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How better to work on Open Source projects than to use a Libre computing device? But that's a hard goal to accomplish. If you're using a desktop computer, Libre software is easily achievable, though keeping your entire software stack free of closed source binary blobs might require a little extra work. But if you want a laptop, your options are few indeed. Lucky for us, there may be another device in the mix soon, because [Lukas Hartmann] has just about finalized the MNT Reform.
Since we started eagerly watching the Reform a couple years ago the hardware world has kept turning, and the Reform has improved accordingly. The i.MX6 series CPU is looking a little peaky now that it's approaching end of life, and the device has switched to a considerably more capable – but no less free – i.MX8M paired with 4 GB of DDR4 on a SODIMM-shaped System-On-Module. This particular SOM is notable because the manufacturer freely provides the module schematics, making it easy to upgrade or replace in the future. The screen has been bumped up to a 12.5″ 1080p panel and steps have been taken to make sure it can be driven without blobs in the graphics pipeline.
What has Soylentils' experience with open hardware been?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Wednesday January 22 2020, @03:22AM (14 children)
Windows 10 on 2 GB? That's a laugh and very misleading.
Based on my experience, 4GB is enough to barely to keep the operating system running. 8 GB is good if you have an SSD. The SSD is a requirement.
I just sold a 10 year old laptop that could only run Linux. It had 8 GB RAM and an HDD. I tried putting Windows 10 on it, but the hard drive never stopped chugging. Literally. I could just let it sit there for an hour or two and the hard drive never stopped. It ran so slow, that it was basically impossible to do anything. The monthly updates made the problem even worse. With Windows 10, it's sole purpose could only be to consume electricity without doing anything useful.
Today, my secondary computer is 8 GB with SSD and it runs Windows on the bare metal. Hardware-wise, it's not a problem. (Obviously, the OS still sucks.) My experience running it on 4 GB is limited to running Windows with 8 GB, but subtracting 4 GB for a virtual machine. Trying to do anything useful in my Windows host didn't go too well. No surprise when modern day basic web surfing can easily consume 1 GB or more of RAM.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 22 2020, @03:29AM (10 children)
https://char.learnwebcoding.com/help/windows_system_requirements.html [learnwebcoding.com]
That is what they say. It might require a cut-down version [wikipedia.org], such as Windows 10 S or Windows 10 IoT, to get acceptable performance with it. But it should still run.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Wednesday January 22 2020, @04:40AM (9 children)
I had looked at the link you provided in the original post. And I did not mean what you said was laughable or misleading, but rather the requirements the link provided. Sorry if that was unclear.
I hadn't considered Windows S or IoT. Interesting observation. Although, I have to mention that minimum requirements given out Microsoft always meant extremely poor performance since at least Windows 95.
Having had the problems I did with 4 GB, I couldn't (and still can't) imagine 64-bit Win 10 on 2 GB.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday January 22 2020, @05:04AM (7 children)
Windows 10 IoT Core [windowscentral.com] in particular runs on Raspberry Pi 2 and 3, which both had 1 GB of RAM. This experience is so cut down that it is difficult to call it Windows 10.
2 GB of RAM will theoretically work, and it is still common to see deals for 4 GB systems today:
https://slickdeals.net/f/13735292 [slickdeals.net]
https://slickdeals.net/f/13700204 [slickdeals.net]
https://slickdeals.net/f/13732478 [slickdeals.net]
It's not going to be great, but the recommendation is not that different from Windows 7. Windows 7 was usable with 4 GB, but you wanted to have 8 GB. I helped upgrade a couple people to 8 GB back then. That remains true with Windows 10 a decade later, and overlaps with an ongoing ~7-year stagnation in DRAM pricing since 2012.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday January 23 2020, @05:45AM (6 children)
Interesting info, thanks -- I'll have to try that, just because.
Yeah, I was just noticing that there sure seem to be a lot of 4GB systems out there even today. I'm wondering if the OEM and Surface Pro versions of Win10 might be slicked up some, compared to the public ISO.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:38AM (3 children)
It would be easier to not care if more of these systems were upgradeable. I would have no qualms with buying a $100 laptop and then slamming 32 GB of RAM in it for another $100, creating an unnatural $200 beast. But a lot of the RAM is soldered with no empty DIMM slots, or support is limited to 8 or 16 GB in a single empty DIMM, DIMMs take invasive surgery to access, etc. That's due to the pursuit of thinness.
You could reference blackviper.com to disable unnecessary components to improve system performance and RAM usage, but that's not really fair for a non-savvy user who picks up a low-end system.
There probably is some slicking up for Surface. And there is slightly customized AMD and Qualcomm hardware for Surface now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Thursday January 23 2020, @07:32AM (2 children)
Blackviper used to be my neighbor :) (Well, a few miles up the road. We've both since moved away.) Yeah, I've been meaning to check his latest service configs, but since my current hardware doesn't really notice all the crap running, I haven't been real motivated. And Win10's interface gives me hives, so I don't spend much time with it.
Agreed on the soldered/non-upgradable. Got nothin' against frankenputers. Don't like disposable much. My sister's office buys Surface Pros by the pallet to use in the field, says they have good performance... when I looked at the specs and innards, I was like.. this has got to be a specialized, slicked-up Win10, cuz otherwise that's just not enough machine. And lordy, overpriced for what's inside (and there's room for more, but it's not used). But business likes the convenience, and the size, and the support... and that's where all the real money is, not from us little users.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 24 2020, @08:12PM (1 child)
Still wanting a decent Linux tablet.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday January 24 2020, @09:19PM
Unfortunately not enough of a market for the big boys to pursue.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:17PM (1 child)
Looks like efforts are underway to get "real" Windows 10 ARM on Raspberry Pi 4B:
Windows 10 ARM on Raspberry Pi 4 is off to a good start [windowslatest.com]
But the real shock is that they are running it on the 1 GB version, as can be seen in this screenshot [windowslatest.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:07PM
There exists a mod called "Windows 10 Lite" which uses about 1.1GB RAM, vs the 1.5GB used by default Win10, and this "Lite" was not notably absent of features. Not surprised that they've managed to shave off another couple hundred MB. Now I'm wondering just how low it could go.. .I vaguely recall someone managed to pare WinXP down to using a mere 8mb.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday January 23 2020, @05:42AM
I've told this story before, but it's silly enough to tell again... Win2K required a Pentium and (IIRC) 64mb RAM. Well, that's what it said on the tin. I had a 486 DX4-100 with 8mb RAM that I used as a HD tester, and one day I hooked the wrong HD to it... and found myself watching Win2K boot up. Took about five minutes to reach the desktop, but after that was perfectly usable, and only a little sluggish (including Office2k). And that was with no swapfile. I was amazed.
I knew a programmer who ran Win95 on a 16MHz 386 with 16mb RAM. He said it took 15 minutes to boot up, but was tolerable after that. (Not my definition of 'tolerable'!!)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Thursday January 23 2020, @02:58AM (2 children)
Um... I put Win10 on a ten year old box (Phenom II x4, but runs about 30% slower than my nominally-slower Core2Duo, so really not a very good system) -- 8GB RAM, spinning rust HD. Runs perfectly fine. Doesn't chug the HD. Might be Update got stuck on yours and just never finished wiping its ass. Also sounds like it had some serious issue with the I/O drivers.
I can't stand Win10's interface, it will never be my everyday OS, but not because of poor performance.
Meanwhile, I recently saw a Catalina setup that used... are you sitting down?? 14GB RAM just to admire its navel. Holy crap.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Common Joe on Thursday January 23 2020, @03:44AM (1 child)
I bumped you up with a point simply because the stories I have are anecdotal and it's always good to hear another perspective.
I do have some experience with running a very small fleet of individual Win 10 laptops, but not ancient tech like the one I owned. They were modern and high powered. I don't know why you and I had different experiences. The Intel i3 processor was definitely not the problem, though. I watched the processor and it's was near idle most of the time. The I/O was through the roof, though.
Yeah. Win 10's interface does suck. It won't fix all your problems, but I suggest using the open shell menu [github.com]. It's brings sanity back to the start menu. Highly customizable. And instead of Windows Explorer, I also suggest FreeCommander [freecommander.com], although personally I use Double Commander [sourceforge.io]. Last I used it, FreeCommander is more stable and better suited for Windows, but it's a Windows only application. Double Commander is less stable, but since I use more than one OS, I can run it on both Windows and Linux. Both are feature rich and nearly have the same features.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday January 23 2020, @05:30AM
Returned the favor, good info. Does sound like problem with the I/O driver... long time since I've seen that, but that's exactly what it did, made the HD chug constantly to no effect even when the system was idle. Can also happen with the default network driver. Used to see that on IBM boxen -- without their right driver, it'd look like everything worked (no bang marks in Device Mangler) until you hooked one to a network, and brought the entire network to its knees. Was the most amazing thing.
Yeah, first thing I do with Win7 onward is install OpenShell, so I can stand 'em at all. I've used FreeCommander and DoubleCommander but have not found either to be 100% stable. Explorer++ has some good features but crashes enough that I've given up on it. Search is utterly broken in W7 onward; found some 3rd party util to replace that (don't have it up this instant, must copy to the other post-XP boxen when I remember which one it's on... you can tell I don't spend a lot of time slumming there). I live in the file manager, so having it so messed up is enough to run me off. Over time I could probably fix and block and beat the rest of Win10 into submission, but there's no making it not ugly. I don't require beauty on the desktop, but it's eye-searing brutalism.
I have... um, four different Win10 installs (original, some later version, whatever is most recent, and "Lite" which runs about 30% lighter but only worth bothering on a really cramped system -- 1GB idle instead of 1.5GB idle) ... they all perform well enough, but I still hate them all, and they only exist because Experimental and extra HDs and spare PCs with no real mission in life, so just in case. Hopefully I'll never get stuck using the damn thing for lack of choice. Win10 is what finally got me to trawl distros until I found a linux I can live with. Way to go, Microsoft... run off the users who used to actually LIKE Windows!!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.