Review: First impressions of Pinebook, the $99 Linux laptop


When I first heard about the Pinebook back in April 2017, I became very excited. I am always on the lookout for a good travel laptop, something that is small (less than 12 inches in screen size), light (not much more than 1 kg), thin and inexpensive. Although there are many nice notebooks that would meet most of the above criteria, they all have one big flaw on the software side of things - they come with Windows pre-installed. The last time I used Windows was in early 2001 and I have no desire to return to that estranged companion with which I'd never had a very good relationship anyway. As such, I don't see a point in paying a hefty license fee for a product I will not use. This disqualifies all computers built by the established manufacturers as they are extremely careful not to irritate the software giant by shipping Linux (quelle horreur!) on their machines.
So what about the specialist Linux laptops assembled by the likes of System76 or Slimbook, you might ask. Well, these have certainly been on my radar for some time, but unfortunately neither of them offers a sub-12" laptop configuration at present. One reasonable compromise would be a Chromebook which is light and cheap and which doesn't come with Windows. However, I've always found Google's implementation of Linux on these machines severely limiting, even in developer's mode (although I hear the more recent Chromebooks with the ability to add Android apps are much more versatile). Installing Linux alongside Google Chrome OS or booting a full-featured Linux distribution from an SD card would be a decent option, but still not ideal. So once the news about Pine64 developing a low-cost, 11.6-inch Linux laptop started circulating on popular tech websites, I became very interested.
-

- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version- 3038 reads
PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is released
After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release.
|
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech
The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world.
Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility.
|
today's howtos
|








.svg_.png)
Content (where original) is available under CC-BY-SA, copyrighted by original author/s.

Recent comments
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago