Pyra in the wild - the real life experience

[elvissteinjr]

Well, it's mostly an Electron application, so it could possibly be made to work. Discord itself only ships binaries, though.
It may also be against their TOS, but I'm not exactly sure (they said mods like BetterDiscord are, but they won't punish for it, but they could).

 

[Silent-Hunter]

You could just use Nativefier to make a desktop app out of the web version.

That can't be against their TOS, because it's just accessing the website.

 

[Askarus]

We're doing Matlab this Semester at University.
There is an online version ff Matlab.
All you need to do is to log in with the MathWorks account.

And of course I can access it via Firefox on Pyra.
Screenshot and photo attached.

Loading takes a while but not painfully long.
Typing and UI is responsive.

Let's see how well it performs during the lessons.

Of course I'm a hardcore Pyra user and will use it for whatever possible no matter what

 

[CommanderB]

We're doing Matlab this Semester at University.
There is an online version ff Matlab.
All you need to do is to log in with the MathWorks account.

And of course I can access it via Firefox on Pyra.
Screenshot and photo attached.

Loading takes a while but not painfully long.
Typing and UI is responsive.

Let's see how well it performs during the lessons.

Of course I'm a hardcore Pyra user and will use it for whatever possible no matter what

I guess that you could install octane, the open source Matlab implementation and test is natively on the pyra!

Gesendet von meinem SM-N9005 mit Tapatalk

 

[eric]

I guess that you could install octane, the open source Matlab implementation and test is natively on the pyra!

Gesendet von meinem SM-N9005 mit Tapatalk

*octave

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[ljones]

Some intresting stuff here. And I hope this is the right place to ask. But in terms of speed how does the pyra feel? What I mean is well .... I understand trying to compare the speed of arm and x86 devices is like trying to compare apples and bananas but just in general. So does the pyra feel more like (say) in terms of speed and performance like a raspberry pi, or an old asus eeepc or something better or worse? Just really hard to guage when you don't have a device! I'm just trying to "peg it on a board" so to speak.

And is it possible to install kde to the pyra at all yet? Or would it just be too slow?

ljones

 

[second exodous]

Some intresting stuff here. And I hope this is the right place to ask. But in terms of speed how does the pyra feel? What I mean is well .... I understand trying to compare the speed of arm and x86 devices is like trying to compare apples and bananas but just in general. So does the pyra feel more like (say) in terms of speed and performance like a raspberry pi, or an old asus eeepc or something better or worse? Just really hard to guage when you don't have a device! I'm just trying to "peg it on a board" so to speak.

And is it possible to install kde to the pyra at all yet? Or would it just be too slow?

ljones

I noticed when I first got my Pandora it felt really slow. after a few updates things drastically improved speed wise. I'm guessing the Pyra will be the same, start out slow and then improve. The GPU isn't even working yet but will eventually. I remember someone commented here with a dev board with the same specs it was a little faster than a pi but that was a while ago. I bet things won't start to improve until more people get the Pyra, more people to report bugs if nothing else.

EDIT: So basically no matter what the speed is now it will improve.

 

[WizardStan]

The only thing that ever bothered me on the Pandora with respect to speed was internet. It started out well when it first came out and web pages were pretty simple but now they're very complex things and getting more complex every year so that's why I'm so interested in finding out how well the Pyra will handle them.

 

[Askarus]

Some intresting stuff here. And I hope this is the right place to ask. But in terms of speed how does the pyra feel? What I mean is well .... I understand trying to compare the speed of arm and x86 devices is like trying to compare apples and bananas but just in general. So does the pyra feel more like (say) in terms of speed and performance like a raspberry pi, or an old asus eeepc or something better or worse? Just really hard to guage when you don't have a device! I'm just trying to "peg it on a board" so to speak.

And is it possible to install kde to the pyra at all yet? Or would it just be too slow?

ljones

My Pyra runs only a 1 GHz, no GPU, Boot from SD (slower than internal emmc)
It feels same or smoother than the Raspberry PI 3B.

 

[second exodous]

The only thing that ever bothered me on the Pandora with respect to speed was internet. It started out well when it first came out and web pages were pretty simple but now they're very complex things and getting more complex every year so that's why I'm so interested in finding out how well the Pyra will handle them.

Yeah, I never remember Web pages loading slow and browser crashing when I was first using it daily but when I picked up my Pandora a few years ago and tried to browse the internet on it that was the case. I hadn't thought about webpages becoming more complex, it makes sense.

 

[fusion_power]

Well my classic 256MB Pandora is nearly unusable for "serious" internet browsing, even with pale moon, even with a swap file. Really really slow (even forums take long to load) and you should never have more than 3 tabs open. ^^ So every improvement from there is very welcome.

 

[Eight Bit]

I find Netsurf, though lacking some compatibility, to be the fastest browser on the Pandora by far. It loads and downloads + shows the Pandora forum in 9 seconds flat on my GHz.

 

[Askarus]

Pyra Firefox loads pretty long but after that it's OK.
Not as fast as on my Laptop, but a lot better than the Pyra.

I'm currently using it for browsing.
So it's usable.
I did even use Google Maps light with it today and it worked nice.
No complaints.
Wifi is still only 200 kb/s and CPU at 1 GHz.

And I hope that we finally get a Firefox Quantum Build for the Pyra. That will also improve things a bit I suppose.

 

[PowerGod]

Does Vivaldi work in there ? There's an ARM version for the RPI

 

[Askarus]

Does Vivaldi work in there ? There's an ARM version for the RPI

Not in the default Repo
[doublepost=1522261948,1522260805][/doublepost]There's a Raspberry Pi build.
Downloading the deb and dpkg -i did the job.

It's running.

 

[elvissteinjr]

Oh? Raspberry Pi stuff can work out of the box on Pyra's Debian?

I've been meaning to ask about Parsec. They have a client for the Pi. It's closed source but I had really good experience with their streaming tech.
https://parsecgaming.com/

Though hosting requires Windows and 8.1+ at that. Would be nice to know if it at least brings up the UI and if software decoding is available in that build.

 

[levi]

Pyra Firefox loads pretty long but after that it's OK.
Not as fast as on my Laptop, but a lot better than the Pyra.

I assume this last reference to the Pyra is a typo for your Pandora. GHz or slower out of interest?

Wifi is still only 200 kb/s and CPU at 1 GHz.

Is that a kbps figure or a kBps figure to be clear? Either way it's not that impressive (although I believe the newer prototypes should have better wifi).

And I hope that we finally get a Firefox Quantum Build for the Pyra. That will also improve things a bit I suppose.

When I upgraded to Quantum on my 2GB laptop, I didn't find it particularly speedy, although it perhaps starts up slightly more quickly, and arguably spends less time blocking my input entirely, as it usually lets me tab away when a particular page is taking a long time to load. But the main change for sure was it's blocking of many of my favourite plugins (I'm still missing a decent replacement for cookie buttons and disable css), and the quantum noscript build was missing features to begin with (although that's mostly all there now).

 

[WizardStan]

Oh? Raspberry Pi stuff can work out of the box on Pyra's Debian?

I wouldn't expect everything to work, but it is basically the same OS on the same architecture so compatibility is going to be pretty high.

 

[Askarus]

Oh? Raspberry Pi stuff can work out of the box on Pyra's Debian?

Yes.
I found a Firefox 57 Ubuntu arm build .deb file.
It installed but did crash upon execution.
But that was not built for Debian.
And as @WizandStan said, it's both Debian ARM.

I assume this last reference to the Pyra is a typo for your Pandora. GHz or slower out of interest?

Right. It's Pandora.
GHz. It's no comparison. Pyra is much faster than the Pandora.
As I wrote in the first post. The first days it was such a great feeling to have a real desktop experience in my Hands.
Simply standard Debian installation. Much faster than the Pandora.

Is that a kbps figure or a kBps figure to be clear? Either way it's not that impressive (although I believe the newer prototypes should have better wifi).

No idea.
I'd say KBps.
But yes, the improved Boards should already be produced.

When I upgraded to Quantum on my 2GB laptop, I didn't find it particularly speedy, although it perhaps starts up slightly more quickly, and arguably spends less time blocking my input entirely, as it usually lets me tab away when a particular page is taking a long time to load. But the main change for sure was it's blocking of many of my favourite plugins (I'm still missing a decent replacement for cookie buttons and disable css), and the quantum noscript build was missing features to begin with (although that's mostly all there now).

Make a new profile and import your Bookmarks, history, etc. That made a huge difference for me.

 

[Askarus]

I installed Zotero on my Laptop and on my Pyra.
It's a nice tool for citation and manage a bibliography.
It has a Firefox extension and a LibreOffice extension.
Both did install automatically on the Pyra and my Laptop.

The Pyra could import the Library and edit the .fodt file I created on my Laptop.

It's a useful tool it seems.
The Firefox extension adds a Website with one click to the library with access date and extracts the author.
The LibreOffice extension allows to choose a citation style and adds. It can make a bibliography out of Zotero's library and add a reference to the text.
Everything is created automatically.

It seems to be pretty useful and to work well. Much better than the integrated one in LibreOffice.

Installation was simple as usual. Search "Zotero" in synaptic and install the standalone App and the LibreOffice extension.
When Zotero is open and I start Firefox it asks me if I want to install the extension.
Both did work well on the Pyra.