really cool.
| sweetjuly wrote:
| It can really be anywhere. Intel/AMD _probably_ have done
| due diligence in ensuring that the SoC itself sleeps
| correctly, but once system integrators start glueing on
| external hardware like radios, external graphics, floppy
| drives ( :P ), things get messy fast. For example, a
| wireless driver which doesn 't correctly power down the
| radios when the system sleeps will end up firing
| interrupts at the SoC and dragging it back from S3
| constantly. Or maybe the SoC does actually power gate
| correctly but the external graphics doesn't and so you
| end up burning a non-negligible amount of power over
| there for no good reason. And so on and on and on.
|
| Integrators here are really on the hook for validating
| their configuration and chasing down the appropriate
| vendor to fix it (be it Intel/AMD or, I dunno, Qualcomm).
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It all comes down to personal preference at the end, but
| battery life to me is overrated.
|
| The main impact is mild inconvenience: lugging and managing an
| external battery, babysitting battery when needed or plugging
| it more than less.
|
| That sucks, but you can deal with it. There's little way to
| deal with the iPad having a restricted OS with no
| JIT/compiling/virtualization support, or the MacBook having no
| touch or pen support.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I've experimented with Asahi Linux on my iMac, and while it
| offers a generally great experience, the ARM Linux ecosystem,
| especially with 16K pages, doesn't quite meet my daily needs.
|
| I would be interested in hearing more - I was given to believe
| that most open source software was fine on any of the major
| architectures[0], and I've not heard of the 16k thing at all (is
| Asahi doing something nonstandard with memory pages?)
|
| [0] Albeit with POWER somewhat weaker and SPARC mostly lost. But
| I thought ARM was in good shape, and MIPS has been weirdly
| resilient.
| dji4321234 wrote:
| The IOMMU on Apple Silicon only supports 16K pages. The page
| allocator on Linux only supports unified page sizes. Ergo, to
| make both IOMMU mappings and userland software work, everything
| needs to have 16K pages (on OSX, this isn't an issue, because
| XNU supports mapping both 4k and 16k pages).
|
| It's not really non-standard so much as it is new-standard or
| different-standard. Aarch64 officially supports 4K, 16K, and
| 64K pages. This flexibility in the aarch64 ABI means that most
| compilers already produce 64K aligned load segments for
| aarch64, so it's not a huge deal except for software that works
| at a low level and makes assumptions about mmap (for example).
|
| The main software that's truly affected beyond just needing
| recompilation or tweaks is x86/x86-64 emulation software, since
| x86 is pretty tightly coupled to 4k pages.
| jeffchien wrote:
| It's too bad that the portable display mode doesn't support
| touch. That was what stopped me from getting one.
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(page generated 2024-06-23 23:00 UTC)