Thread: What's the best Handheld gnu/linux machine for 2017?
View Single Post
theonelaw is offline theonelaw
2017-09-19 , 15:18
Posts: 671 | Thanked: 1,630 times | Joined on Aug 2010
#142
Originally Posted by Venemo View Post
As far as I see, there are a few possibilities in 2017:

GPD Pocket
Aside of GPD's horrendous communication, at least this project has delivered actual hardware. However the number of reports about faulty machines and GPD's sloppiness in reacting to these (see their indiegogo page) is kind of scary. At least there are a bunch of people for whom it works well, even though they ship with Ubuntu it does need some tweaking before it is usable.
But hey, this is the only device that you can actually buy out of this list.
I confirm the GPD Pocket is not perfect,
but it is very nice out of the box.
I have already begun testing various distros to get a handle on it.
Having a keyboard again is like being back in paradise.

[Using external RF and BT keyboards with my tablets is horrible,
but onscreen keyboards are also pathetic.
My ACER w4-821 power supply smoked last week,
but this arrival means the ACER will not be missed at all.]

The GPD Pocket probably has a few more bugs to sort,
but it is here, now, and not priced out of reach.
It can be bought, it can run linux very well,
and is not tied into whatever dreamscape some walled-garden-dev
wants to inflict on consumers.
And that is pure gold.
(Ubuntu Phone was and still is a miserable disappointment)

Librem Purism 5
Good points: they have chosen a SoC vendor which actually seems to support some sort of a mainline kernel. They also recognize this will cost a LOT so have a high funding target (which either will or will not be met). However I'm unsure why they push their "PureOS". I do NOT care about yet another dead platform phone OS, I'd like to just run my favourite Linux distro. Aside of this, the hardware looks cool, but lacks a keyboard. I also don't quite understand Purism's laptops: they ship outdated but _very_ expensive hardware.
What do you guys think?
The Purism is a very hopeful direction,
but as I alluded to above,
if the hardware needs a specific software
then this locks out Linux solutions already coded and ready to go.
And makes creating new solutions a headache of learning new
integration steps.

If we cannot load and run something
open-source and completely configurable,
in favor of some dev group's idea of
what we must be running on their hardware,
then my interest will ice over very quickly.

It is my opinion the GPD Pocket is demonstrating a way forward.

The Pyra, if they stick to their plans,
should also be an amazing machine.
__________________
Three n900s: One for stable working platform,
One for development testing Chopping Onions
One for saltwater immersion power testing resurrected ! parts scavenging

My Mods for Wonko's Advanced Clock Plugin:
ISO8601 clock mod and Momental_IST clock mod

Printing your Email with the N900
 

The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to theonelaw For This Useful Post: