On a 2GB RAM / 32 GB storage cheap Windows laptop, I have found that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) works fine and I would prefer it to full emulation given the limited amount of RAM available. For 150GBP, I have got a 1kg "disposable" notebook with a small form factor, decent keyboard and 10hrs battery life. I used to have a chromebook for that purpose, but I had to flash its firmware and hardware support wasn't perfect.
As a C++ development environment, you get the usual console tools (vim, git, cmake, gdb, ecc...), but g++ is quite old (4.8) which basically means C++11. Installing clang-3.8 from the repository worked, but I personally had dependency problems when I tried to install libc++. Good C++14 language support with poor C++11 standard library support works fine for me, so I didn't bother to try to solve the issue.
A problem I did not expect is the inability to access removable MicroSD from WSL, so you should be aware of that.
I am looking forward for when Ubuntu 16.04 will be available outside the insider program, so I can get an hassle-free, modern C++14 environment out of the box.
I don't know if you can still catch up with github when it comes to collaboration workflow, but as a plain web hosting service for dynamic content you're still OK. I guess that if you can use the small window of opportunity that docker gives you, you might be able to regain your place.
P.S.: I've read a hint about your https plans. That's great, but please make it optional! I would hate to leave you, as you still allow me to setup custom mime types and serve WML Pages to old feature phones.
I don't know much about mobile phone markets around the world, but what about affordability of data plans? Does it have an impact? Modern smartphones can be used without internet access (at least Android can), but then they lose a lot of their appeal.
There is a middle ground, you know. A cheap brass case will corrode in a couple of years. A Pulsar with Kinetic movement, stainless steel case and great build quality cost me around 60 pounds.
we’ve not been able to build them, because to do so would mean that we have to cannibalise Model B parts – and that would mean that people who are experiencing the backlog would have to wait even longer
Of course, you would not want to let people wait a few weeks for a Model B. People who have been waiting for months for a Model A on the other hand...
I said it before elsewhere, and I repeat it here: just raise the price of Model A to bring its profit margin on par with Model B, and let
the market decide what it wants! The reasoning that $25 was crucial to reach education is not even used to justify Model A anymore. Now it's for robotics, automation and media centers.
I know that new laptops shipping with Windows 8 preloaded have to allow the user to disable secure boot.
Now that some laptops are out there, does anyone know if disabling secure boot will still let you run Windows, ideally even after its partition has been resized? Or will the preinstalled Windows just refuse to boot if secure boot has been switched off?
Thanks, I've checked the links and they both seems to refer to 847E (even the second one, scrolling down, in the order description says "Celeron 847E,4G RAM w/4xLAN,4xCOM,2xMini-PCIe")
In the comparison on the Intel website, it looks one of the main differences is indeed the presence of the "Processor Graphics" on the 847E:
If I could get vanila linux on this, it's a fair price.
You can kick it into dev mode fairly easily, and it ships with fairly orthodox linux already on it('ChromeOS' has a deeply impoverished userland; but its kernel and such are much closer to normal desktop linux than Android is), so hardware compatibility will probably be OK-ish.
What I don't know, and haven't seen anybody mention one way or the other, is if you can(once you've entered dev mode) modify the UEFI to get rid of the scare-screen on boot.
I don't know this one, and I would like to know too, but on the ARM one, I remember reading that you could flash the firmware, but you had to open the computer and void the warranty. It could be the same for this one.
I like this kind of phones, but they might be too good for some countries. It is sad how hard it is to find a black and white phone (i.e. great visibility under direct sunlight) nowadays. I live in the UK and a while ago I was shopping for a Nokia 1200 (a similar phone). No way. I could only find 1208s (i.e. color display). At the end I had to buy it in Italy.
Well, this may be a sign of things to come. We no longer manufacture things in the US, basic big stuff like steel, etc. We just depend on buying it cheaper overseas.....however, what if this continues from Wii to other more important things we need in the US? We're fscked if all the industry we shipped overseas stops selling back to us.
On the bright side...well, maybe some of those industries will come back, but, that takes time...and with all the tree huggers over here taking so much power...it still may not happen.
I like a nice clean world too...but, strike a balance guys....if it comes to the US failing, and a couple of spotten owls, I'll feel sorry for the owls, but, I gotta say humans and our needs take priority.
Nintendo could just increase the price in dollars, but evidently they think they can make more money this way. Maybe they are afraid to lose the "affordable console" label in people's mind.
This has nothing to do with essential items; they will be shipped to the US, because they will be bought regardless of the price.
I don't like tree huggers too, but I think we are a long way to go before we reach the "human needs vs spotten owls" stage. Now it feels much more like "human fabricated wants vs cities with clean air".
Wow, that was quick. I posted an hour ago on the other thread about my worries about Device Fragmentation.
IMHO the differences in the J2ME API is not the main issue for a developer. Differences in screen size, processing power and keypad layout is much more important.
Is google going to force 240x320 (or whatever) on everyone? Is it going to prevent a manufacturer to heavily customize the look and feel? Are we going to have a split between devices having a touch screen and devices not having it?
It looks very interesting, but, IMHO, there are two questions still unanswered.
Device Fragmentation. Programmers hate it, but manufacturers love it. It allows them to say that their phone has an exclusive feature. I'm writing a J2ME midlet and I can abstract away different APIs, but I rely on a ITU keypad being present on 90% of the devices. But what if 50% of phones have touch screens and 50% don't? Sometimes it doesn't matter, but sometimes it does.
Price. I'm sorry, but this is important. Is google going after the 50-100 Euro/$ market? How? Lock-In? Ads? Fast on mid-end and great on high-end is not promising. Yes, there are a lot of people who can convince their wives to buy a 300$ gizmo. But I bet google has a good estimate of how many they are and is not that impressed.
I'm writing an OpenSource J2ME application as an hobby (shameless plug: http://jbit.sourceforge.net/) and I don't think J2ME it's that complicated. Its basic API (MIDP1) is very simple. Its second incarnation (MIDP2) is also simple. There are a lot of optional APIs, but I believe you can write interesting applications without them. Sure, if you want to use GPS, you need to use a specialized API and not every phone will support it. I think it's fair.
But this IMHO is missing the point. Are there any other platforms besides J2ME? I'm sorry but I don't see that many SmartPhones around me (Italy). Most people I know think they are expensive and bulky. I have a friend who still has a Nokia 3310. Laugh as much as you like, but its display has better visibility under direct sunlight than most "Smart" phones I've seen.
On a 2GB RAM / 32 GB storage cheap Windows laptop, I have found that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) works fine and I would prefer it to full emulation given the limited amount of RAM available. For 150GBP, I have got a 1kg "disposable" notebook with a small form factor, decent keyboard and 10hrs battery life. I used to have a chromebook for that purpose, but I had to flash its firmware and hardware support wasn't perfect.
As a C++ development environment, you get the usual console tools (vim, git, cmake, gdb, ecc...), but g++ is quite old (4.8) which basically means C++11. Installing clang-3.8 from the repository worked, but I personally had dependency problems when I tried to install libc++. Good C++14 language support with poor C++11 standard library support works fine for me, so I didn't bother to try to solve the issue.
A problem I did not expect is the inability to access removable MicroSD from WSL, so you should be aware of that.
I am looking forward for when Ubuntu 16.04 will be available outside the insider program, so I can get an hassle-free, modern C++14 environment out of the box.
I don't know if you can still catch up with github when it comes to collaboration workflow, but as a plain web hosting service for dynamic content you're still OK. I guess that if you can use the small window of opportunity that docker gives you, you might be able to regain your place.
I wish you well.
Emanuele
http://jbit.sourceforge.net
http://github.com/efornara/jbit
P.S.: I've read a hint about your https plans. That's great, but please make it optional! I would hate to leave you, as you still allow me to setup custom mime types and serve WML Pages to old feature phones.
I don't know much about mobile phone markets around the world, but what about affordability of data plans? Does it have an impact? Modern smartphones can be used without internet access (at least Android can), but then they lose a lot of their appeal.
There is a middle ground, you know. A cheap brass case will corrode in a couple of years. A Pulsar with Kinetic movement, stainless steel case and great build quality cost me around 60 pounds.
From the blog:
we’ve not been able to build them, because to do so would mean that we have to cannibalise Model B parts – and that would mean that people who are experiencing the backlog would have to wait even longer
Of course, you would not want to let people wait a few weeks for a Model B. People who have been waiting for months for a Model A on the other hand... I said it before elsewhere, and I repeat it here: just raise the price of Model A to bring its profit margin on par with Model B, and let the market decide what it wants! The reasoning that $25 was crucial to reach education is not even used to justify Model A anymore. Now it's for robotics, automation and media centers.
I know that new laptops shipping with Windows 8 preloaded have to allow the user to disable secure boot.
Now that some laptops are out there, does anyone know if disabling secure boot will still let you run Windows, ideally even after its partition has been resized? Or will the preinstalled Windows just refuse to boot if secure boot has been switched off?
Thanks, I've checked the links and they both seems to refer to 847E (even the second one, scrolling down, in the order description says "Celeron 847E,4G RAM w/4xLAN,4xCOM,2xMini-PCIe")
In the comparison on the Intel website, it looks one of the main differences is indeed the presence of the "Processor Graphics" on the 847E:
http://ark.intel.com/compare/55764,56056
From this link:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/beaa4362c7.gif
The "Processor Graphics" looks like a big chunk of sylicon.
I've also found a link to a GPU benchmark that gives the 847 a 85 score, putting it in GMA territory:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=Intel+HD+Celeron+847&id=785
Yes, I'll wait for some field reports. Not an impulse buy for sure.
If I could get vanila linux on this, it's a fair price.
You can kick it into dev mode fairly easily, and it ships with fairly orthodox linux already on it('ChromeOS' has a deeply impoverished userland; but its kernel and such are much closer to normal desktop linux than Android is), so hardware compatibility will probably be OK-ish.
What I don't know, and haven't seen anybody mention one way or the other, is if you can(once you've entered dev mode) modify the UEFI to get rid of the scare-screen on boot.
I don't know this one, and I would like to know too, but on the ARM one, I remember reading that you could flash the firmware, but you had to open the computer and void the warranty. It could be the same for this one.
I have a big question mark about X11 drivers (see my post below http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3248917&cid=41968037 ).
I'm thinking of buying one myself and installing a proper debian on it, but this is concerning:
http://ark.intel.com/compare/55764,56056
Does it mean that it has a PowerVR based GMA like the latest Atoms? That would be a deal breaker for me.
I like this kind of phones, but they might be too good for some countries. It is sad how hard it is to find a black and white phone (i.e. great visibility under direct sunlight) nowadays. I live in the UK and a while ago I was shopping for a Nokia 1200 (a similar phone). No way. I could only find 1208s (i.e. color display). At the end I had to buy it in Italy.
On the bright side...well, maybe some of those industries will come back, but, that takes time...and with all the tree huggers over here taking so much power...it still may not happen.
I like a nice clean world too...but, strike a balance guys....if it comes to the US failing, and a couple of spotten owls, I'll feel sorry for the owls, but, I gotta say humans and our needs take priority.
Nintendo could just increase the price in dollars, but evidently they think they can make more money this way. Maybe they are afraid to lose the "affordable console" label in people's mind.
This has nothing to do with essential items; they will be shipped to the US, because they will be bought regardless of the price.
I don't like tree huggers too, but I think we are a long way to go before we reach the "human needs vs spotten owls" stage. Now it feels much more like "human fabricated wants vs cities with clean air".
Italy stopped building new nuclear reactors 20 years ago, after a referendum following the Chernobyl accident.
Now the government is planning to build new nuclear reactors.
Perhaps, if atomic energy looked more more promising than it really is, the decision would be easier to sell to the public?
Maybe the tide is already changing.
Why are we talking about "unlockability"? I am in the UK right now and I am surprised about the unpopularity of "sim-free" phones here.
Wow, that was quick. I posted an hour ago on the other thread about my worries about Device Fragmentation.
IMHO the differences in the J2ME API is not the main issue for a developer. Differences in screen size, processing power and keypad layout is much more important.
Is google going to force 240x320 (or whatever) on everyone? Is it going to prevent a manufacturer to heavily customize the look and feel? Are we going to have a split between devices having a touch screen and devices not having it?
It looks very interesting, but, IMHO, there are two questions still unanswered.
Device Fragmentation. Programmers hate it, but manufacturers love it. It allows them to say that their phone has an exclusive feature. I'm writing a J2ME midlet and I can abstract away different APIs, but I rely on a ITU keypad being present on 90% of the devices. But what if 50% of phones have touch screens and 50% don't? Sometimes it doesn't matter, but sometimes it does.
Price. I'm sorry, but this is important. Is google going after the 50-100 Euro/$ market? How? Lock-In? Ads? Fast on mid-end and great on high-end is not promising. Yes, there are a lot of people who can convince their wives to buy a 300$ gizmo. But I bet google has a good estimate of how many they are and is not that impressed.
I have a lousy GPRS connection and I prefer this very snappy web site to some "designed-by-the-book" web sites I come across nowadays.
Ironically, it's the more technically oriented guys that keep wasting my bandwidth with irrelevant details about their content pipeline.
I'm writing an OpenSource J2ME application as an hobby (shameless plug: http://jbit.sourceforge.net/) and I don't think J2ME it's that complicated. Its basic API (MIDP1) is very simple. Its second incarnation (MIDP2) is also simple. There are a lot of optional APIs, but I believe you can write interesting applications without them. Sure, if you want to use GPS, you need to use a specialized API and not every phone will support it. I think it's fair.
But this IMHO is missing the point. Are there any other platforms besides J2ME? I'm sorry but I don't see that many SmartPhones around me (Italy). Most people I know think they are expensive and bulky. I have a friend who still has a Nokia 3310. Laugh as much as you like, but its display has better visibility under direct sunlight than most "Smart" phones I've seen.