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Comment by karlgkk | Hacker News Reader

If it’s not cheap, then what differentiates it from a $150 Linux laptop and $30 dongle

That's exactly my point! It's a low to midrange computer with extremely high portability including a grayscale display. Where else are you going to get that functionality combined as a single unit?

A steam deck maybe?

See the Mecha Comet

I have a $140 Lenovo education market laptop I got from their site, new. It doesn’t have a built in Ethernet port but I taped an L shaped usb dongle to the back.

I use it as a terminal mostly.

So I feel like if this costs more than $400, it’s DOA

Considering this is 6.1 inches wide and 1.6 inches thick, I think I'd be happier with a GPD that's 6.8 inches wide and 1.0 inches thick. And I can put the screen into grayscale mode if I want?

When you say "GPD", are you speaking about these?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPD_Win

Moreso the entire company and its variety of models, but yes. Especially when running Ubuntu. I think they have two models of the size I mentioned right now, one around $600 and one more expensive.

I've been eyeing the MNT Pocket Reform for a while:

https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform

A mobile phone?

There are not so many running mainline Linux with all free drivers.

Chip intended for this thing is also heavily blobbed. Even the creator lists "Push vendors to open up their existing closed-source code and ditch binary blobs entirely." as one of the goals as if small niche gadget had any chance of erven nudging the needle.

We are talking Rockchip, company mired in numerous GPL violations with latest nuking their github repository early this year.

And yet a smartphone running an FSF-endorsed distro does exist, so it's possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5. Not free of firmware blobs though.

Smartphone

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