A case of polls!

[levi]

I think there may be more linux users than most computer users think, but the union of people who play games regularly and use linux on their computers is smaller than that for sure. Luckily, the Pyra isn't purely focused on gamers, but that back in the day at least was my in to these kind of devices; I lurked during the GP32 days, signed up but still mostly lurked during the gp2x days, then jumped when the pandora came along, and now I'm hooked.

Back then, it seemed after an initial release of closed source NES emulators on PC, most emulators coming out came out in open source forms, and I'm not sure how many people either installed them from source on windows PC, or packaged them up for PC users. Whatever, I knew there was good stuff coming from open source projects, and that meshed well with smaller battery powereed devices at least for stuff up to Mega Drive. Little did I know what you could really play PS1 and N64 and still use your battery for a while.

What the GPD windows devices at least give you is the ability to sup windows AAA games for a few hours before your battery dies. You'll never be able to do that on your Pyra, at least until box86 starts to support 64 bit opcodes.

Maybe focussing on gaming isn't the best way to sell the Pyra, at least in more than a 'it also plays games' sense. The linux terminal gives you a lot of power, but I'm not sure how saleable that is to the average user. Maybe focusing on that fact is also has GPS and mobile data for working on the move along with the same sort or chops these devices have always had.

Or we could just do the same sort of thing that sold all of those Pandora back in the day. Average users putting gameplay clips on youtube did that in the main. Or maybe showing off the coolest graphical* apps on Linux on the move would be good, GIMP and especially inkscape, plus libreoffice.

* By 'graphical' I mean something that runs under X [Windows] or wayland, rather than strictly under the terminal.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

AAA games are boring compared to rogue. Maybe the Pyra should be marketed by demonstrating how many rogue games it can run simultaneously.

 

[levi]

Debian seems to have a number of roguelikes in its repos, but no actual original unix rogue. But you could probably run dozens of copies of angband simultaneously.

 

[Grench]

I'm still wishing for the same version of Vulture that we had on the Pandora to get ported to the Pyra. The Pandora could run Vulture for ~14 hours straight at low-mid brightness (Vulture uses hardly any CPU).

For those unfamiliar with it - Vulture is an isometric graphical overlay on top of Nethack and other rogue and roguealike games. But - it has a weird history of being open source / free then becoming open source / paid and the licensing on the current versions are a bit of a head scratcher.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

One of my favourite roguelikes is TomeNET. It's multiplayer, very complex, and very fun. Nixpkgs does not even have it, I had to build my own package.

 

[levi]

I dunno. I've got linux on two computers, one I don't game on at all and the one I'm typing this on, I did complete VVVVVV on, I did complete a fire emblem GBA game and play various PC engine games under mednafen, and I have most recently started a new commander in Oolite, but these days I only play Oolite about once a month and I don't have mednafen installed any more, and I've not even checked if VVVVVV can run at all for a couple of years.

 

[NOP]

There will be marketing as soon as the first batches are out.
ED does not want to advertise it more and get negative reviews by people who are disappointed because of delays.

Call me dumb and such but I still believe in SmachZ.
They are in about the same situation but they did sell thousands of units upfront.
And they communicate badly.
The Pyra did not get that huge press attention and so people are not calling us "scammers" whenever they hear "Pyra".
And of course communication is key.

Thats is oft course a good point.
I worked for a company where we where developing an embedded an linux devices and even it took some time, this projects back then pales in comparison to the complexity of a clamshell device. And we worked full time. But companies only doing so set the expectation level quite high.

@Robert Taylor The GPD Win2 I have and the Pyra have a lot on common. I also run Linux on the Win, as it is just a laptop, it runs fine. It has a lot of power. So there is no real need for optimisation. Espacily as most programs target x86 anyways.

The buttons on the back are not that bad, of course not ideal.
But way better than none.

Of course there is no keyboard backlit (this realy is one anoince where I wish I had a Pyra instead, only 2 month™).

Battery can't be easily replaced or hotspawed but battery live is better than expected.

No, nothing is open source sadly (only the OS, in my case),
closed BIOS, hardware and Intel ME.

Yes, some spare parts are available on a nice german retro shop
(This actually saved me as my first gen display ribbon cable failed, thanks Ed!)

No special cases or keyboards available.
Although the keyboard is not to bad.

I am getting quitle alot out of the Win2 using it with Linux.
Even used it at work for some tasks.
Let's see how the Pyra handles my use cases.

 

[netcat]

I suspect thumb typing will be a non-issue even for medium sized projects. I did heaps of coding on my zaurus c860, which surely had a crappier keyboard. I'm talking c, ruby, perl, haskell, R, bash - messy languages - all on vim. no problem. the bottleneck as usual was my brain.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Still no email in my inbox.

 

[NOP]

@Robert Taylor
The keyboard is actually quit usable.
You do not want to write an essay on it.
But for some small commands or a quick E-Mail replay its good enough that I would not go to the hassle to connect it to a keyboard, even wenn one is laying next to it.
As this is often the case wenn I was developing on my main machine but had also some code running on the Win, needed for my Project.
I preferred it to just tumb tips in my changes.

So for short, you do not need an extra keyboard when you are taking the Win2 with you.

If you are installing Linux everything "just works" you only have to rotate the display (and depending on your desktop environment also the touch screen).
I am using xubuntu at the moment and does not had any bigger Problems.

Battery live is suprinsingly good, but heavley depend on what you are doing.
I installed a nice 500G pcie ssd, and the Win2 is plenty fast for my needs. Not that it would replace a workstation PC, but like a proper Laptop.

The win has some drawbacks for sure but at the moment, considering that the Pyra is not available jet, the Win ist the best device for me. The missing mobile internet is not that bad as I just use my phones hotspot when I need internet.

I don't think the win is going into a drawer when the Pyra arrives.
In a perfect world I would merge them.

 

[A2000]

Still no email in my inbox.

Same here. I even emailed ED with a copy of the PYRA receipt. But no reply. On the other hand I'm not really worried, as ED wrote there will be more models than needed. As almost all others answered the survey one of these is going to be mine (and another one is going to be Linux-SWAT's).

A2000

 

[docbroke]

As long as you two are happy with pink with green dots, ofcourse.

 

[mecksg1]

so im just going to ask since i have been out of the loop for a bit. when is shipping going to happen?
please dont yell at me on this question, been out for a while and was wondering

 

[levi]

It's still 2 months away as far as I'm aware. We've not been told it'll be any shorter yet at least. Assembly of lids is due to start soon I think, so it might be a short 2 months.

ARE YOU SURE YOU WOULDN'T PREFER TO BE YELLED AT?

 

[Bibifuret]

It seem 2-4 months in order for the first batch...
Sooooo ,you come back just to know when you have to pay ???

 

[mecksg1]

It's still 2 months away as far as I'm aware. We've not been told it'll be any shorter yet at least. Assembly of lids is due to start soon I think, so it might be a short 2 months.

ARE YOU SURE YOU WOULDN'T PREFER TO BE YELLED AT?

yes please yell away

Post automatically merged: Sep 1, 2020

It seem 2-4 months in order for the first batch...
Sooooo ,you come back just to know when you have to pay ???

no, life and work has been in the way this summer

 

[A2000]

As long as you two are happy with pink with green dots, ofcourse.

Sure, it's unique!

 

[Silent-Hunter]

so im just going to ask since i have been out of the loop for a bit. when is shipping going to happen?
please dont yell at me on this question, been out for a while and was wondering

Probably later this month. But don't quote me on that.

 

[pyrat]

Just looked there and it says 984 (and counting).
It's just me or that's a lot ? Also, IIUI people who preordered 2 pyras get just one mail.

I mean after 6 years from preordering around 90% of people are still showing some interest in the Pyra (I don't remember well, the highgest preorders reached was arroud 1100?).
[...]
Congratulations @EvilDragon and the team !

Meaning the total number of preorders currently outstanding according to the shop (if I'm reading it right) is 1067, and the total number of survey results possible is 1067-the number of double orders (and minus 2 times any triple orders and so on), suggesting that the current survey total of 1059 is pretty damn close to complete.

Sure, it's unique!

No, it's not unique. But almost. I read there're 1063 surveys in right now. We've heard of two cases of people ordering 2 pyras and filling one survey (or was it just one case?) and there's two people not filling the survey, so apparently the Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Pinky Greeny Polkadot Pyrae will be only two.

And I thought 984 surveys were a lot !!!

 

[PowerGod]

Probably later this month. But don't quote me on that.