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Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

endsormeans, the N810 or N900 being usable then or now was never in question.

It was just not ever fully open. That's my point. And to this day, there exist bits of both of those devices that were never even tapped, exploited or managed to even be utilized.

Oh well. Open. Laughable. But great devices nonetheless.

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

Oh I was never questioning the openness of the n8x0 line.
I completely agree with you.
and also completely agree with you concerning the untapped aspects of the device line. One day perhaps...one day...

I was just mashing up my writing on the topic considering all the different parties speaking on devices...

I have come to the conclusion myself that either the neo or at worst the pyra (not convenient as a phone ...but would suffice...just...)
A maemo running modern device still runs into the issue of support... software... wise ... and that means we are still pretty much stuck where we are.

So a pure debian smartphone makes the greatest common sense...
especially for longevity of the platform.
I am tired of all the :almost open but not quite` platforms... that fail..... all for the same reasons...

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

Quote:

Originally Posted by pythoneye2 (Post 1509271)

Sadly the Rasberry Pi has nearly no powermanagement and draws nearly 0.5W even in idle.
For comparison N900 draws 0.035W in idle.
...

This is always the first thing on my list when I revisit
possibilities:
power needs to last at least 8hours to be useful,
which eliminates stuff very quickly.
We can always "within reason" add capacity,
but that "within reason" gets reinterpreted very quickly.

If it is only barely pocketable
(8inch form factor is only good for
people like me who wear cargo pants)
then extra battery is impossible.
But, on the other hand, a 3 inch screen is almost pointless.
(almost, but not quite,
if you are willing to serve a tablet through it)

7inch (micro-bezel!) resistive 1280x800+
with 8hours+ is my holy grail.
Nothing fits that can actually -run- linux.
The continuing diarrhetic horror stream of people
rediscovering how incompatible closed source Android
stuff is with actual linux distros just squelches
any thought of trying more ARM hardware.
(LinuxOnAndroid is something I will never trust)
The only way ARM appears to be able to succeed is if
the project begins from a linux-compatible beginning.

Buying anything that is Android-based
and then trying to shoehorn linux onto it
just looks impossible.
GPD may work, PYRA probably will, Neo900 certainly,
but virtually no other business out there will
invest in linux compatibility.
(This means PYRA, GPD, and Neo900 will
corner the entire linux dev market, not a bad thing actually)
((CHIP - noted, yes, but not sure where they are headed))
See Also this, about probably the best CPU hope fail:
https://hackaday.com/2016/04/21/pine64-the-un-review/
The comments are ~~excellent~~ golden:

Quote:

Joshua Blomberg (@si_jblomberg) says:
April 21, 2016 at 11:15 am

Every time one of these ARM boards comes out, it only serves me as a reminder of why I stopped paying attention to the single board computer market. Yes, the assortment of RasPi’s are wunderkinder. Yes, people love their Odroids and Beaglebones and all those other boards built around oh-so-convenient ARM SoC’s. But, really, aside from the novelty of its size and how much proverbial punch you can get out of something that small, what’s the real advantage of using ANY ARM-powered Linux SBC?

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that the fact that you can get near-desktop functionality out of something the size of a wallet justifies its own existence, or even that the justification is that people buy it. Both of those statements are true; I don’t begrudge the free market its ability to release whatever products people think they can sell, barring obvious concerns such as product and user safety. However, that doesn’t mean the market shouldn’t be criticized for bandwagoning and a lack of giving people what they really, truly want: A small, low-power, expandable computer.

Personally, I’ll wait for Intel to pull their heads out of their asses and start releasing an Edison-like system that gives me all the wonders of a RasPi with a processor that actually allows me to run the sorts of programs I’d actually want to run on a tiny computer connected to m

Now that Intel has realized
how flawed their Baytrail ideology was,
maybe the future will have hope.

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kabouik (Post 1508568)

I'm currently using a tablet/laptop with a Wacom digitizer layer (Thinkpad Helix), and although it is indeed a great addition to capacitive screens, I have to say that the Linux support is not as good as it is for Windows. The corresponding driver was not compatible with Linux initially, if I remember correctly the first compatible driver came out with no pressure sensitivity. Even now, I experience lower accuracy and lower performance compared to Windows. The performance issue is a significant delay between the stylus and the actual drawing on the screen, which often beats the point of the stylus because you cannot use it naturally or draw smooth curves as accurately as you would want.

However, for what it's worth, this laptop never was a good choice for Linux, it seems, even though it's a good machine. I have experienced a lot of hardware issues that I didn't get in Windows. I have chosen to stay on Linux anyway, but I'm pretty much not using the tablet feature at all (almost never use the digitizer, never detach the screen because of bad touch support (no right click with long touch or double touch), suboptimal touchpad/trackpad experience, no good virtual keyboard appearing automatically when touching a text field when in tablet mode, screen rotation is not good, one hardware button is not recognized...). None of these issues exist if I boot in Windows but, well, I still don't want to boot in Windows.

I do not exclude that these Wacom issues are just bad compatibility between the digitizer model on my laptop and my Linux distribution (though I don't know any Linux distribution offering a perfect experience with the Thinkpad Helix). It might not be true for all Wacom digitizers and Linux distributions. But anyway, even on Windows, the Wacom stylus does not offer the level of accuracy I experience on the N900's resistive screen; it's actually quite far from it.

I used separate tablets a long time gone now...and I just didn't like the disconnect I found. I've also gone through almost every model of tablet and convertible ...and I enjoy immensely the toshiba line of portege's ..I use a very old m200 for graphic work ...since the screen real estate and resolution is wicked. as well I am using still as my primaries ....a m700 in my shop and daily 2 m780 (i7's) ... the wacom pen on the entire line I could never complain about... they have been stellar... also in my m700 and both m780's I have 2ndary harddrives in the optical bays.... so I just flip out drives and pop in others with different os's ...and use the internal hard drive as storage... fabulous with Linux distro's too.... Everything I've thrown at the machines and they only bucked at a couple of distros... and even those distros I could have gotten working... but ...meh! ... what are a couple oddball distros compared to all the others it runs... been happier than a pig in mud ever since....It is too bad they never continued to create more in the line... still.... for the foreseeable I will be using them for a long time to come.

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

Yep, but the problem is the lack of alternative, even in the OS segment.

Companies don't create GNU/Linux smartphones because they don't have anything to put in.

We have Sailfish which slowly paves its way. Fingers crossed. Big players aren't interested in geeks, so we won't see it from the big players. Small player won't create hardware we want, since they have to target the average Joe (or they may go bankrupt after 2-3 devices)

We have Ubuntu Touch/Firefox OS/Plasma Mobile. Ok, kidding, we'll have.

Finally we have desktop Linux. But how many mobile adapted apps are there for Debian? Ok, the GNOME family (if you like their design). But any e-mail client? Any browser? Phone app?

I think it may be a good idea to swallow that crappy Android (see my another thread, where I ask for suggestions of such devices) but take a good device (driver-wise). To have some hardware to test the new alternatives to emerge. They'll all use libhybris, I'm more than certain.

And I still hope we'll someday be able to set up our own distro on a phone just as we do it with our desktops.

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

marmistrz, i need to have a go at debian900 at some stage, either on my daily as dual boot or preferably on a 2nd (yet to be purchased) n900. if i go for the gdp win or something I would want to dual boot with win10 or just go full debian or arch (use it on the eee).

i need to try my gtk3 work on a real device when it's in a decent state. still needs gtk theme and init/systemd work.

was going to try on a pi3+tft first (again, not purchased yet) because its a little easier to back up and restore sd. also it creates a platform to test/learn libhybris and potential future ports. this route requires replacing matchbox with mutter so is a long long way off if i ever decide to do it. mutter does iirc have a sort of single window/maximised option that might work out.

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

Android_808: I'm not exiting the ship today or tomorrow. Not even in a week :)
Even if I get an Android, I'll still be dreaming of some decent mobile operating system.

I'll be working on DebiaN900 too. I think about using Gnome-Shell, I'll see how usable it'll be. Seems to have similar concepts to h-d.

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

And if we can't get a slider...
I heard about some people using BT or USB rubber keyboards with their Android phones, this way: http://cdn-www.bluestacks.com/Androi...-2-550x366.jpg

Folks, have you tried it yourself? What's your experience? Is it worth it or slider forever?

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

Quote:

Originally Posted by marmistrz (Post 1509332)

Small player won't create hardware we want, since they have to target the average Joe (or they may go bankrupt after 2-3 devices)

Could you please expand on that argument? I do not quite follow. If they were to target the average Joe, they would put an average OS on it. By using a niche OS, they are already targeting a niche audience.

There are reasons why small players cannot make top-notch devices hardware wise, but catering for the average Joe is not one of them, IMO.

Re: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2016?

Quote:

Originally Posted by pichlo (Post 1509362)

Of course. There are two cases.
1. BRICS-oriented Sailfish phones. Ok, here you've got me, indeed niche. But, e.g. Intex Aqua Fish has such a price! And I'm pretty sure the BRICS governments are pouring some money to make the world a less Googly place.
2. The rest. Usually there are two variants of the phone released. One with Android. The other with $ALTERNATE_OS_NAME. (See the Ubuntu devices, Turing phones)
If the niche system doesn't sell, they can just change the software, and sell as an Android device. They can possibly win the niche at low risk.

The average Joe doesn't care about the name of the OS, how well the system is designed. He cares about how slim the device is, how pretty, how much can he impress his friends, whether he can make a good quality selfie at a party and put it on Instagram without hassle. And get $HIS_FAVORITE_BUT_UTTERLY_USELESS_APP_GEEKS_SIMPLY _USE_BROWSER_FOR (got so Java!)