[HN Gopher] Palmtop 2024
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Palmtop 2024
Author : dcminter
Score : 12 points
Date : 2024-10-02 20:16 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (paperstack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paperstack.com)
| dcminter wrote:
| A few typos and omissions that I'll correct later:
|
| I ended up running it with a 512G micro SD card (not an SSD as I
| mis-state once)
|
| It has a micro-HDMI port and runs fine in dual screen mode.
|
| One of the pics is with the heatsink (not just the fan per my
| typo) removed to show the motherboard.
|
| Oh and the case is very thin, but aluminium and should hold up
| fairly well I hope.
|
| Finally the keyboard layout is very different from the usual, but
| it fits in all the important keys and I felt like I could get
| used to it quite quickly with a bit more exposure.
|
| I'd love it if this form factor caught on again (but I hope
| mousekeys get upgraded to real mouse events asap).
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Excelllent article.
|
| It's good to see the kind of info that's not likely to be
| available from a manufacturer.
|
| Especially findings that really need experimentation to pin
| down :)
|
| I would try a very high performance USB 3 stick instead of SD,
| and carefully (write 200000 sectors of of zeros to it first,
| then reboot and) partition it and format with data blocks
| aligned similarly to how a SSD is optimized by tools that
| actually do it properly.
|
| Factory formatting on USBs are often very shoddy so it can make
| a big difference.
|
| When it's good it boots and runs faster than a HDD and not much
| slower than an internal SSD.
|
| SD cards have gotten more optimized for FAT filesystems than
| ever, and they should _really_ be formatted using the app
| downloadable from the SD Association itself. There 's a Linux
| version of the app but it still formats FAT or exFAT but not
| EXTx or even NTFS.
|
| That could move it up a notch.
|
| I'd want to try one with Windows and see if that will control
| the fan, a 64GB USB would be enough for that.
| dcminter wrote:
| Thanks for the performance tips, but oddly (?) it's quite
| bearable as-is. While it does take about 20 seconds to get
| from just-logged-in to clean start Firefox, it's completely
| fine once it's running. I guess 12G is still a reasonable
| amount of memory and so I'm mainly reading from cache after
| that.
|
| Terminal apps are completely fine. I haven't tried running
| IntelliJ but the screen size was always going to be a problem
| for that so I'm more likely to run things in the bare
| terminal or from vim or something (I just started playing
| with Helix and like what I see).
|
| So at the moment I'm using ext4 on the SD Card and I'll
| likely stick with that. If it feels too slow my next attack
| would be to take a needle file to the dodgy m2 card slot and
| see if I can get it working again. Failing that, though, I'll
| try your suggestions.
| dcminter wrote:
| Typos/omissions fixed and a few more pics/notes added.
| vitovito wrote:
| My notes on a previous generation version of the machine:
| http://vitor.io/notes-7-inch-mini-laptop
|
| I haven't tried a new OS version since 22.10, I'll have to see if
| audio and touchscreen support have finally resolved on this one,
| too.
| dcminter wrote:
| Nice, I'll link that later as well - the gsettings trick would
| have been great the first time I installed (trying to rotate
| the screen via tab and arrow keys was painful!)
|
| I saw Jeff Geerling had a neat RISC-V machine with exactly the
| same form factor too:
| https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/sipeeds-new-handheld-...
|
| I like your point about the anchoring effect of the GPD price.
| I think that influenced me exactly as you say. It's a shame
| about the few rough edges; this is so nearly a _very_
| compelling gadget!
|
| Do you use yours much having had it a while?
| vitovito wrote:
| I don't use it as a daily driver any more (I did for a bit
| while traveling, for obvious reasons), but it's been very
| useful as bench computer. Doesn't take up as much room as a
| laptop on a desk, has both a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port for
| serial consoles and data transfers, is proper x86 so I don't
| have issues with running proprietary flashers on it. I think
| it's running 18.04 right now because I needed to flash an old
| Jetson board.
| dcminter wrote:
| Bench machine makes sense. I have a very locked down
| MacBook for work and I don't much like macOS - a little
| Linux machine for my personal stuff that takes up almost no
| space on office days seems very appealing. I'll see how
| that goes!
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