[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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