Linux Arm Netbooks?

[mduffor]

Over the past year or so, many Linux pundits have been talking about an oncoming wave of ARM based Linux netbooks. But now that my wife is looking to buy a netbook for her and I to use (and I've offered to find one for her), I'm coming up largely blank! The Pandora is an awesome Gaming device with internet/computer capabilities; but its main focus is gaming. Does anyone know of any ARM-based Linux netbooks that have at least a 10" screen, 1GB memory, a hard drive, WiFi, a good notebook-sized or 92%-sized keyboard, trackpad (touchscreen would be a bonus), USB connections, is lightweight, supports 3D (OpenGL or OpenGL ES), and is comparable in performance to the Intel Atom N450 based offerings?

I know a lot of the Pandora fans have been following ARM news, so I thought I'd check here.

The closest I've found so far is the Touch Book from Always Innovating, but it seems a little light on power but heavy on price. The goal is to have a machine that my wife can use for browsing and blogging, and that I can use for coding (for both desktop Linux and Pandora apps). I'm getting tired of lugging my 8 lbs. notebook around in my backpack everyday.


Thanks for any insights. Sorry if this is wandering a little too far off topic, but you have to discuss something while waiting for the OP team to build your Panda!

Cheers,
Michael

 

[mali]

I'm waiting since over a year. I didn't pay attention in the last weeks though, but I doubt there is much retail stuff out there, yet.
Nice site:
http://armdevices.net/

edit:
The Lenovo Skylight would fit your bill regarding specs, but it will be $499, IIRC.

 

[Alpha2]

Recently ran across this site. Might be relevant.
http://www.linux-netbook.com/

 

[ari64]

comparable in performance to the Intel Atom N450 based offerings?

None of the currently available ARM netbooks have performance similar to the Atom N450.

 

[cobaltage]

These "smartbooks" or whatever haven't materialized yet, although I was also expecting to see more in this arena by now. As Mali mentioned, this Lenovo Skylight was just revealed:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/hands-on-skylight/

David Hill, the designer some dude at Lenovo or something, discusses the design process here:
http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?p=3204

I think ARM and Intel are going to fight over smartphones, MIDs, and possibly tablets (like the iPad and MS's Courier possibly running on Windows CE6) a bit before we see smartbooks come out next year. I just saw something about how Chrome OS "Business Edition" will be out next calendar year (2011) as well.

 

[may88]

In this month's T3 mag there is talk of a £125 Freescale tablet. ETA. mid 2010.

Edit: added link.

 

[ldesnogu]

None of the currently available ARM netbooks have performance similar to the Atom N450.

That's the sad truth. So if N450 performance-level is mandatory, forget about ARM netbook.

 

[Kangal]

Looking for one at the perfeormance specs of N450, it would need to be a dual core ARM (A8 or A9) and would need to be running around the 1GHz frequency.
But adding to this, such netbook should theoretically match the N450, but it also depends on the drivers and OS.
A Linux OS should be light off its feet. The big plus is, you should have equivalent power but have longer battery time OR a smaller/more portable unit as the battery can be smaller!

 

[gruso]

The Notion Ink Adam is one of the tastier things on the near horizon. Although it's a tablet, it's not out yet, and it will probably be more expensive than your average netbook.

 

[Ollonk]

Looking for one at the perfeormance specs of N450, it would need to be a dual core ARM (A8 or A9) and would need to be running around the 1GHz frequency.
But adding to this, such netbook should theoretically match the N450, but it also depends on the drivers and OS.
A Linux OS should be light off its feet. The big plus is, you should have equivalent power but have longer battery time OR a smaller/more portable unit as the battery can be smaller!

My main machine is an Asus Eee with a 1.6ghz Atom. However, it's hyper threaded, so I get near 3ghz performance most of the time. Ubuntu and XP run faster on this than any other computer I own/have owned.

 

[Exophase]

Looking for one at the perfeormance specs of N450, it would need to be a dual core ARM (A8 or A9) and would need to be running around the 1GHz frequency.
But adding to this, such netbook should theoretically match the N450, but it also depends on the drivers and OS.
A Linux OS should be light off its feet. The big plus is, you should have equivalent power but have longer battery time OR a smaller/more portable unit as the battery can be smaller!

There are no dual core Cortex-A8s, much less ones that are competitive core for core with an Atom N450. 1GHz A9 probably isn't going to really match performance either. Atoms these days are also dual core, not to mention 64-bit. A 1.5GHz Cortex-A9 should be decently competitive. Of course this is just looking at the CPU, but it looks like the Atom netbooks have better faster video too.

Hopefully they'll converge in performance soon but not with what's out now.

And the whole "Linux is faster than Windows" bit is a myth as far as I'm concerned. The OS probably doesn't matter for most things anyway.

My main machine is an Asus Eee with a 1.6ghz Atom. However, it's hyper threaded, so I get near 3ghz performance most of the time.

Oh my, that's an impressive delusion you're under. I'm not sure a hyperthreaded 1.6GHz Atom could beat a 3GHz 386.

 

[torpor]

I have a Touchbook - I bought it to tide me over while I wait for the Pandora and have been using it primarily as a development target (alongside Smart Q7 and Zii Egg) for some of my apps - in that capacity it has proven to be a worthwhile investment, although there are still some issues that make it unsatisfactory as a consumer-level device. Right now, mostly power management and what I refer to as "OS settling down stuff" which gets in the way of having a smooth experience (recent issue related to mmcqsd consuming 50% CPU power, and so on) .. but as I said, as a development machine its really quite useful and for that it has been a worthwhile investment. If you buy one now, you get twice the RAM as mine (early adopter syndrome, grr..) but be forewarned that power management is a real issue .. it has two batteries (keyboard and tablet) and the charging/management of these batteries is, right now, a dysmal issue in the OS. So I just leave mine plugged in. Also the physical quality of the machine leaves *quite* some things to be desired - the plastic is super-flexible and not exactly something I'm comfortable bashing around a bit, as is the case with my other netbook, an Aspire One, which is a real workhorse and kicks serious ass to be truthful, and it cost about the same as the Touchbook. I treat my Touchbook as an experimentally better-cased version of my Beagleboard, which is still sitting in its ghetto toolbox, duct-taped to the wall, with a Pico Projector ..

If you give it a chance and settle in a bit, you can definitely use the Touchbook for blogging/web browsing, and it works fairly well in that role, after a bit of tweaking - I've modified my scroll bar sizes, for example, to make it more user-friendly, and so on .. don't believe the hype about the AI interface, this just doesn't work as smoothly as it should, but on the plus side they have been releasing steady monthly updates to the OS which incorporate a lot of what the community has been adding to the mix .. just, sort of quietly .. and there is also a bit of rumour going around that there are hardware bugs that need to be fixed related to USB power consumption and general charging mechanics, which means you won't get an order shipped necessarily straight away, alas.

As a getting-ready-for-Pandora machine, though, its quite satisfactory. I've been able to use the onboard compiler to build a lot of interesting stuff for Angstrom/ARM, and the compatability of the CPU's between the two machines is quite useful.

I also have a Zii Egg, which is a platform I'm hoping really takes off - I think in many ways PlaszmaOS (Creatives' custom Linux environment, akin to Android in many respects) is quite a fun environment and worth targetting, at least .. I have been able to maintain a cross-platform codebase which utilizes sound and OpenGL ES on both Zii Egg and Touchbook/AIOS quite satisfactorily.. its not a laptop per se, but there are plans by Creative to launch the Zii platform in this regard - a rumoured tablet to compete with iPad is on the books, as is a media-center system, a phone, and so on. This is ARM computing done right in many ways, imho.

The Smart Q-* series of devices is also an option, although you won't get PC-level performance out of these machines, and again the OS will need quite some tweaking if you want to get absolutely the best performance for your needs .. I can't say much about the build quality, they're quite chintzy machines really, but for the price its something you can definitely evaluate without taking a huge loss.

 

[ldesnogu]

1GHz A9 probably isn't going to really match performance either. Atoms these days are also dual core, not to mention 64-bit. A 1.5GHz Cortex-A9 should be decently competitive. Of course this is just looking at the CPU, but it looks like the Atom netbooks have better faster video too.

If you don't get a ION-based netbook then you probably won't get faster video than an SGX SoC
One A9 should be 10-20% faster at the same frequency as an Atom for integer code.

 

[Klarth]

The Notion Ink Adam is one of the tastier things on the near horizon. Although it's a tablet, it's not out yet, and it will probably be more expensive than your average netbook.

Very impressive, nice find. I'm out of time and the website does not say it: was it released or there's a date?

 

[Kramy]

My main machine is an Asus Eee with a 1.6ghz Atom. However, it's hyper threaded, so I get near 3ghz performance most of the time. Ubuntu and XP run faster on this than any other computer I own/have owned.

HyperThreading gives about a 5% boost if you have a lot of processes running on your computer.

It doesn't handle two threads at once - that'd be dual-core. It just seamlessly manages two threads at once, rather than wasting time flipping between them and thrashing the cache. Subtle difference.

If you have an Atom N330, it's dual-core, and way faster than a regular atom. You can find them in gaming netbooks like the Asus 1201N.

 

[gruso]

The Notion Ink Adam is one of the tastier things on the near horizon. Although it's a tablet, it's not out yet, and it will probably be more expensive than your average netbook.

Very impressive, nice find. I'm out of time and the website does not say it: was it released or there's a date?

It's now looking like Q3 this year.

http://www.engadget....ts-latest-form/

http://www.engadget....eo-at-mwc-2010/

 

[cobaltage]

This just came up on a Freescale 7" tablet; it includes a video:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/freescales-7-inch-tablet-runs-android-chrome-os-or-linux-cost/

 

[mali]

^ Still waiting for that other $199 device promised a year ago

edit:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/46057-arm-netbook-anyone/

 

[WizardStan]

It doesn't handle two threads at once - that'd be dual-core. It just seamlessly manages two threads at once, rather than wasting time flipping between them and thrashing the cache. Subtle difference.

Intel's marketing department is brilliant, that's all I can say. Or pure evil, although there may not be much difference between the two.

 

[Kangal]

There are no dual core Cortex-A8s

Currently not. But 1.5GHz Dual-core Snapdragon coming soon. Isn't Snapdragon a modified A8 SoC?

1GHz A9 probably isn't going to really match performance either. A 1.5GHz Cortex-A9 should be decently competitive.

I didn't mean 1GHz A9, I meant dual-core A9 at 1GHz. Yeah I think a 1.5GHz A9 (solo) should be on/near par.

And the whole "Linux is faster than Windows" bit is a myth as far as I'm concerned. The OS probably doesn't matter for most things anyway.

Firstly, what good is hardware without good software: nothing. OS is pretty important part of a PC, not just UI but performance too. Example, why was Vista cleared off by XP on netbooks? It was because Vista wasn't suitable for netbooks before Win7 release.

Secondly I do believe Linux is a lighter system than Wins. I know its a myth. Still, I didn't say it'll be faster than Wins. I should've wrote "Linux is faster than Wins, imho". To justify, LeeNux was pretty decent on 1.2GHz old Atom compared to XP which was always taking an extra moment to follow each command (eg open properties of a file, start up and switch programs (dual-booted)on the same netbook.

Atoms these days are also dual core, not to mention 64-bit.

Yes, newly 64. Only dual I know is N330. But that is a weird concept. "You decided to get a PC. You decide that mobility and battery life is more important than performance. You see Atom can save you money. You try it and not satisfied with its speed. So you get a dual-core Atom. You pay a little extra. You just realise you've lost half the battery time. You moron"
Just do what I did, get your hands on a SU7300 (or newer SU9400), which is fast enough for me (i'm very impatient, i'm on posts waiting for Pandy) and it gives me good portability (14"=good, wished it was 12" though) and best of all I get (quoted max is 8+hrs) around 6hrs surfing with wifi (LED screen brightness on lowest, which is still pretty bright and visible under Aussie sunlight). Regrets with the Acer 4810T is that keyboard good size but feels cheap and sometimes decides to not register keys unless pressed hard, and that I got it Nov on clearance for $1700 (+5yr warranty) from $2300 price, and after Xmas it was advertised as clearance on TV for a whopping $1100 at same place (H. Norman)!! Its now at $1500 without ext warranty. I'm not at a loss, but I did lose a chance to grab a great bargain/basically a steal!