It delivers what it promises -- an unbelievably small Windows PC -- but there are four annoying things about it.
First, the fan runs when it's charging. Every other device on Earth can charge silently when turned off.
Second, the keyboard is not just small but also oddly arranged. Maybe some people can adjust to it, but for me, dear lord do I despise the letter Q when I'm using it.
Third, there's something odd in the I/O that makes USB drives incredibly slow. The first thing I did was make a Windows 10 recovery drive on it (because I wanted to wipe it and run Linux). I kid you not, the operation took about 24 straight hours to complete. I haven't bothered profiling the system so I don't know where the bottleneck is. But it was a USB3 name-brand USB drive that I know is fast.
Fourth, they claim Ubuntu runs on it, but they took the typical Shenzhen approach of putting a modified binary on Mega -- in this case an Ubuntu ISO -- rather than upstreaming their changes or publishing source code. No way in hell am I installing a binary download like that as my OS. Maybe they are in the process of upstreaming and a future pristine Ubuntu distro will run on it. Meanwhile I'm stuck with Windows 10 (and no, I'm not happy with that, either -- I have no way of knowing it's not rooted, either).
> Fourth, they claim Ubuntu runs on it, but they took the typical Shenzhen approach of putting a modified binary on Mega -- in this case an Ubuntu ISO -- rather than upstreaming their changes or publishing source code.
Well, that makes this a no-go for me. Thanks for the info, seriously!
> No way in hell am I installing a binary download like that as my OS
Um, if you run windows 10 and install drivers from them, then you're running binary crap. (not to mention windows 10 is binary crap, but I digress)
Its a mighty fine device, my favourite Linux machine ever .. and all of the issues discussed are no longer an issue thanks to the GPD Pocket/Ubuntu community.
Thanks, I'll give it a look. Last time I looked at the subreddit, there were various people working on Ubuntu respins, but none of the projects looked like a frontrunner yet for a low-maintenance build.
Cool, thanks. I got the impression when I was first looking for distros that this project did create an initial ISO from source, but after that you couldn't apt upgrade without things getting weird. Maybe I am misremembering or maybe it's improved since then.
First, the fan runs when it's charging. Every other device on Earth can charge silently when turned off.
Second, the keyboard is not just small but also oddly arranged. Maybe some people can adjust to it, but for me, dear lord do I despise the letter Q when I'm using it.
Third, there's something odd in the I/O that makes USB drives incredibly slow. The first thing I did was make a Windows 10 recovery drive on it (because I wanted to wipe it and run Linux). I kid you not, the operation took about 24 straight hours to complete. I haven't bothered profiling the system so I don't know where the bottleneck is. But it was a USB3 name-brand USB drive that I know is fast.
Fourth, they claim Ubuntu runs on it, but they took the typical Shenzhen approach of putting a modified binary on Mega -- in this case an Ubuntu ISO -- rather than upstreaming their changes or publishing source code. No way in hell am I installing a binary download like that as my OS. Maybe they are in the process of upstreaming and a future pristine Ubuntu distro will run on it. Meanwhile I'm stuck with Windows 10 (and no, I'm not happy with that, either -- I have no way of knowing it's not rooted, either).