
Pinebook ARM Linux Laptop Powered by Allwinner A64 CPU - awqrre
http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/11/24/pinebook-arm-linux-laptop-powered-by-allwinner-a64-processor-to-sell-for-89-and-up/
======
woodruffw
It's nice to get a laptop form-factor with a 720p screen for less than $100,
but it's worth noting that the specs are on-par with a 2-year old smartphone
flagship. Given Allwinner's history of GPL skirmishes and backdooring, I'm
also not too happy to see their CPU in this machine.

~~~
lgeek
> specs are on-par with a 2-year old smartphone flagship

Cortex-A53 is a low cost, energy efficient, slow, in-order implementation. I
don't think it was ever used as the main core in a flagship smartphone.
Something like a 2012 ODROID-X2 SBC with its Cortex-A9 cores should have no
trouble outperforming it, but it doesn't support AArch64.

> Given Allwinner's history of GPL skirmishes and backdooring

On the other hand, the linux-sunxi community does a pretty good job of
bringing mainline support for Allwinner SocS and they're working on the A64.
That's probably the longer term plan for the creators of this laptop.

~~~
Nanite
The Cortex-A53 is also used in the Orange Pi 2, a Raspberry Pi 3 alternative
for $20. On paper this is some nice bang for the buck hardware, just the
implementation is sub par.

------
colindean
This must be based on the NexDock: [http://nexdock.com/](http://nexdock.com/)

The pictures of the laptop are exactly the same device I have sitting in my
lap right now. The NexDock of course has no computer inside it: it's a
keyboard, touchpad, SD reader, USB hub, and display.

~~~
welly
Looks pretty interesting and my initial excitement for this soon dulled when I
thought that if I'm taking this device somewhere I might as well just take my
laptop.

Still, it looks like a very cool gadget. What's the battery life like on it?

~~~
freehunter
There are places I'd take something like this but not my laptop. A CTF
competition at a security convention, for example. I've already got a burner
laptop that gets wiped every time I use it just for this purpose.

------
Animats
That's useful. I've been buying old Asus EeePC machines on eBay for small
projects. Unlike a Raspberry Pi, you get a keyboard, screen, case, and power
supply, all for under $50. But the supply of old subnotebooks can't hold out
forever.

~~~
akhilcacharya
What sorts of small projects?

~~~
pmontra
I increased the RAM of my EEEPC 901 to 2 GB years ago (2009-2012?) and I used
it to develop Rails applications on trains and during a vacation. Not as fast
and comfortable as my Core 2 Duo laptop at that time, but it worked. By the
way, it still works even if I don't turn it on often nowadays.

------
kefka
Remember, this company is known for flouting all of the GPL, and providing
extremely out of date drivers. And they also refuse to submit back into main
any of the hardware changes they make.

Whatever condition you buy it in now will be the condition it will be in 10
years. Expect absolutely no upgrades of the kernel subsystem.

~~~
throw2016
The sorry state of open source on ARM is not due to the vendors but ARM itself
and to an extent Google. The effort to open GPU drivers on ARM is over 5 years
old now I think and you can see all the promises made on the ARM community
forums.

The blame is shifted from the vendor to ARM and then back like a football and
open source developers give up and look for something productive to do.

It appears Arm is not interested in open source or moving beyond the mobile
market where things are tightly controlled.

~~~
Solinoid
Can you explain further how Google is possibly at fault here? Legitimately
ignorant of the situation.

~~~
rwmj
Google is currently developing an alternate kernel which will be MIT licensed.
They've been removing GPL from userspace as fast as they can, and now it seems
they want to remove it from the whole system.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-
ne...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-new-
operating-system)

[https://github.com/fuchsia-
mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENS...](https://github.com/fuchsia-
mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENSE)

~~~
mwcampbell
I doubt that the primary motivation for Magenta is to eliminate the GPL'd
Linux kernel from Android. A much more practical way to do that would be to
use one of the BSDs.

~~~
pjmlp
They also deprecated GCC from the NDK, going forward only clang will be
supported.

GCC is still around, because just like it happened with Apple, there are a few
features that clang still lacks in order to fully replace it in the context of
Android.

Brillo has even less GPL components than Android.

------
hoverbear
Are there any other 64 bit ARM laptops out there worth looking at? Maybe with
a GSM/LTE module, more RAM, or a better screen?

~~~
aexaey
Some chromebooks have aarch64 ARM CPU, including new Acer Chromebook R13

~~~
hoverbear
Oh hrm, yes I didn't think of those. Some even have SIM cards.

------
akhilcacharya
This is getting close, but I don't think my dream machine is on the market yet
- I'd really like something dirt-cheap, has has an ARM chipset running
Debian/Ubunt and lasts for 15 hours on battery. A modern Tandy 100.

Are there any other machines like this, or are cheap machines like the post as
far as it gets? I would have considered the ARM Samsung Chromebook, but it has
pretty awful battery life.

~~~
david-given
I have an Asus Flip Chromebook. It doesn't do 15 hours, merely 10, but it's
very light, pretty cheap (I bought mine in the UK for £250, but I've seen it
in the US down at about $150), has 4GB RAM and a quad core ARM processor
making it plenty fast enough for development, and it's even got a reasonable
keyboard.

Minor features: capacitative touchscreen, screen that folds all the way round
for use in tablet mode, MicroSD card slot, nice big clicky touchpad,
completely silent, and a metal case.

[http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-
chromebook-c201-review](http://www.trustedreviews.com/asus-
chromebook-c201-review)

I run ChromeOS on mine, with Debian in a chroot using Crouton; but I gather
you can run Debian on it natively, although with some blobs:

[https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/C201](https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/C201)

~~~
ansible
I have an Acer R11, which is similar. Crouton is a great project.

Given the price and performance of current generation Chromebooks, I don't see
much advantage in going for ARM systems right now.

~~~
david-given
The Flip _is_ an ARM system!

~~~
ansible
Yes. What I mean is that the power consumption is a little better, but the
current generation Intel Celerons have quite low power consumption too.

One nice thing about x86-64 is that you can also run closed-source apps like
games. For example, after having installed Crouton, I was able to install
Steam and play some of the Linux games in my library.

------
jklinger410
This is going to be exactly $89 worth of computer.

More for people who never leave terminal or for teaching kids linux.

~~~
phpnode
even if you live in a terminal all day 1280 x 720 is just too small to be
practical.

edit - I too once basked in the warm rays of a 320x200 CRT, it's OK at the
time if that's all you've ever experienced, but it's hard to go back to that
from 4k.

~~~
vardump
It was possible to achieve a lot with just 320x200 on 8-bit systems.

Or on programmable calculators (TI, HP, etc.), with just 128x64 or so screen.

Or on Amiga (704|640)x(200|256|400|512).

Or VGA PC 640x480. VGA was for the first time truly enough for an IDE. SVGA
800x600 soon followed. And 1152x864, etc.

So one should definitely be able to manage with 1280x720.

I think we can adapt to whatever is available. I guess one could even manage
software development with just a single line (320x8, 40x1 characters) display.
It'd certainly be far from optimal, but you could do it.

Of course now I enjoy 4K resolution and multiple monitors...

~~~
userbinator
_I think we can adapt to whatever is available. I guess one could even manage
software development with just a single line (320x8, 40x1 characters) display.
It 'd certainly be far from optimal, but you could do it._

Or even a dumb terminal (TTY) that prints to physical paper.

------
hsivonen
What's the mainline kernel story? Or story for ongoing kernel security updates
by other means?

~~~
makomk
For the A64, mainline support is still very much a work in progress that isn't
usable as-is I think.

------
andreiw
Why only 2GB? Especially for a device that's not shipping yet. I understand
there might be SoC limitations, but I would be really surprised if the A64
cannot support 3 or 4GB.

A53 is a bit on the slow side, but the worst part is that it's not a great (as
in, representative of the architectural requirements on software) chip for
porting software to AArch64, because of its simplistic design - you will be
able to get away with forgetting a barrier, or TLB or cache maintenance
instruction here or there, and your code will work (but blow up on other, more
advanced uarches, like A57 or other non-ARM designs). It's basically a minor
step above using Foundation Model.

------
jamespo
I wish they could do exactly the same thing, but the form factor of a Psion
5MX Palmtop

------
teekert
As someone who emails from a Nextcloud instance online, writes and reads a lot
of text and logs into a Linux cluster for data analysis in Jupyter Notebooks.
This could completely replace my company issues HP Elitebook (price around
1200€), the screen is even better.

I would like it even more if it were just a Raspberry Pi (possibly with a very
fast ssd if it were possible) inside, simply because of the support and trust
I have in them.

------
vegabook
I fully expect it to be an utter piece of junk, but at 89 dollars with 2GB RAM
this beats a Raspberry Pi or a Cubietruck hands down on price/performance
considering either of the latter require at the very least 100 bucks extra for
monitor, keyboard, power supply, SD card, and cabling, after which you're also
left with a rats nest of wiring and awful little plastic bits and pieces all
over the place.

------
npx
I've been waiting on this for years! Not specifically THIS, but hardware along
these lines. I'd like to see at least 4GB of RAM, and then I think that I
could use this with Alpine Linux as my daily driver. Not quite perfect yet,
but very close to what I want!

~~~
escap
if you don't mind X86, [http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/10/24/jumper-
ezbook-2-cherr...](http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/10/24/jumper-
ezbook-2-cherry-trail-laptop-with-14-full-hd-display-4gb-ram-64-gb-storage-
sells-for-190-promo/)

Current black friday sale is $178 to $185

------
faragon
I own a Pine 64 board (2GB RAM, 1 gigabit ethernet) based on the same
Allwinner A64 SoC. It performs OK for light tasks (Debian), however, it lacks
proper graphic acceleration (which is OK for using it as a build server, but
short if you want e.g. play YouTube videos, so unless in the case of the
laptop hardware accelerated graphics are provided, it would be hard to use it
comfortably -if they do, I would love to buy one!-).

------
SwellJoe
Anyone know if more RAM will be plausible for a machine like this in the near
future? I'd love to have a new netbook, but 2GB is what my 6+ year old Dell
mini 9 has; this wouldn't be a very big upgrade, though a bigger screen and
keyboard would make it more suitable for actual work.

------
Paul_S
If it had a normal keyboard I'd buy one. Amazing little package.

~~~
ant6n
Article says it has full-size QWERTY. In what sense is that, umm, not normal?

~~~
Paul_S
It's one of those apple candy keyboards. Typing on those is only slightly
better than typing on glass.

------
crudbug
Impressive specs, How much cost difference if 1080P screen is used ?

------
Zekio
major downside for me is the DC jack for charging, they always break for me...

~~~
batbomb
The entire machine is the same price as an apple power adapter.

~~~
cordite
To be fair, they have a processor in the power adaptor

~~~
phpnode
Is that processor more or less powerful than the processor in this laptop?

~~~
eltoozero
Funny question, but the answer is less powerful.

"This processor is a Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller, roughly as
powerful as the processor inside the original Macintosh."

"MSP430 is a 16 bit processor running at 16MHz. The Dhrystone benchmark
measures 1.4 MIPS."[1]

No doom or rooting your MagSafe adapters.

[1]: [http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-
surpr...](http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-
surprising.html?m=1)

~~~
tluyben2
MSP430 are nice to play around with for hardware projects and they are very
cheap, so you can quickly get to cheap products if you start your work with
them instead of far more expensive processors.

~~~
kogepathic
Is an MSP430 really cheaper than a low end STM32?

I mean the MSP430 was great, 10 years ago, but the industry hasn't stood
still.

~~~
tluyben2
True, good point. I just have many MSP430 boards lying around, so even blowing
up and giving away a few 100 I would be fine hence I go for them when trying
something out. I worked on a few projects with low powered bluetooth that had
mandatory MSP430 usage so I again something I go for if I have to try
something quickly and has the potential to turn into something I want to give
away/sell.

