| > Torvalds, of course, can already have an ARM based Linux > laptop if he wants one—for example, the Pinebook Pro. The > unspoken part here is that he'd like a high-performance > ARM based laptop, rather than a budget-friendly but > extremely performance constrained design such as one finds > in the Pinebook Pro, the Raspberry Pi, or a legion of > other inexpensive gadgets. I believe he currently uses an AMD threadripper setup - there would be nothing stopping him using something like the PineBook Pro as a "dumb terminal" and having his builds done off-machine. It would mean that he is dependent on an internet connection, but it wouldn't have to be a fast one as he would only need to send deltas to the build process. (This would be on top of other mechanisms like CI.) The PineBook Pro has quite a reasonable keyboard, is quite light and gets decent battery. He could reasonably use it all day without issue. Re-flashing it can be as simple as throwing a new SD card into it, which could also help in terms of security whilst traveling (re-flash it when you get to your location). I would very much tell him and other people to seriously consider such a machine. |