Star Labs StarLite Mk IV – 11" Linux laptop with Coreboot | Hacker News Reader

Star Labs StarLite Mk IV – 11" Linux laptop with Coreboot

starlabs.systems

302 pointsgadgetoid108 comments

I tested the Mk III back in Dec 2020 before it dropped out of existence (parts shortage I think.) Due to relocating during the Covid chaos I actually daily drove it as my workstation for a few months (using VSCode/Slack/Discord and writing C++ for RP2040 and running more MicroPython recompiles than I'd care to imagine). The keyboard left a little to be desired (inconsistent actuation force), but having a Linux-first, mini laptop at that price point was compelling. The decent resolution (1080p at 11") screen, SATA SSD (rather than eMMC) and backlit (!!) keyboard made it worthwhile and I still use it for work.

If they've revised the keyboard/trackpad in Mk IV then it could be a pretty solid little machine.

I also had some weirdness with the USB Type-C power adapter (ha I wish this was the only hardware I could say this about) but that may or may not have been fixed (in the Mk III) with a recent firmware update. Though it did take them the best part of the year since my vague and difficult to reproduce bug reports. A 12v barrel jack supply was rock solid. No surprise there.

I know it's no Framework, but it's nice to have a System76-a-like this side of the pond.

I use Pinebook Pro as daily driver for a couple of month, and my only complaint was about the keyboard. Even the screen is bearable.

A good, cheap keyboard would be a game changer for low-end devices, it's definitely the bit I find hardest to compromise on.

The SoC is really slow, do you mostly use it as a terminal to your servers? What's your rational behind getting it? The price and it being "open"?

I was running one of those 7" OneMix laptops for a while. They have 16GB ram and a 512 SSD. Apparently they have switched to 10" form factor now[1].

[1] https://www.1netbook.com/product/onenetbook-4-platinum/

The SoC is not that slow if you only use Firefox to read Hacker News and Stackoverflow, and the rest of the work happens in the terminal.

I am more bothered by unreliable suspend to ram. It kind of works, but then it does not for me.

On my PbPro this is caused by the lid sensor magnet being badly positioned. When I close the lid expecting that to trigger suspend, it will suspend too early as the lid closes, then un-suspend once it fully closes. Suspending manually first (via keystroke, for example) and then closing the lid solves that. I've read you can fix the sensor's position if you're willing to open the LCD-half of the laptop. The other issue I have is if you plug or unplug the power (via USB-C, at least, I haven't tested using the barrel plug) it causes the PbPro to resume even if the lid is closed, so I always make sure to plug it in first and avoid taking it out while it's suspended.

Barrel plug will do it too. It's an odd behavior, for sure.

I don't think I even realized it had a suspend sensor in the lid. I suspend mine via the power menu, wait for the green LED to go off, then close it. If you've got the proper suspend (deep sleep) stack working, it's very much a power sipper when asleep as well - I've had it asleep for a week (when I thought it was off), and still had plenty of battery when I woke it up.

The PBP CPUs aren't fast, but they're certainly "enough" for daily driver use if you're not insanely demanding. I use one as one of my daily drivers, and it handles web (Firefox and Chrome), Element, Marktext for editing blog posts, and various other things perfectly fine. It's not fast by any means, but it's entirely adequate. Photo editing takes a couple ticks to process, and I wouldn't try video editing on it, but neither do I do video editing, so...

Battery life is excellent (8-12 hours depending on what you're doing), the 2021 trackpad firmware solves the fact that the trackpad was beyond vile, and other than wifi glitching every couple weeks and needing a reboot, I've really got no complaints with it. Plus, it's $200, and very light.

If you're the sort of person who "needs" 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD with a 6C/12C workstation processor in a laptop, it's not at all useful, but it's quite a bit more capable than most people realize, and that I have no fan noise, and it doesn't roast my legs in normal use, is really quite nice.

I thought the Pinebook Pro screen was fantastic. 14'' feels spacious after 13.3 :) The keyboard you sorta get used to. My main problem was the 4GB of RAM that couldn't really run Emacs and Firefox simultaneously. Do you code without a browser on the side?

I've tried to have an emacs-only workflow - but lots of stuff is complicated. CIDER will now open/browse ClojureDocs, but there is still no way to display JavaDocs without a browser. I also dunno how to browser Github short of cloning every repo I use.

I'd appreciate any tips :)

However, that said, I never found the processing power problematic

I'm not the GP, and I don't necessarily have a solution for you, but I'm curious about your workflow.

My 19-tab Firefox (with Gmail open) is consuming 1.2 GB, and my fully-loaded Spacemacs is ~250 MB. What's your memory consumption look like, and how many tabs do you usually have open?

Suggestions for reducing memory usage: check about:performance for high-memory tabs, use uBlock and NoScript to block large images and JavaScript from loading by default, set permissions.default.image to 2/3[1] if you have lots of image-heavy sites, I suppose?

You might just have to resign yourself to using a small number of tabs. Firefox doesn't give you a lot of knobs to tune memory usage with, and already is lighter on RAM than Chrome (at the expense of CPU/latency).

[1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Permissions.default.image

Reducing the Firefox content process limit from the default 8 to perhaps 2 should help (assuming the default is the same on smaller systems, I guess I'm not sure it is ...)

Postscript: it would be really nice if Firefox allowed a "click-to-play, but for images" addon - but it seems like that's not possible, given that zero addons exist that implement it.

I do tend to get carried away with tabs.. :)

I'm also generally working in Clojure/CIDER which eats tons of memory. The JVM just doesn't give back memory easily. I need to see if maybe there is some JVM setting I can set that would help. I even have issues with this on my 8GB daily-use laptop

Then you carelessly do something intensive, blow through your memory limit and the OOM-killer nukes your process

Emacs has some browsing capabilities itself. I've used `eww` in the past with some success.

Since linux+hardware discussions usually leads to the >$1000 laptops e.g. System76/Framework (both of which I highly recommend) or Thinkpad; I'm hijacking the top comment to mention to those who are looking to get into Linux from Windows or macOS that Linux Operating System almost certainly works well with your existing hardware or any entry-level computer too.

In fact I've been buying entry-mid level low TDP laptops with good IO for several years now and put the cost saved in massive memory + storage upgrades for that laptop. Due to the accessibility of such laptops worldwide, I find that support/bug fixes to Linux OS/kernel arrive faster as well.

For small form factors, Converting a 11" Chromebook to Linux laptop can be done with some effort[1] and the compatibility varies with the chipset. But due to Google subsidies, such portable laptops costs way lesser than purpose built Linux hardware.

[1] https://mrchromebox.tech/

During a vacation last week I brought a very cheap, small laptop (~250 euro, 11" ACER) with me as an emergency laptop. Just in case something would happen at work that would require my assistance.

Naturally, one of our services crashed during my second day away (this service had been running flawlessly for 3 years prior). So I spend a bit of time using the tiny cheap laptop.

To my surprise, the tiny laptop was refreshingly nice to work with. There is something elegant about a tiny little fanless machine that you can just throw in your backpack without any worries (unlike with my multi-thousand dollar portable workstation).

The keyboard on this particular laptop was actually very nice, though the screen and trackpad are just utter crap. Though the screen was small and low resolution, it was just fine for email, some SSH sessions and light browsing.

Anyway, long story short: I am now looking at buying a small, fanless laptop with a decent trackpad and screen. The StarLite would be a good contestant.

what was the model of the acer ? I have an asus 1015e that is my favorite computer I've ever had, but it's very old at this point and essentially unusable because its disk is so slow and it has very little memory.

I'd love to replace it with something more usable.

It's an Acer Aspire ES1-132 series N16Q6. I don't think it's still for sale. I also would not recommend it, the screen is really bad (though was to be expected for the low price), the trackpad is quite bad also.

I run Linux on it with i3wm, so I don't bother with the low hardware specs, I rarely use the trackpad. A better screen would be nice though, hence that I am interested in the StarLite.

I have a similar one that I bought for exactly the same reasons - something I wouldn’t be too sad if ran over by a car.

It’s now with my daughter, as her homeschooling computer (schools have since returned to normal where I live, but the kids still use Teams and other apps to keep in touch). It’s definitely recommended.

I recently got myself a 2017 Macbook (the fanless 12" one with only one USB-C port). I'd highly recommend it - it only ran me about $400. If anything, thanks to more mature USB-C and wireless ecosystems, it's nicer to use now than it was when it was new and cost $1700!

It would be interesting if Apple bring back this laptop with their M1 chips. I guess an Ipad Pro sort of fills this role hardware wise.

One could argue the M1 Air is essentially the replacement for the 2015+ MacBook (better perf, battery life, ports screen, but slightly bigger).

I just sold a Early 2015 model and I agree. The M1 would be perfect for this machine. The form factor of the MacBook Air is still quite a bit bigger, it's truly wild how thin and light the 12" was.

I've used a Macbook Pro several times while daily driving a Windows PC and Linux occasionally, and I have to say that I didn't like it in the slightest. Not only did the model I use have two design flaws (flexgate and butterfly switch issues) and the whole device weirdly buzzed and vibrated, but the OS in general felt like a supervised playsession at times, e. g. not allowing for portable apps and making sideloading hard. It only having usb c ports made everything even worse. Being forced to use a dongle or hub each time I want to connect an external harddrive is just awful (the alternative being not using the included cables and buying a seperate one for everything).

I love my 12" Macbook, I'm using it to write this reply, but goodness is the keyboard awful. I have a can of compressed air at hand at all times to blast the keys when they get stuck.

I'm about to (if the shipping notification is anything to go by) upgrade to a 14" MBP but I really hope Apple release something in this size again. It's such a pleasant laptop to use; I even work on my (2D) C++ video game on it.

Yep I got my Chuwi 14" for the same reason. To use in situations where I'm not very comfortable using an expensive laptop.

And like yourself I was impressed with the speed, display and battery life. I would have been disappointed if it had cost me 1000 euro. But for 180, wow. It's much better than I thought it would be.

Even 4 years later I still use it a lot. I'm not really a laptop guy anyway, I prefer desktops so this is in fact my only personal laptop in active use.

I've been beating myself up trying to understand why cheap 11" laptops aren't more common.

Ten years ago the atom based "netbooks" were ~$200-300. Yes, they had almost no RAM, eMMC storage, and archaic wifi chips, but it's been 10 years, and I'm surprised they can't still put out a Pentium Silver system with even slightly modern internals for around the same price now.

My best guess is volume. The netbook experiment failed and nobody is going to invest in a large enough volume of devices to make the costs worthwhile. Also, tablets and phones can do what you'd probably do on this device anyways, except for the form factor.

Still, it bugs me. This device has nice specs, but as others have pointed out, it looks like it's probably just been thrown together from a reference which also makes me worry about whether this company will be around long enough to service it if something goes wrong a year from now.

I guess I should just suck it up and buy a used 11" MacBook - there is one with an NVIDIA dgpu that my wife had at one point and it was quite a little power house.

There are popular 10-12" Chromebooks & hybrid tablets with flippable or attachable keyboards.

Prices just seemed to hit an arbitrary floor without the technology being of higher quality to justify the still high price. Couldn’t a Chromebook have three or four year old tech at this point costing a half of the price?

The tech is definitely higher quality, and so are current requirements from users and apps. People hated the cheapest netbooks for a reason.

The Netbook category was taken over by Chromebooks

But they’ve never gone under about $200 MSRP despite not really delivering better or more advanced hardware on par with the advancement of the market.

This faq entry https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/faqs/ami-aptio-v-vs-core... is quite misleading.

>coreboot uses flashrom, which runs from the userspace (outside the kernel) and writes directly to the SPI (a small chip where the firmware is stored). Instead of verifying the update, it will allow anything using user id 0 (aka "sudo", "root" or "admin") to write to it.

This is their implementation. Coreboot doesn't care about how it's written. That is not a part of coreboot. You, as a vendor, are supposed to create something sensible.

>AMI ... offers many features, including a graphical interface. ... [Coreboot] has no dedicated interface, apart from a simple boot menu.

This is again a function of the payload. If they use tianacore as a payload, they'll get a similar menu as AMI. It's their job to pick and customise payloads. Coreboot doesn't handle that stuff.

Somewhat more interesting is:

"For example, the LabTop Mk IV combined with coreboot will offer approximately 8% more performance and around 20% longer battery life (with a record of 13 hours and 42 minutes for general use)."

Which is a bit of a WTF is different between the two. presumably they are sharing the low level intel powermgmt blobs, so why the significant power reduction?

> power button between backspace and delete

How layouts like this reach the light of day totally escapes me.

I managed to hit power and enter in quick succession on the Mk III accidentally just a day or two ago so... yeah... I'd be in strong support of putting it somewhere less under my fingertips. Confused the heck out of me, I thought the battery had run out.

Can key assignment software deal with this?

I didnt have a PrtSC key on my Spectre HP machine, and so I remapped NumLock to PrtSc in order to use my screenshot program. Wonder if power can be reassigned.

It's only happened to me once, so I haven't bothered to change it but at least on Linux Mint it's just Settings -> Power Management -> When the power button is pressed -> Do nothing. Problem solved! Bit of a waste of a good button, though and it doesn't look trivial to rebind (IE: not supported by the builtin Shortcuts GUI even though pressing the power button obviously elicits a flicker of the input box).

Yes, at least on another laptop I used that had the power button in a similar place. The button was basically a button like no other for the OS and I was able to just unbind it. It didn't keep me from being able to use the button to power on or to hold the button for a long time to power off.

Yeah Macs deal with this by requiring a slightly longer press than you normally would with normal typing. Also for the caps and eject buttons. Smart idea that works well. I wish other manufacturers would follow their lead (like they do on the design front!)

For me it's a huge red flag. Either the company doesn't test their devices on real users, or doesn't care.

Putting the power button on the keyboard is a cost cutting measure. A lot of Chromebooks do it too. When you are building to a price you get things like this. I'm not surprised really.

I've never really considered these types of devices all that viable on merits. What about this is more compelling than a recertified ThinkPad? Because that's what $500 competes with.

I like how Chromebooks deal with the button. AFAIR when you press it screen contents fade into black and when the animation finishes (after something like 3 seconds) it will show you shutdown/reboot dialog. I never had any problem with the button. On Linuxen it is not as clear cut though.

That doesn't look nearly as frustrating as the right shift key. I'm not sure how I wouldn't miss that every time I tried to hit it.

To be fair, it is not exactly between.

Does anyone have experience with the processor they're including?

I ask because I recently had to switch back to Windows for my work laptop after about 7 years of running OpenSUSE Linux[0] and have been looking to buy a less powerful laptop as a second work machine running Linux[1].

I have zero experience with the Intel Pentium Silver N5030 processor -- I'm guessing that line of processors is what replaced Atom. I haven't looked at that series in a while but in the early days I found them to be unusable -- 80% slower than what I was used to.

I'm looking at light development/debugging work as the target, pretty much "living out of the browser and the terminal" with the majority of development done on my workstation-grade laptop.

[0] Honestly pretty happy with Windows 11/WSLg, which is nice since the app I'm supporting would be very difficult to do in a development environment on Linux...my personal PCs still run Tumbleweed :)

[1] I don't mind running virtual machines as I am currently, but it's more convenient to have another laptop to swivel too, sometimes.

> I have zero experience with the Intel Pentium Silver N5030 processor -- I'm guessing that line of processors is what replaced Atom

It is what Atom got rebranded as, yes. Pentium Silver = Atom cores, Pentium Gold = big cores.

If you are searching for performance, go elsewhere, a Snapdragon 7c of all things has performance that's a bit better...

(for $299 in a Galaxy Book Go, and that's a totally borderline system)

> (for $299 in a Galaxy Book Go, and that's a totally borderline system)

Can it run anything other than Windows Home?

I’d love to have a small cheap Linux machine, but have no need for a small cheap Windows box.

For Windows: it can run Pro too, but that's still a low end machine.

For Linux: It has Secure Boot that can be toggled off but no one seems to have done the Linux enablement part for that specific model... so you might not have a good experience.

(most Qualcomm drivers don't have ACPI bindings on arm64 yet, so the Linux on those devices port involves writing a flattened device tree. This issue will go away at some point in the future)

Given that some Chromebooks are shipped with the same SoC, that task is doable. You might want to think about buying a Chromebook outright to put another Linux distribution on it too.

(see https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/debian-cdimage)

tldr: not the right machine to buy if you want to run Linux on it.

kind of gobsmacked the processor is...intel? in 2021? for an $800 laptop?

was arm or AMD too hard to get? Intel is easily the dead-last pick for performance and power efficiency in the mobile category.

Better supported in some ways with respect to privacy and FOSS, though. Coreboot / ME Cleaner / HAP Bit.

I worked for ~3 months exclusively on the N5000 version, writing C++ drivers for the RP2040 (in VSCode) and binding them to MicroPython, plus tending our 32blit (STM32-based) project. Sure I would have used something a lot beefier if I had the opportunity (I do now) but I managed to be productive with it.

The N5000/N5030 are not fast, but coming from WSL1 on Windows 10 over to a Linux-native machine gave me pretty much the same approximate build times.

I still leave my workstation (i9, 32GB RAM, Pop!_OS) in the office and work on the Star Lite if I'm doing some evening tinkering. Or just want to sit on the sofa for a change of scenery.

goldmont uArch -> Atom. Slow & tiny cache. It'll struggle

I have been using one of those for a year or so (Dell Latitude 3190, 4GB, Debian 11), mostly for web and remote access.

Firefox with uBlock and NoScript runs OK, not much difference between this and a proper PC. YouTube on 1080p60 maxxes out all cores, but yt-dlp+vlc barely touches 20% CPU. Similar results with Twitch. Remmina/RDP to a proper workstation works flawlessly. Overall performance when browsing feels much more responsive than Atom Z3735F or RPI3. VSCode is workable, but not ideal. Virtualization (QEMU) is for decorative purposes only.

Battery usually lasts 10-12h, with 4W power draw when idle and 10W at 100% CPU. No thermal throttling so far.

May I guess that this is "just" a re-brand of some far east manufacturer? Nothing wrong with that, but I was kind of sour that my (not exactly cheap) Tuxedo Linux laptop was basically just a off-the-shelf laptop from another vendor (plus some additional support).

They all start like that and then fan out into more customization both on the hardware and the software. According to the coreboot sources Starlabs now have their own open source EC firmware in addition to coreboot support which usually isn't part of the ODM package, either.

(No idea what they're doing on the hardware side, I just happened to review some Starlabs code today.)

The whole time I was looking at this machine, I was unimpressed. That was, until I saw the price. Under $500 brand new for this machine looks fantastic. Hell, under 2 lbs and under $500 would've made this a no brainer for me when I was in university. Kind of a shame I don't need a new machine at the moment, this looks like some real bang for the buck, if you like new machines.

I'm sure used machines are still better bang for buck, but this is really cool to see.

You need to click on the British flag and select your country to see the price in your currency.

Upon clicking the United States the price becomes "From $929", the USD is weak vs. the pound/euro.

Edit: My bad, as a comment mentions the $929 is for a different model. When you switch your country the site throws you back to the home page, I didn't notice the model was different.

The USD hasn't been that weak to the pound in quite some time. Quick currency conversion shows that 400 GBP is about 550 USD. The fact that the price is nearly doubled in USD seems very odd to me. Doubly so as the GPB price should be all in inclusive of VAT.

It's $479, you're looking at the Star Book.

Star Lite - https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite

Star Book - https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starbook

It really doesn't help that the country selector dumps you back onto the homepage!

You're right, I'm going to edit my comment to reflect that, thanks for the correction!

I'm on the checkout page of the base starlite (8GB ram, 240GB SSD), and all in to the USA by DHL... it's saying no tax (suck it USgov?), And free DHL worldwide shipping at £318 or $438. I don't NEED a chuckable backup/emergency laptop, but for the Linux-first property, and the price I'm having a hard time resisting. The only downside is that they say the order will be filled mid January of next year, so a long wait.

Wow, that's a funnel-killer. I clicked away as soon as I found a US price.

Wow, I've been a big fan of tiny / cheap / fanless "ssh+vim+ browser+chat"-machines like this for years.

At the moment I've got an Asus E203M fulfilling this role, but I'm annoyed every time I have to carry around, untangle and plug in the stupid barrel jack charger when I've got USB-C charging available on the sofa, in bed, in the office (and even in my car). I'm aware that there are USB-C -> barrel jack adapters, but c'mon, if I have to carry something around it might as well be the charger.

That alone would have sold me on this device.

But it's got coreboot! 8gigs of RAM! Backlit keyboard! Matte display, fullHD! I've ordered instantly. Many thanks for the link!

They're hard to find right now, but a PineBook Pro might work for you, and they've got USB-C charging.

I've been following the pine64 devices for a while, but the "pro" is too big (14") to fit that niche for me and the non-pro pinebook is too weak.

Too bad, I'd love to run aarch64!

Keep in mind that this is an atom-derived chip (Goldmont Plus uArch), so it will be VERY VERY slow. Do not compare clock speed with something like Core i-series, expect this thing to have a much lower IPC. It barely has any cache as well. With the size of modern websites; JS, i'd expect it to struggle with anything complex...

I have a Chuwi LapBook 14.1 which has the N4xxx atom series. It's a similar laptop like this one. It's actually pretty great for light work on the go. It cost me almost nothing (180 euro), has a great IPS display, is 100% silent and runs 7 hours on a battery.

Sure, performance isn't great but it's not terrible ;) It's not my primary laptop of course. I use it in the makerspace, I bought it so I didn't have to worry about blowing up a USB port with an Arduino project or a soldering iron falling on top of it. Neither of which actually happened during the last 4 years but it's the peace of mind that matters.

I may be mistaken - but I thought Blue USB A port indicated High Speed / USB 3.0. Should USB 2.0 port be Blue?

Noticed this too. But it seems it's not strict:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0: "It is recommended that manufacturers distinguish USB 3.0 connectors from their USB 2.0 counterparts by using blue color for the Standard-A receptacles and plugs,[2] and by the initials SS."

> a true matte display that prevents glare with an Anti-Reflective Coating.

This alone made me pay attention, it is so damn rare to find something portable nowadays that is not glaring with a mega reflective display.

I understand that reflective screens sell better next to lackluster matte screen in a display case but at this point it really feels like none of these manufacturers have used their devices outside.

Awesome to see people still producing things with this small form factor. I loved my Asus Aspire One when I was travelling as a student (even before mobile internet was widespread!), though I think that was 9" even.

Seems quite expensive though, and it's also surprising they didn't choose ARM. As for such a mobile unit you'd probably want battery life over high specs.

The PineBook Pro is a cheaper alternative for those use cases - https://pine64.com/product/14%e2%80%b3-pinebook-pro-linux-la... but is 14"

I found that ARM wasn't a great development environment. At least a couple years ago. Mileage should vary a lot based on stack.

Pretty cool looking device, and a decent price (and the weight is impressive).

Wondering why there’s an amibios option at all? Is there something it does that core boot can’t?

Might be required for Windows HCL compatibility listing and certification?

That’s my best guess.

They have a good FAQ on this: https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/faqs/ami-aptio-v-vs-core...

The AMI UEFI firmware behaves like most UEFI firmwares these days and locks out writes to firmware flash after boot and only allows updates by way of efi files being dropped into place and then updated via reboot with signature check.

The coreboot setup leaves writes to the firmware flash open and root can use flashrom at anytime.

This makes for security trade-offs, a choice between freedom to change your own firmware and know what you're running vs a mechanism to reduce the chance of advanced persistent threat at the firmware level.

Also, their build to order model under additional OSes does include Windows 10 as an option at an additional cost, so I imagine a UEFI firmware is required.

I knew System76 had made a nice name in Linux laptops as alternatives to the mainstream. How does Star Labs compare to System76 generally?

Not quite the same ballpark yet, but I sincerely hope they get there. System76 are rolling their own distro - Pop!_OS - and their own tiling window management add-on - Pop! Shell - both of which I've switched to using even on a non System76 machine. Star Labs test with various Linux distros, but they haven't shown quite the same deep involvement with software, community and ecosystem yet. But that's no easy feat!

I can't comment on build quality- I've never laid hands on a System76 system, as alluring as they are! The Star Lite is pretty damned nice, feeling a bit like an 11" MacBook Air but just a little bit more sensibly proportioned. I haven't seen many - actually good - 11" laptops and I feel they've hit that particular niche pretty well.

The Star Book and Galago Pro - both with i7-1165G7 options and close specs overall - seem to be pretty toe to toe, but with only three laptops in their lineup, no desktops and slightly lower entry prices Star Labs seem to be serving a slightly different market, or at least taking their time before they gun for the greats.

It could be a great tool, but why almost always keyboards seem to be designed by people who don't use them?

When are we going to get a keyboard with proper set of keys in the right size? Like cursors, PgUp, PgDown, Home, End etc?

Also it's a shame they don't say where they make these laptops.

> Like cursors, PgUp, PgDown, Home, End etc?

This is a valid complaint for developer laptops (which this obviously is), but for general laptops I'd guess most users never touch PgUp, PgDown, Home, End, and probably couldn't even tell you what they do.

You'd be surprised. I even see my mother in her 70s doing it.

Though of course when she started doing a "computer course" it involved WordPerfect 5.1 :) But things she could do back then like editing a config file would scare her in these days of glossy GUIs but these keys don't. Perhaps a millenial (or is it Gen Z?) has more issues with them as they've never known anything before the touchscreen :)

Maybe they're vim or emacs users? I can't remember the last time I used one of those keys.

How do you edit text files?

neovim

I have an original Mk1 unit and this looks like a very nice upgrade. Sure it's not the best but for the price and being linux first its good.

A bit of bezel on my Mk1 broke and I was able to get a replacement with ease (did cost me but I was happy I could even get the part easily).

Make sure you can remap the Fn key on this keyboard. It is in a terrible spot and should have been swapped with the CTRL key. Dell has the same issue and on their system it isn't software remappable. Really makes using the keyboard untenable for me.

Interesting messing-about-with laptop. It's the kind of thing I probably might get my son as his first laptop.

On another note, as I was scrolling down the page, it got laggier and slower and I'm browsing from an i9 10900K with all the trimmings... odd.

Don't know if their copy editors read these, but "Gallium Nitrate" is surely a typo for "Gallium Nitride" (GaN). GaN is a wide bandgap semiconductor, Gallium Nitrate is apparently some sort of drug.

For completely irrational reasons I really want a laptop with Coreboot in my toolbox, but sadly I don’t have £4-500 to throw at it as things are now.

Hope Star Labs does well and that they sell plenty free and open devices though :)

If you need performance take a look at the ThinkPad X13 AMD/Intel with good 13" display and probably the best keyboard available. Linux is supported very well. Replacement parts widely available (five years). With a docking station it is well usable stationary, too. The nice thing is, it fully usable and fits in every backpack. Drawback is - it is not fan-less and doesn't feature Coreboot.

PS: X13 is cheaper than X1, maybe more sturdy and you can get one USB/Thunderbolt port extra.

The laptop I use the most is a T500 Core2Duo P8600 with 4GB RAM.

The StarLite Mk IV out performs it at every turn, and I’ve been wanting an 11” laptop for a while now.

Is there any reason I shouldn’t but the Mk IV, or is there any other similar devices I should consider? I’d rather buy locally for Australian consumer protections.

This looks almost identical to the Pinebook Pro, down to the port placement. Interesting! The ARM processor on the Pinebook Pro can sometimes be a bit of an annoyance, as it's not the beafiest processor and emulating x86 on it suffers.

I think that's because they use a standard Chinese laptop enclosure. I have a Chuwi LapBook that's also got the exact same enclosure, screen, keyboard and horrible trackpad as the PineBook Pro but it has an Intel atom board. The battery and PCB are totally different. I know because I was looking to order a Pinebook Pro battery to replace it :) In fact the Chuwi has the USB ports upside-down (really annoying with a yubikey which you have to touch on the top side).

I've also been trying to get the Pinebook Pro's touchpad improvements going on my Chuwi, but it's been tough going because the I2C controller is very different. But it's literally the exact same part.

So it looks like some company makes these enclosures available as a platform that companies can use to make their own laptop without having to worry about the case, keyboard, display etc. The display in this case is actually pretty good (IPS 1080p), it just has some backlight bleeding but that seems to be caused by pressure points from the lid, not the display itself. The keyboard is also decent. The trackpad is awful. Lots of fake touches if you so much as wave your hand over it, and it presents itself as a PS/2 mouse so you can't even use improved drivers.

Of course OEM laptops are already a phenomenon (think Clevo etc) but I've never seen them where the mainboard was not part of the platform.

It's charming and deserves consideration but I will never buy a 16:9 device.

Would love to see this in AMD. It's also just a little bit pricier than I typically pay for my to-go linux netbooks, but I'm always happy to pay a bit more to support a company that's supporting linux.

Does AMD make these extreme low voltage CPUs? The small fanless builds I see always use Intel.

Yes, the AMD A-series would be comparable. However, they also have ultra-low-power Ryzen Embedded series. [0] Their embedded machines get down to as low as 6W.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15554/amd-launches-ultralowpo...

>Weight: 0.9 kg (1.98 pounds)

I would seriously consider it along with X1 Nano

Too bad all their products are limited to 1080p displays, even the 14" one that you can order with 64 (!) GB RAM. For me it's an immediate deal-breaker.

With an 11" display, would anything higher than 1080p provide a substantive benefit for most users?

Like I said, 14". They also make a 13" model.

Looks very cool, I just wish they’d ditch x86 for better portability and ventilation.

I feel like outside of performance, x86 is kinda burden

There's a lot to like about this and I really like the direction they're heading in. So I wondered where did they come up with the specs?

> Star Labs was formed in a pub

I think I've had many similar conversations but they usually start and end in the pub. Good work lads.

Will be seriously considering the 14" model when it's time to replace my XPS 13.

Intel CPU ... sadly

Not just Intel but a funny low-end Intel. They only name their worst CPUs "Pentium" today. I can hardly expect this working any good.

That's not as true now as it used to be. AFAIK the Atom line was recently rebranded as Pentium Silver.

Looks like the most generic OEM laptop you can get from Intel reference design from Weibu.

Though, Atom cored N5**** CPUs are complete pipsqueaks today in comparison to higher-end ARM cores, the benefit is that Intel reference platforms are the most well supported, and documented pieces of hardware in the industry.

If you get an Intel CPU, put it on a PCB 1-to-1 matching Intel schematics, and fit it with full Intel chipset (WiFi, Ethernet, Enpirion PMICs...) complement, it's almost guaranteed to work.

Is this for those people who really want to post online but hate doing it on windows or Mac? I cannot see how this could be useful except as maybe a backup machine that I can use to burn a kubntu disk/usb for my real machines. Imo anything with less than 32gb RAM and a real video card is useless for anything other than consuming junk and that's why I have a smart phone, my smart phone with 16gb ram and a real video card....

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