Slashdot Mirror
Litebook Launches A $249 Linux Laptop (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
It's "like a Chromebook for Linux users on a budget," reports ZDNet. The new 2.9-pound Litebook uses Intel's Celeron N3150 processor and ships with a 14.1-inch display and a 512-gigabyte hard drive with full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080). For $20 more they'll throw in a 32-gigabyte SSD to speed up your boot time. "Unlike Windows laptops, Litebooks are highly optimized, come without performance hogging bloatware, [are] designed to ensure your privacy, and are entirely free of malware and viruses," writes the company's web site. They also add that their new devices "are affordable, customizable, and are backwards compatible with Windows software."
A current-gen Core i3-7100U costs ($281.00) more than this laptop.
But Braswell is kinda old by now, superceded by Apollo Lake.
Last I heard of Pinebook on Slashdot was a comment by vux984 mentioning it in passing.
But one disadvantage of switching from x86 and x86-64 to ARM and AArch64 is inability to run the occasional Windows application in Wine. My work flow includes a few Windows applications distributed as free software, such as FCEUX debugging version, FamiTracker, and Modplug Tracker. All are usable in Wine, even on a dinky little Atom CPU. If you go ARM, you're on your own recompiling them for linking with Winelib.
The launch was delayed due to supplier issues, this time to around March 20. Prototypes exist (photos: 1 2 3) and were sent to a bunch of involved people who are working on mainlining the drivers. The thing will ship with a smelly OS and smelly 3.10 vendor kernel, but near-mainline is basically working: only sound is missing, display currently only simplefb, proper DRM is being worked on.
(I'm merely watching #pine64, I'll try to make proper Debian installer (instead of mere dd-able images) once I get a Pinebook in my hands, but I'm only peanut gallery for now.)
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Their website
2017 and still solving the same fucking problems for the last 10 years
This is not true at all. Now with systemd there's a whole new set of problems.
lucm, indeed.
I have always used a ThinkPad that is off lease and verified. Newegg has a host of models listed between $200-$300. And the ThinkWiki will help you with the particulars if you aren't familiar with the model you get.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Hello I'm one of the creators of the Litebook, and I'm here to address a few of the comments. The Hard Drive formats to 500GB, but is advertised by the supplier as a 512GB Device.
The SSD is not a replacement for the standard drive or a hybrid mechanical Hard Drive. Its a separate 32GB drive and is seen as such by the operating system.
Skype is not a preinstalled application. We include pictures of it to show Windows Users that the applications they are familiar with will run on the Litebook.
Thank You,
The Litebook Team
So much of the Linux laptop market seems to be targeted at the low end (current story), or the high end (Dell XPS Ubuntu developer edition). Only System 76 seems to offer anything middle of the road (core i3 for $700). Not really confident linux can get a foothold in a market with a Windows 10 laptop at every price point from top to bottom.
Where is the breakthrough here?
You can glue an Apple logo on it and nobody at Starbucks will be able to tell that it's not a Macbook, as long as you pick blurry fonts and remember not to maximize windows.
lucm, indeed.
Those aren't real prices. Like AC above says, you can buy systems from Intel with similarly prices processors for almost the same price as what Intel lists for the processor. Those are either place-holder prices (just so that they can list a price in their literature), or the price that you would pay as a consumer to get one processor if you could buy one (which you can't).
What's so special about this laptop?
If I go to Alibaba and search for "inexpensive linux laptop", I get 19k hits with products like:
- https://www.alibaba.com/produc...
- https://www.alibaba.com/produc...
- https://www.alibaba.com/produc...
The big thing seems to be an angle rather than technology (hardware or software).
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
In fact, there is no mechanical HDD with full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080) either.
Google Chrome calls home. There are many alternatives easily available without Google's stalkware baked in.
Skype is insecure spyware owned and operated by Microsoft with well known intercept capabilities. It runs and consumes bandwidth continuously whether your using skype or not.
Spotify is spyware that automatically collects data about you and your friends just by logging on.
Why is it that everyone selling to consumers offering privacy and no-bloat demonstrates the exact opposite? We won't preload heaps of shit except for the heaps of shit we preload.
It's like all these companies selling "eco friendly" products that are anything but.
There needs to be third party qualification program for security and privacy that actually meet specific articulable requirements. This wild west of everyone claiming they give a shit when in fact their actions demonstrate otherwise is worthless.
The price isn't good because of a little fact that Linux fanboys don't want to admit after making the falsehood a meme....in reality there is NO Windows tax, its in fact a tax BREAK because the OEMs get paid by third parties to put their trialware into the OS. This is why MSFT has been selling trialware free PCs in their store and offering Windows for certain designs (such as 7in convertibles) at lower prices or even free with the stipulation that there is no trialware as it slows Windows down.
Speaking of convertibles,has anybody had any luck installing Linux on one? Because I've seen 10 inch Intel Atom quad convertibles going for as little as $89 and if you could get a really light Linux like Puppy on one of those? That would be a kick ass netbook/tablet to have around. I know Puppy on my 2011 AMD netbook is crazy fast and its just a dual core (albeit with a decent AMD GPU) so having a quad version that is also a touchscreen tablet? Would be seriously awesome.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No, this is Linux were you do not need an ungodly amount of CPU power to do the simplest things...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.
Fortunately, in the mobile space, this is easy to determine. Look at the model number: if it starts with a letter, it's based on Atom. Just don't buy it. However, if it starts with a a number (may, but not must have a trailing letter), you are looking at Core based Celerons. Those are actually, very good. They make decent desktops for light users. Sure, you're not going to do some heavy CAD/CAM on them or high-end gaming, but for someone doing Office work they are fine. I have a user running a database on it (for specialized software related to his farm), and I have a Celeron running as a Xen host with a few light-use VMs on them. Works fine.
For desktop Celerons, I am not completely sure how to identify the lame Atom ones. From what I remember, if the model number starts with a "J", avoid them.
Now, of course, the described laptop is an Atom based one... So, I wouldn't buy it.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
When your Xorg process uses a ton of CPU and your graphics driver is bad, a linux desktop is quite bad with overhead also Gnome 3, KDE are pigs or at least quite heavier than XP was.
Then please explain to me why Thunderbird connecting to a Linux server (over WAN, no less) does not seem to have that issue?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Actually, 540GB, since HDD densities tend to be multiples of 6, while SSDs are powers of 2
I just want to add that I agree wholeheartedly with you. I run a Celeron N3150 as a PFSense firewall... seriously overkill for that job, but it runs fanless and just plugs happily away day after day without a hitch. It does get somewhat toasty at times when there's a lot going on (I run Snort and various other services on the box so it can get up there sometimes) but even at high temps it seems to be really stable and usable.
I did put Linux on it at first and had the Ubuntu desktop running on it... very slick and fast with 8GB of RAM. Definitely no slouch of a machine.