Your New Raspberry Pi: ThinkPad 11e Gen 5 (11“) for $169 | Hacker News Reader

Your New Raspberry Pi: ThinkPad 11e Gen 5 (11“) for $169

lenovo.com

8 pointspulse711 comments

The raspberry pi platform has GPIO as the main feature. This Lenovo is just a laptop. Some people use a raspberry pi for lightweight computing.

Without exposed GPIO, this is not comparable.

These Windows netbooks were Microsoft's panicked response to Chromebooks. Unlike Chromebooks, they're mostly too slow to be of practical use as netbooks. But they're small, cute and super-portable laptops in any case.

I run Linux on a much older one myself. I even wrote a book on it - LibreOffice is relatively small and fast these days! - though the box is too slow to be practical as a netbook).

If you want to Linux one of these, watch out for the following:

* severely anaemic processors

* you will be compiling your drivers from source

* usually for the worst wifi hardware in the world

Nice to see they're at 8GB now - 4GB was just too cramped in the modern world. 8GB, you can at least run a browser ok.

Slightly disappointed at the 768p screen - mine has 1080p and it turns out retina is correct.

Here's my 4GB Linuxed netbook, which I think is 2016 hardware (certainly the CPU is): https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/608064.html

If your use case is "desktop Linux"—sure, wipe it and install linux. But in other common pi use cases, absolutely not. This has several components that are not required here—most notably a screen and battery, and lacks the easy GPIO capability. And even if you're going for "cheap computer", there's likely other better choices out there, especially without a windows license.

And—somewhat unfortunately—any non-pi choice will lack the common mass adoption of pi; you may find issues and incomplete support for your use case, like this (even from a pi-analogue like rockchip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxD_0q8tAdc

I was expecting a cheap N4120 small form factor desktop, which would be a better alternative--and you can get slightly older chips for even cheaper.

Is it available without the Windows Tax?

Your New Raspberry Pi!

ThinkPad 11e Gen 5 (11") for $169

Specs: 2.6GHz CPU / 8GB RAM / 128GB SSD / 11.6" Display / 720P Camera / Keyboard / Battery

I mean, it's a cheap low-wattage PC that can probably run Linux. That alone doesn't make it a Raspberry Pi though; the motherboard is still much larger than an RPi SOC, and the wattage is low, but still higher than most Pis.

Even as someone who prefers x86 machines for most projects, I think it's misleading to pitch this as a Raspberry Pi. It's a cheap Intel netbook that is far from a drop-in replacement like some of the RockChip boards are.

Not until they can match the Pi's software availability. In that regard, cheap Intel Celeron are a _vastly_ better alternative to the Pi than anything in the RK series, and can be gotten cheaper to boot.

What do you mean? I was under the assumption that modern Rockchip and Pi boards are both on AArch64 now.

CPU architecture is only 20% of the problem here. Hardware support and being able to run mainline kernels and distros is a much bigger issue.

The baseline kernels and Linux distributions that are currently available for Rockchip boards are still stuck in 5.10 (or were a few months back) and both kernels and drivers are poorly maintained. It is rather ironic to see something like the RK3588 (or the S variant) with a GPU driver that is almost irretrievably broken outside Android, for instance (depending on vendor).

Likely the best software support in that regard is from Khadas (who at least have remote flashing working), but some boards can't even boot from NVME without messing about with serial consoles and reflashing selected bits of their controller hardware.

(You can point out that the Pi still has binary blobs in their firmware and that the Pi CPUs themselves are essentially an afterthought around the VideoCore chip, but Raspbian is exceptionally well maintained in comparison, and so is Ubuntu for the Pi. And although Armbian is pretty amazing, they can't match that for other boards either.)

This is why I will take a Celeron over a Rockchip any day. There is, in a nutshell, very little for Intel board vendors to frak up.

> This is why I will take a Celeron over a Rockchip any day.

Strictly speaking, so would I. That was part of my original comment; I prefer x86 hardware all days of the week.

That being said, if your concern is software compatibility, I don't really see many Pi applications that don't elegantly translate to other ARM-based SOCs. Yes, Rockchip has limitations, but for hobbyists it probably won't make a big difference. The lack of mainline kernel support stinks, but for everyone that isn't manufacturing an LTS critical support system, it's fine.

I agree with you more than I disagree, but my experience using the Orange Pi and Raspberry Pi has not been radically different.

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