| A recent convert to GPD Pocket 2. Decades of programming experience from kernel hacking to 3d engines and distributed systems. After a few days reached 60-80 wpm (depending on the typing test). A drop of ca. 20 wpm from my 13" MacBook Pro. Installed a dual booting Ubuntu 20.04 Mate LTS. Comes with all the necessary open source drivers. Make sure to get the pre-baked distro for GPD Pocket 2 from Canonical's website. Intel Graphics acceleration works flawlessly as do all the GPU acceleration options in Firefox. Installing Compiz as a compositing manager really speeds everything up. Now use this more often than my Macbook Pro. In fact, the GPD Pocket's touchscreen spoiled me and now I keep pressing on normal laptop's screens expecting for things to happen :D. GPD's substitute for a mouse is incredibly precise, a huge surprise as my expectations were super low for such an unproven solution. Think of it as some sort of capacitive/optoelectric Lenovo nub in the corner of the keyboard. Ultimate hackery: The keyboard has a fan on/off switch as the Celeron provided has an operating range of up to 100C. So if you don't need the highest clock rate, turn off the fan with one key press :D Hoping fellow hackers appreciate this review. Of course, this post is written from my GPD Pocket 2. P.S. Also running Wine, PlayOnLinux, WinUAE and AROS. 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD make it easy to be cavalier about resource use. Performance wise you'll be fines as long as you're not compiling large codebases, editing large videos or expecting to raytrace animations in Blender... |
I have both the original Pocket and a Pocket 2 (both Linux), as well as a Win 2 (windows, gaming-only), and I love them.
Before the pandemic I used to use them very frequently to study (or game, with then Win 2) at coffeeshops because they use so little bag space and table space. Right now they're collecting a bit of dust mostly, but I hope that will change again once this whole situation is over.
I would have been interested in the Pyra when it was first announced (in fact, I did follow the project for a year or so when I first heard about it in 2016 or so), but at this point there are so many better (and similarly priced) alternatives out there that I have a hard time seeing who would be the target demographic. Still, I hope they will find some success with it since they seem to have their heart in the right place.