Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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