I installed Linux on this 8-inch mini laptop, and it's my new favorite way of computing
I installed Linux on this 8-inch mini laptop, and it's my new favorite way of computing
I can't imagine many people would find this a pleasant device to do any actual work on. Maybe writers on the go, as the author says, though with a dubious keyboard layout even that is questionable.
I haaaate typing on a laptop, layout not withstanding.
My work-issued T15 G2 has a large keyboard with a separate 10-key. It's glorious.
Docks are pretty great now.
I have a dock at home and at work. Single cable to plug in and get proper peripherals, 2 + 1 monitors, and power.
It's nice to be able to undock and go sit in a Cafe to read emails or do whatever you don't need full regalia for.
I can see this working on a smaller form factor.
Yeah, I’ve been pretty happy with my usb-c dock. Although randomly I stopped being able to use all the usb ports on it at the same time. I wonder if the cable is failing.
But it’s been super useful and I don’t mind buying a new one down the line.
If you have to carry a separate keyboard, it defeats the purpose of an 8" laptop...
Well, I carry a keyboard with my 17" laptop. Carrying a keyboard with a 8" laptop is that much easier.
Same here, Meko Blink or GK64 are my usuals for my big laptop
It's not. I carry one(mix 3s) as a pocket laptop for when Im going out but might need to do some work urgently and also as a lightweight backup in case something happens to my main laptop. For the former, it's been great and saved me many times, but for the latter... this did once happen when I bonked the entire screen out. To say it was a painful week while waiting for the replacement would be an understatement. My back was killing me the entire time, and the thing is so underpowered it was easier to remote into that screenless pc rather than trying to launch stuff locally. And even with that, the thing whirred like crazy. It's fine for a few minutes at a time but hearing it sll fay got annoying quick. And dont even get me started on the keyboard...
I remember my 9 inch "netbook." That thing was dope.
I'm down to see this form factor make a comeback, personally.
I'm strongly hoping that the framework 12'' becomes widely successful so that the format keeps being relevant.
My 11" netbook is my favorite portable PC I own. A bit slow but rock solid and about as heavy as a tablet.
11 inch is a pretty nice form factor, too!
Still love my Acer Aspire v151, core i5. 11" is a great size, just big enough for a standard keyboard. I wish they would have updated models like that. A Ryzen 9 version would kick ass.
Unfortunately I think most of this audience (if there ever was any) have switched to tablets.
I remember having 10 inch netbook. It was okay for a while, but I would never want to go back to 10 inch display on a laptop. It's just horrible to use. 13 inches is ideal for me =)
Well, at least it's 1920x1200 resolution. The old 10" netbooks mostly had 1024x600 which was terrible even by standards from 15 years ago.
I've got this little tablet...you know how so many people turn an iPad into a crappy laptop by adding a keyboard cover to it? Well Lenovo turned a laptop into a crappy iPad by making the hinge a floppy skin flap with a magnetic pogo pin connector. I intended it as a little computer I can use in the wood shop, I wanted something fanless and preferably with a removable keyboard so it wouldn't be destroyed by sawdust that can run FreeCAD natively.
I'm not sure Linux is ready for tablets. FreeCAD is not ready for tablets or laptops, holy fuck it's unusable without a 5 button mouse and a spaceball. I may have to distro hop a little on the thing because it likes to wake up with the keyboard attached, not recognize the keyboard, and stay permanently in portrait mode. So wake up the computer, rip the keyboard off, wait a second, reattach.
It's kind of fuckpuke, tbh.
10 inch screen size isn't a problem though. For a general laptop I'd want to go 13 inches but for something I'm mostly going to use as a tablet and then occasionally as a laptop 10 will do.
I’ve got this little tablet…you know how so many people turn an iPad into a crappy laptop by adding a keyboard cover to it? Well Lenovo turned a laptop into a crappy iPad by making the hinge a floppy skin flap with a magnetic pogo pin connector. I intended it as a little computer I can use in the wood shop, I wanted something fanless and preferably with a removable keyboard so it wouldn’t be destroyed by sawdust that can run FreeCAD natively.
I have an 11" M1 iPad Pro with a Logitech keyboard case. It was intended to be my "laptop". Clearly that didn't work out, as Apple hath decreed that running full-blown VMs on hardware that's more than capable of doing so is not allowed on the iPad, despite the fact that the same hardware runs Mac OS in the Macbook line.
I have a Thinkpad T14 G1 now.
The library near me has a bunch of 3D printers people can rent time on, or maybe it's based on filament used I'm not sure I've never actually used them.
At one point they had some surface tablets connected up to them so people could review their 3D prints or something, (again not my area of expertise), but apparently it was enough of an issue they eventually got rid of them and just replaced them with some desktops. It seems that the 3D design software just isn't built for touch screen primary interfaces. They'll work up to a point but then you'll come up against something that you have to use a mouse and keyboard for and be stuck, so then you have to go get a mouse and keyboard.
14 here. Lenovo T-series life.
AMD T14 G1 here, with LMDE. Definitely my most used computer.
Well, you're in luck. The Piccolo N150 netbook is an 8in screen lol
I had one of the original netbooks (Asus EEEPC) back in the mid 2000s and I absolutely loved that thing. It was really great for bopping around college and travelling and such and had a killer battery life of like 8 or 10 hours or something like that. I used to run Win 7 dual booted with Ubuntu
Same had a little acer mini laptop in early 2000s I used it for notes, office apps, etc during college and between the battery life and how much more portable it was than the giant laptop I had at the time it was great, it ran BSD without any fuss too.
There's some talk somewhere else yesterday about how PC/laptop sales are tanking. It's mostly because people don't want "AI" computer.
Out of all the things in the past 20 years I miss - it was my netbook. It was amazing in college for me too.
Some say tablets killed the netbook, but there have been so many failed tablets that are not "iPad." It's a real gap in form factor and need
I loved my EEEPC. I used while study abroad before smartphones were common. It was great to carry on me at all times. If I needed directions or to check on a website I would sit at a café / restaurant / bar to have a coffee / wine / beer to grab the wifi. It was great and small enough that I could carry it open if needed. I loved it. I thought it was the future until the iPad took over
Urgh. Why do they always have to ramble about AI?
I appreciated it, since he didn't do a legit stress test. Running a local llm is intensive on the hardware, and if it performs well on that, it'll likely perform well on most standard, non-useless tasks. So, I see that part as a makeshift stress test.
There was one paragraph about AI. Hardly a ramble.
My eeePC still works. Installed a touch screen. The battery and power adapter is long gone but it keeps on chugging with a random 12V power supply.
I had one of those but the tiny keyboard used to drive me nuts it was literally unusable.
Plus it was horrifically slow for everything. Even when new.
I had a 9" HP mini 2140-- the keyboard was surprisingly good given its size.
It's just a shame the build quality matched the price and they fell apart in short order.
That keyboard layout gave me a stroke. I'd rather relocate Enter than the apostrophe. I suppose that could be remapped...
For awhile now I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a something like a modern version of the Poqet PC.
The Poqet PC had a much nicer keyboard than the laptop in the article, and between the simplicity of its software and a very aggressive power management strategy (it actually paused the CPU between keystrokes) it could last for weeks to months on two AA batteries.
Imagine a modern device with the same design sensibilities. Instead of an LCD screen you could use e-ink. For both power efficiency, and because the e-ink wouldn't be well suited to full motion video, the user interface could be text/keyboard based (though you could still have it display static images). Instead of the 8088 CPU you could use something like an ARM Cortex M0+, which would give you roughly the same amount of power as a 486 for less than 1/100th the wattage of the 8088. Instead of the AAs you could use sodium ion or lithium titanate cells for their wide temperature range and high cycle life (and although these chemistries have a lower energy density than lithium ion, they'd probably still give you more capacity than the AAs, especially if you used prismatic cells). With such a miniscule power consumption you could keep a device like that charged with a solar panel built into the case.
Such a device would have very little computing power compared to even a smartphone, but it could still be useful for a lot of things. Besides things like text editors or spreadsheets, you could replicate the functionality of the Wiki Reader and the Cybiko (imagine something like the Cybiko with LoRaWAN). You could maybe even keep a copy of Open Street Map on there, though I don't know how computationally expensive parsing its data format and displaying a map segment is.
Mad lad installed KDE Neon. Weird choice, but okay!
Uses the calamares installer, comes with all neccessary tools and, above all, is the safest bet if you need all KDE components to work properly. Makes enough sense to me but I'm biased since it's my daily driver too 😅 It's my first distro where genuinely so far "everything just works". I've had a much better experience than with stuff like Mint or Pop or whatever else people usually recommend.
I used to travel a lot and didn't need a full sized laptop but did need something more powerful than a phone, this would have been perfect. I might get one anyways for transferring files on the go from my cameras.
It arguable it's not more powerful than a phone, but the keyboard would certainly be useful.
Phones are capable of a lot, but even something basic like a network ping is buried and they prefer you to install some crappy app with adverts and in app purchases, rather than let you use the PC in your pocket.
"Upon picking it up, you can feel the metal chassis has a surprising amount of weight to it."
A surprising amount of weight is exactly what I do not want to feel when picking up a micro laptop.
That being said, it's just a little under the weight of the new 12“ surface pro. Pretty much any bag I have could easily fit a 12" laptop but I imagine it would be hard to get Linux to work well with the surface - especially the touch screen. Not to mention a pretty big price difference.
Either way, it's nice to see more options for small laptops! Maybe in a few years someone will start making small phones again.
but I imagine it would be hard to get Linux to work well with the surface - especially the touch screen.
There's a dedicated Linux kernel for Surface devices. Surfaces are your best bet for installing Linux out of any of the Windows tablets.
Neat. Like the other poster said I also have an old surface 4 I think that could really use a new life.
Thank you for this! My husband has an old surface and it’s getting slow as shit. Didn’t think there was a way to get Linux on it. Cheers!
I ended up falling into using a surface for my travel and it's been surprisingly good. I have surface pro 7+, and it's small enough to use on an airplane seat, has good battery life, a great screen, and can do some limited gaming. With an upgraded drive (1TB for $100) for movies and low end games it's a great little computer. They also run for 200-400 dollars on eBay.
I use a Lenovo nano and haven't looked back to my surface days. Has a touch screen and I really like it. Sounds like used surface market is good, but prices for new ones tend to be quite high. The 12 inch sounds really interesting to me though
What they kind of eyes do you people have? I mean, my phone screen is smaller but I'm not doing stuff I would normally do on a desktop or full size laptop.
I had better than 20x20 vision when they gave us eye-tests in high school and I’ve often gotten, “Holy shit, you can read that from here?” I always chose screen space over font-size even on small laptops but I recently had to dial it back a notch for the first time. The optometrists come for us all, eventually.
My vision still seems fine but it takes longer to adjust and focus. Like I have a digital clock I used to glance at to check the time and now I have to squint for a few seconds and wait. It’s sort of like a phone camera auto-focus where it sorts things out but it used to be immediate.
Yeah, lots of young people apparently. After the second 24" screen of my dual screen (primary is a 32" QHD) started dying I've ordered a curved 44.5" DQHD 1440p as a replacement. Will arrive tomorrow, I hope I didn't make a mistake by not ordering a second 32" QHD instead.
Its very hard to beat the laptop form factor for productivity, but i wish there was more laptops out there with all the ports and hardware features i would like. too bad that some of them are only really available in obscure cyberdecks
Thank you very much!
I need exactly something like that thing! :-D
Something I can just connect to a device to gather logs and don't need to care, that it's lying in the dirt for a few hours.
Currently I need to use my main laptop and I'm always anxious to get it destroyed. Either by dirt/dust or a careless worker in the warehouse.
So this thing seems to be just perfect for such tasks
Can't even express how happy and excited I am now, waiting for that sexy little thing to show up in my mail :-D
There was a MacBook 12 inch like this that my business partner loved. It would last all day on a charge and he was building our app with it (Xcode and I think clang builds).
This was 10 years ago though.
But can it play doom 3?
It can play 20 separate instances of Doom 2.
It can play doom 40?
I like my T14 with touchscreen but I kind of wish I went a little smaller. Cost $300 refurbished with a 2 year warranty though, and it runs great!
It's a fair bit older than yours, but I've been so pleased with my X260. I originally got it as a side to my T480 but I find myself just taking the X260 when studying and leaving my T480 as a docked laptop because of the smaller form factor, battery life is way better (6 hours for my use) and for what I do (attending online classes, programming, and other studies) the performance is good enough (on LMDE, it probably wouldn't take Windows well anymore)
The later X series like the X280 have options for quad core processors I believe if you wanted more performance. Given I only paid $120AUD for my X260 and I like the slight chunkiness of it (feels more rugged for on the go) that the X280 lost, I'm not upgrading anytime soon.
It looks pretty cute. But holy shit the mouse on that thing looks awful to use.
I don't really see the point in low powered small devices like this, when something like an iPad/Galaxy Tab/eInk tablet is far better suited to the typical tasks you'd use them for.
we don't do things because we need to. we do things because we can.
playing doom on a iPod or Zune is completely awful. so why does it exist? because someone willed it into existence. why? because they could.
Aperture Science. We do what we must, because we can. For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead.
Not really applicable here though. Can you use a terrible keyboard on an 8" screen? Absolutely. Can you use a much better keyboard on a much better screen the same size or smaller/bigger on preference by using a more common device? Also yes.
The devices you listed are either locked down, or are low powered devices themselves. None of them have a keyboard which is essential for linux.
Being “locked down” is irrelevant for a device used to read and write on. All those devices are also significantly more powerful than this thing.
They all also have keyboard attachments readily available across all sizes and prices.
Linux isn’t at all necessary for the use cases the author talks about. Windows would be massively overkill.
The use case seems pretty limited:
"when I'm on the go and I don't have room in my bag for a full-sized laptop"
First, if you're on the go, do you need a computer with you? Second, if you do, that's what a dedicated laptop bag is for.
First, if you're on the go, do you need a computer with you?
That's kinda the point of laptops
Second, if you do, that's what a dedicated laptop bag is for.
Why should I have to carry a whole bag in order to have more compute power available than a phone? This is the same argument as "you already have a bag for your mobile phone battery if you want to carry it everywhere, but why would you do that?"
The answer to that is "because they can". You don't have to like it, but others do, so if you can't understand the potential applications, then it's clearly not for you.
What I'm saying is, the use case is limited.
You can carry a bag for your laptop and have other things in it vs. fitting an 8" device into the bag you're carrying.
Sometimes all I need a small compact SSH machine when I'm at a client's site. This is a perfect use case for it.
I have a 10" Chuwi Minibook X. It's basically my go to when I go to my kids activities. For me, it's a better alternative than a phone or my tablet. It's small when folded up and weighs very little. The luggability is surprisingly better than my Framework 13. Plus, I have a real keyboard instead of a touchscreen that is surprisingly much better than I expected . That's handy for when I do want to do something more productive. And since it only cost me about $300 or so, I'm much less worried about it getting damaged.
I wouldn't just carry it around with me randomly in public. But, I could if I wanted to. It's a shame there are so few options like it. One of my biggest factors I was looking for was weight and overall footprint.
Idk, seems really cool but I have big hands and I'd be reluctant to get anything smaller than a full size keyboard. Definitely looking for a small linux-only laptop that still has all the ports I would ever need.
Eight inches ought to be enough for anyone!
It was enough for yo mom ohhhhhhhh!
j/k
did her twice, huh?