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by ryukafalz 2194 days ago
That's my dream, but I think this crop of devices isn't quite there from a performance standpoint. If I could have the hardware of today's flagships with the mobile Linux distros running on these things...

The Librem 5 might be closer performance-wise; I'd be curious to see how it performs docked. Regardless though, both devices have accelerated development of real mobile Linux DEs, and I'm grateful for that.

Exciting times!
2 comments
freeqaz 2194 days ago
What about using your phone as a thin client of sorts? I've used Docker-Machine on an external VPS before when my laptop didn't have enough RAM. The experience was pretty decent (npm install didn't run locally).

I would run my code editor locally and sync the files to the remote box.

Using my phone with external monitor/keyboard/mouse as a thin client seems fairly reasonable in 2020!

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ryukafalz 2194 days ago
That would be basically necessary for this kind of workflow, yeah. But the PinePhone isn’t quite at that level even; we’re talking hardware that’s going to feel unacceptably slow at fairly basic things like web browsing compared to even a low-spec x86 laptop.

Which is not to say it’s unusable, but keep in mind this is a $150 phone and the software is still a work in progress as well. If you’re expecting to use something like this docked as a workstation... well, it’s worth tempering your expectations.

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megous 2190 days ago
It's not that horrible, even with large displays and a challenging dual-head output:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdKNugT-mTQ

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fsflover 2194 days ago
> unacceptably slow at fairly basic things like web browsing

Are you sure? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8

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ryukafalz 2193 days ago
>compared to even a low-spec x86 laptop

I mean... I have a Braveheart edition PinePhone sitting right next to me, and it's usable, but I don't think I'd want to do even light development work on it. Not because an editor wouldn't run just fine on it (it probably would) but because of all the documentation I'd need to look up online during that process.

It's just sluggish enough with a few webpages open to make that sound pretty unpleasant. But fair, "unacceptably slow" may have been a bit hyperbolic.

(As it stands, I do have a PineTab on preorder, so... I’ll likely be giving it a try then, and that has nearly the same hardware as I understand.)

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megous 2190 days ago
It's not that horrible, even with large displays (enough for reading hacker news for sure, lol):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdKNugT-mTQ

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