[GTALUG] Pine Book Pro
D. Hugh Redelmeier
hugh at mimosa.com
Wed Jan 30 13:14:16 EST 2019
| From: Alex Volkov via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
| It looks like Pine64 are releasing Pinebook Pro, a laptop that I'm actually
| willing to pay money for and then use.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
| Specs:
|
| * Rockchip RK3399 ; big.LITTLE Hexacore A72/A53 SOC
I don't think that there are good open source video drivers for this
(Mali-T860MP4). There is a good closed-source driver from ARM but who
knows if Rockchip and Pine licensed it. There are "coming along" open
source drivers but I don't know it they are good enough.
Also: other parts of the SoC may not be well supported by open source
stuff. Video codec assists?
This chip is perhaps the best popular ARM SoC. I was tempted to buy a
cheapish TV box with one and hack it to run Linux. But most of what I
read made it look like it might take a lot of hacking. But if the vendor
targets Linux that should help
TV boxes with rk3399 chips are significantly more expensive than
ones with s912 chips. I wonder why.
| * PCIe x4 that can take a m.2 NVMe SSD using an optional adapter
Optional? I wonder why.
| I'm hoping that the product would be successful enough that there's going to
| be a release of a version with 8GB of RAM -- that would put it on par with
| ultrabooks.
I think that the rk3399 is limited to 4G.
| Thought I don't think Pinebook Pro ever going to meet its $200 US target
| price.
Yeah.
I've posted a couple of netbook deals with similare prices and
capabilities. The Atom-family processors are a lot better supported by
Linux distros. But an adventure with ARM might be fun.
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