Pinebook Pro Update: The $199 Linux Laptop is Almost Ready to Go
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There's a new video out today with the final, pre-release version of the Pinebook Pro playing movies and games and so forth: https://invidio.us/watch?v=F-Yh8uiA2TY
With the Panfrost libre video driver, this should be a decent little libre notebook except for the need for an atheros wifi USB card. Once Trisquel 9 is released for ARM devices, hopefully this wil be a $199 machine that can run nearly everything needed for a decent Trisquel notebook.
Also, Pine64 announced recently that there will be 3 kill switches for the wifi, bluetooth, camera and microphone. So sounds like good for privacy as well.
The big concern of Spectre/Meltdown/the-like remains though.
Pre-orders for the PineBook Pro are being taken now: https://store.pine64.org/?product=14-pinebook-pro-linux-laptop
> It is black.
Remember, thieves hate black laptops. It's a security feature.
I have asked pine64.org about the pinebook. I have sent an email to them about one or two months ago. I told them that:
・I might be going to buy the pinebook.
・It is regrettable that you chose the cpu that seemed to be vulnerable to spectre and meltdown.
And I asked:
・Why did you choose the cpu? It seems that there are other ARM cpus which are not affected by spectre and meltdown.
・Are you going to choose those cpus which are not vulnerable to spectre and meltdown in the future?
They ignored the email.
I have exchanged some emails with Thinkpenguin before I purchased the router. They gave me replies normally. I apologised to them for asking somethings before I become their customer. I don't know well how useful/reliable the router is. Anyway they gave me answers.
If the owner of the classic sport car shop did not answer questions of customers sincerely, it would go bankrupt immediately. The world is of course very small. People will talk. There is no room to educate their customers, of course. They are very worldly. Despite they are asking about its accelerator, an owner of a car shop started to talk about its brake, they would think he is crazy. I think generally such a thing is needless to say though. Similar things seem to happen in the computer world somehow. There seems no difference between proprietary things sellers and free things sellers. It might be worse because they raise the flag of ethics.
Of course I don't buy a pinebook. Even Apple's customer service staff answer my questions even if those are nonsense. I am going to show those exchanges with them (not just with Apple) in the future. It might be interesting.
I have no knowledge on computers but I can judge the sincerity of a seller from question and answer. If they did not answer your questions sincerely, reasonably, it would be better that you avoid the shop. They might blame you for somethings (anything, they can find it easily) finally, like the vendor of the librebooted devices. Laugh. I don't know well how such a seller can make sincere goods.
They only have used a few cpu's in their devices, including the Allwinner 64 and the Rock64. They are using the Rock64 Pro in their Pinebook Pro laptop because it is their fastest.
If you want to chat with them, they are on their IRC channel all the time and they push people to chat with them via IRC instead of by email. You can easily join the IRC as a guest at this page: https://www.pine64.org/web-irc/
I asked them your question on IRC this morning and here is what they said: They have the "cortex-a53" which is not vulnerable, but it is "Slow like ass", because it doesn't have "speculation". Speculation is what leads to the spectre and meltdown cpu bugs. Basically, you could build a laptop with an ARM cpu that is not vulnerable, but it would be very slow.
I know the original Pinebook laptop uses the cortex A53 cpu, so you could try that one. It is only $99. https://store.pine64.org/?product=11-6-pinebook
I was wrong about one point above - the Allwinner 64 and the cortex A53 are the same cpu. So, if the cortex A53 is safe from the effects of speculative execution attacks, then all of the Allwinner 64 cpu products from Pine64 would probably be safe. This would include the original Pinebook and the upcoming PinePhone.
I think that I had checked the official list of cpus of ARM before, though... Indeed A53 seems not to be vulnerable to them.
But you might have received the answer from them but I have not received it yet.
I tried to join the IRC as a guest but somehow it shows a blank page. Sometimes I also got an error message (server error 500). I declined their cookie so it might be the problem, or already banned... Anyway I will try it again later, to be used to that IRC too.
99$ is attractive. If they apologized for their rudeness, I might reconsider to buy it.
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