By: Linus Torvalds (torvalds.delete@this.linux-foundation.org),
Room: Moderated Discussions
First off, "Mr Torvalds" is my dad - upstanding citizen and MEP.
I go by just "Linus" ;)
dieselnutjob (subs.delete@this.christiantena.net) on November 23, 2020 8:30 pm wrote:
>
> I bought myself a Pinebook Pro this summer. The company most certainly want to help people run Linux.
As others pointed out, I do need a bit more "oomph" than that, even for just a laptop.
Yes, I spend a fair amount of time in just a browser reading email, but while traveling during a merge window, I need to do tens of kernel compiles a day. I do try to avoid that kind of situation (outside the merge window, my build requirements go down fairly dramatically), but it happens.
I don't need it to be anywhere as beefy as my home workstation is, but I need the laptop to be fairly good. 8GB of RAM is the bare minimum, 16GB preferred, so that IO isn't an issue. But I want IO to be reasonable (so I really really prefer a real SSD, not some eMMC thing). Four cores if they are beefy, but 8 cores preferred (with 4 good cores with SMT being a reasonable compromise).
There aren't a lot of easily available ARM laptops out there that could match that. The RPi4 is actually getting closer - at least now it comes in an 8GB version. But A72 isn't exactly a great core. It's fairly solidly "meh". The Rockchip in the Pinebook Pro isn't very close, I'm afraid, and the 4GB RAM is just not an option.
I do also care about other things, but they basically boil down to portability (~1kg is pretty much what I aim for, but inevitably it tends to be a bit more) and the screen.
The portability is because that's the only reason for me to use a laptop in the first place, and if I carry it around while traveling, I want to basically not have to feel it. And the screen is because when I don't build kernels, I read email, and I want lots of well-formed text. Even on a laptop, I basically think 1440p is a minimum requirement these days if I'm going to really work on it.
My current laptop is a XPS 13 (the 4k version), and has been for a few years (I think three generations so far).
Btw, don't get me wrong: my personal requirements have been going up over the years, but they've been going up much more slowly than the ARM ecosystem has been improving. So an ARM laptop that I would like to use looks inevitable, but it just hasn't happened yet. The M1 Macbook Air looks good in all respects except for the "runs Linux" part.
Linus
I go by just "Linus" ;)
dieselnutjob (subs.delete@this.christiantena.net) on November 23, 2020 8:30 pm wrote:
>
> I bought myself a Pinebook Pro this summer. The company most certainly want to help people run Linux.
As others pointed out, I do need a bit more "oomph" than that, even for just a laptop.
Yes, I spend a fair amount of time in just a browser reading email, but while traveling during a merge window, I need to do tens of kernel compiles a day. I do try to avoid that kind of situation (outside the merge window, my build requirements go down fairly dramatically), but it happens.
I don't need it to be anywhere as beefy as my home workstation is, but I need the laptop to be fairly good. 8GB of RAM is the bare minimum, 16GB preferred, so that IO isn't an issue. But I want IO to be reasonable (so I really really prefer a real SSD, not some eMMC thing). Four cores if they are beefy, but 8 cores preferred (with 4 good cores with SMT being a reasonable compromise).
There aren't a lot of easily available ARM laptops out there that could match that. The RPi4 is actually getting closer - at least now it comes in an 8GB version. But A72 isn't exactly a great core. It's fairly solidly "meh". The Rockchip in the Pinebook Pro isn't very close, I'm afraid, and the 4GB RAM is just not an option.
I do also care about other things, but they basically boil down to portability (~1kg is pretty much what I aim for, but inevitably it tends to be a bit more) and the screen.
The portability is because that's the only reason for me to use a laptop in the first place, and if I carry it around while traveling, I want to basically not have to feel it. And the screen is because when I don't build kernels, I read email, and I want lots of well-formed text. Even on a laptop, I basically think 1440p is a minimum requirement these days if I'm going to really work on it.
My current laptop is a XPS 13 (the 4k version), and has been for a few years (I think three generations so far).
Btw, don't get me wrong: my personal requirements have been going up over the years, but they've been going up much more slowly than the ARM ecosystem has been improving. So an ARM laptop that I would like to use looks inevitable, but it just hasn't happened yet. The M1 Macbook Air looks good in all respects except for the "runs Linux" part.
Linus
