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Comment by JonathanBeuys | Hacker News Reader

Since Linux can be installed on pretty much every laptop, I am not sure what is special about this one. Maybe the HN gang can enlighten me?

What fascinates me about Pine64 is that we might finally see Linux on phones and tablets.

I ordered a PinePhone a few days ago. Can't wait to try it. I wonder when they will ship it. I got an email "Your order has been received and is now being processed." but no info when they will send it out. Any idea how fast they will ship?

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Two things others have mentioned:

- It's an open device so you're not locked out of or into anything (Android devices don't cut it on this front)

- It's ARM-based

One thing they haven't:

- You don't pay for a Windows license you'll never use

That last thing has annoyed some of us for decades: funding (even in a minor way) a company that has been actively hostile to the platform we want to use. Plus it adds some amount of cost to the device. Believe what you will about their recent change of stance, some of us still don't want to send money their way unnecessarily.

This is an ARM laptop. Since it isn't intel, that means you can have access to the MOBO schematics as well as the processor data sheet.

This means that the average person can design a computer around the processor without paying a couple million to intel in NDA agreements.

This is a being deal for the FOSS hardware community - I myself am actually working on a project to make an open processor with a GPU. https://systemeslibres.org

> the average person can design a computer around the processor

I'm not quite sure that's the case...

I get what you mean, but to be clear -- this is not a computer for the average person (nor is it meant to be).

Not the op, but I guess they meant the person with far more than average system design skills, but with an average 1 person budget for a hobby project.

That's great for Pinebook company but why is it good for their customers?

The main thing I see is that it enabled a $200 laptop which is amazing (except for the dodgy keyboard and trackpad undermining it)

Well, my friend has a Pinebook Pro. He's capable of writing drivers himself and designing MOBOs for CPUs. He's actually designed a CPU and written a compiler for it.

Being able to get to the core of the system matters very much to him - being able to trust his hardware. Releasing MOBO files strengthens that trust. In addition, he can repair the MOBO himself if need be.

I suppose me and my friend represent a minority of users though.

There are a couple things going for this machine:

- It's fairly inexpensive, even when compared to cheaper build machines.

- It's very open and easy to hack

- It's fast to the point of being actually useful

- It has a six-core asymmetric CPU (two fast A72 cores, 4 low-power A53 ones). That's not available on any x86 based laptop.

- It's almost completely Windows-proof.

> - It's almost completely Windows-proof.

What does this mean? And why is that good?

I’m not the person you replied to, but it’s definitely free of brain damaged bios junk that’s windows specific, and also unremovable enterprise malware, such as the Intel Management Engine.

What does asymmetry achieve? Intel/AMD can downclock themselves.

If you like to play with OSs and how they allocate work, it's a very interesting machine.

Also, remember that Intel doesn't have asymmetric multi-core parts right now, but they already announced Lakefield, which has Tremont and Sunny Cove cores on a single package.

In a sense, it's like playing with Intel's future chip, but with an ARM ISA.

x86 can go to lower clock speeds, but does that get them as low on power use? I was under the impression that Intel failed in the mobile space because they couldn't make x86 fit in a phone's power envelope.

I think not that they couldn't but as they say, you don't have be able to outrun the bear, just the guy with you.

Not that they couldn't, just they couldn't beat ARM. And ARM already had a solid footing in the dumb phone space.

I think four things. Two Technical and two business. 0x86's innate power consumption per bit of state change is higher than ARM's. Lack of experience with low power process. No one wants to pay the Intel Tax. And Intel isn't very nice to their customers.

If they spread their investment to compete against AMD in the current x86 niches and with ARM in the low-power spectrum, there won't be enough money to succeed in either.

I currently have an Acer B115m with Intel N2940, SSD and 8GB LDDR3.

I use this laptop mostly to work outdoors. I get somewhere nice, surrounded by nature, open the laptop, plug in my 4G modem and work from there. It gets me about 6h of real usage, but sometimes I can't charge it up to 100%. I'd also like to have a brighter scree so I deal better with sunlight.

Most of the times I go to places you can't reach by car, so I go on bike or walking, therefore I need to be careful with what I carry with me, be it weight or volume.

An ARM laptop would be a nice upgrade for my battery anxiety, but having everything soldered makes me uneasy, and 64 Gb HD + 4Gb Ram is not enough for me. Also, I wasn't able to find info about the screen brightness.

I have an old, similar Acer. It’s a great form factor.

Would pay more for 4K, smaller bezels and faster CPU/more dram, but only if it remained fanless, and kept the 8 hour battery life.

(I paid $189.)

It's a reasonable question. The main reason is a desire to support the "open" development model of the hardware.

I think most people interested in a device like this would be better served with a Chromebook, of which there are numerous, with much more diverse hardware options. They already run Coreboot and are about the most open laptop devices currently sold in large quantities.

Shipping information for Pine64 products is generally available at https://www.pine64.org/shipping/

Shipping schedules for Pinebook Pro and Pinephone do fluctuate since they are produced and shipped in batches.

I don't know about the PinePhone in particular, but the time to shipment for my PineBook Pro was very long since it was done in batches after orders came in.

Installing Linux on low end laptops is difficult because of obscured proprietary firmware. Chromebook BIOS is an example.

Chromebooks boot using coreboot. As far as I know that's pretty open.

Check latest Chromebooks, it's really hard to use native Linux on them unlike on previous iterations. For example, they use weird soundcards.

This is sad, because they were easy-to-buy and inexpensive Linux machines. Pixelbook Go is very nice, and the price is reasonable.

How did they manage to screw that up? I mean, Chromebooks literally run Linux just with a weird userland on top, and even if they're using weird out-of-tree drivers, if they're in-kernel they still have to be released, so worst case you should be able to reuse their patches. Or has the joy of drivers running at least partially in userspace also hit ChromeOS?

I think the hardware is sold at a loss to recoup once budget laptop users are locked into the Google ecosystem. I don't think Linux was conspired against but compatibility with Linux was an afterthought or discouraged.

But that's what I don't understand; "compatibility with Linux" can't be an afterthought when the stock OS uses a Linux kernel. Even on Android, it's rare for the problem to be getting drivers for hardware; the drivers might be terrible and hard to rebase onto a newer kernel, but they're at least available.

No spying technologies built into the CPU, at least as far as we know. That one is a big deal.

if you ordered before the 22nd may, it will be shipping soon and you'll get an email when it starts (they said shipping began on 28th, but i haven't received my email yet).

if it was after that date, you'll have to wait for the next batch - no idea when that is scheduled.

Maybe I'm a retard but isn't Android linux?

Yes, Android uses a Linux kernel, but it's a worked example of why "GNU/Linux" actually does mean something. Linux is just a kernel; it gives you drivers and basic OS support, but it's just one part. Android/Linux (Android on a Linux kernel) is its own complete userland, with its own libc (bionic), own coreutils, some sort of drivers running in userspace, its own graphics stack (not X11 or Wayland based), etc. On the other hand, GNU/Linux (GNU-flavored system built on a Linux kernel) uses GNU's glibc, GNU coreutils, typically upstreamed drivers (or if not, at least reusable packaged out-of-tree drivers), Xorg or some Wayland compositor providing GUI, and usually some sort of package manager that owns the entire system (user apps, libraries, core OS). They're really different beasts.

Technically, but have you ever worked at a shell on an Android device? It feels alien, and all the interesting stuff is wrapped up in the JVM so the fact that it's wrapped in Linux doesn't gain you much.

You should give Termux a try. It's an honest to goodness "Linux environment" with a full package manager for many many popular tools and utilities, including the build essentials if you want to compile software directly on your device.

I like Termux too, but... even that stuff is going away https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/1072

So it makes sense to use Linux if that's what you prioritize.

Android uses a forked Linux kernel.

Android tends to use patched kernels, but the diffs are getting smaller (Google made it an explicit goal to bring their fork back to mainline). The bigger issue is the weird userland; a Linux kernel is one thing, but bionic is not a libc meant to run anything but Android, and toybox is no GNU coreutils.

True. I was only referring to Linux itself (i.e., the kernel), because that's what I understood the parent commenter to be referring to.

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