drascus

Dell has got to be one of the most frustrating companies that put out a linux laptop. They put out a laptop certified for ubuntu but then never support newer releases. A big part of their hardware is always proprietary drivers like webcam, fingerprint reader etc.. Then you update to a new LTS release because lets be serious 20.04 at this point is going to sunset in a couple of years... However after you update the webcam stops working, or some other hardware stops working. Then you are constantly troubleshooting to get it working and every kernel update it breaks again. If you ever did ask support they will just tell you to go back to 20.04 image from dell. Not to mention all their OS tools are made for windows even the ones for making linux recovery images... like WTF! I am two years in on this laptop and I am just getting rid of it I cannot put up with this nonsense anymore from them.

So I have been using the pinetab 2 for about 6 months or so on and off. Mostly off to be honest. My final thoughts are that I can't really recommend this device to basically anyone. Even as a power user and someone that does software development I can say this device is a slog.

Cons: In terms of raw computing power this device is slow even with 8 GB of ram. Programs take a long time to start Once they do launch they are mostly fine however video playback in most modern browsers is terrible and stutters. You can actually get DRM playback to work if you are willing to put in 3 + hours to get widevine installed from AUR and modify your user agent. However it's not really worth it because the actual playback is awful.

It seems as though Wifi is never going to work. From what I have read there is practically no one working on the driver and it seems like the driver is so complex to do that with the community size it's basically a non-starter. So essentially this means you will always need an external Wifi dongle. Ubuntu touch has implemented the internal Wifi card but it's so unstable as to be unusable mostly.

The device is heavy. With the keyboard case attached it's heavier than my laptop and it's bigger than my laptop too. So the idea of it being portable is only true without the keyboard case.

The screen is not very good and is definitely dim even with the brightness turned all the way up so using it in full sun is not something I would recommend. The resolution is also low for a modern device. It's serviceable but not what someone would expect out of a modern tablet 50$ walmart tablets will be as good if not better.

Pros:

There is something magical and that just joyful seeing linux running on a tablet. As a linux enthusiast I still want it to be a thing but this might not be the place it happens. There are other linux tablets on the market that look like they are more modern and have better support : https://us.starlabs.systems/products/starlite?shpxid=5a56d85e-f63c-4d39-8bf9-91e4dd227aa1 But obviously they are a lot more expensive.

The keyboard is very good and once you get used to it's smaller form factor it's actually a good typing experience for what you would expect for a tablet case.

The tablet without the keyboard case is just nice and a good form factor and a joy to hold. They onscreen keyboard is responsive enough in all the OS choices I tried and doesn't become too cramped or too wide.

I appreciate the selection of ports having two usbs and an hdmi as well as a headphone jack is very uncommon in a tablet. not to mention the microsd card slot. It probably has the best selection of ports in a tablet.

swapping OSes: Being able to swap Oses just with the microsd card is a lot of fun. I just wish any of them were less beta at this point. With that said it's so easy to just grab an image write it to disk and reboot with the disk in and try out a new OS.

Final thoughts: Well I tried to put my overall impression right up front. However to reiterate I don't think this device is really read for real workloads. It's a fun sort of toy and to maybe if your goal is to tinker and work on a project it's okay. If you need a real world daily driver tablet there are better options for a linux tablet. If you just need a cheap tablet there are better options too. I wish I could say that the community loved this idea and that there was lots of exciting things coming. However it seems like the community around this tablet is very small, development has been slow to non-existent. so in conclusion I can't recommend it.

I just saw today that there is now a desktop app in beta for Windows and macos. As a privacy conscious person on Linux I am stuck as a second class citizen using proton services because there are no Linux apps besides bridge.

So I got my pinetab2 a few weeks ago. I am going to leave aside for a moment the absolute hell it was to get this thing. How it arrived broken and how I had to argue with support for a week to get a replacement. Now that I have it and have been playing around I must say it's sorta decent.

1. If you can't stand the thought of using a usb wifi dongle use ubuntu touch. Ubuntu touch has the ability to enable the internal wifi and in my testing it was stable so if you just can't stomach the idea of a dongle that is your best bet.

2. If you need bluetooth you are SOL at the moment

3. if you want to watch DRM protected streams it technically dooable but not advisable. this is because to do it you need to install widevine and in my experience it takes like 5 hours to install and I never got to install it because I didn't hit yes to a prompt in time and so I wasted like 5 hours.

So what is this tablet like to use on a day to day basis. First Issue is that this tablet has no sleep or standby mode yet. All you can do is turn the screen off. needless to say this thing is a battery killer at the moment. It gets decent battery life but with no standby you can't make it through a day with it.

The keyboard seems nice until you try to use it. I don't know why but I run into input lag with the keyboard. sometimes it misses characters when I type. When it is working it's a decent keyboard overall. However it's been a bit flaky for me.

The onscreen keyboard is actually fine except it doesn't yet really work for desktop applications. You need to use the dock button to get the keyboard to pull up with desktop applications. For some strange reason desktop applications cannot receive numerals or the lower character from any key. It's as if you are holding down shift all the time so good luck putting in a password or tying a url with no numbers and no "." . Also sometimes this dock button because unresponsive and you just can't get the keyboard to pull up no matter how much you mash the thing.

Performance is both good and terrible surprisingly. I have the 8 GB RAM model and applications can take a while to open. Video playback will stutter at times. Even old android tablets with just 2GB of ram seem to perform better. This doesn't really make sense so I assume there is still performance tuning that needs to be done. Ubuntu Touch runs much better on this device.

My conclusion on this is that at the moment everything has it's issues. Things work great at times but it's very rough around the edges. You get better results if you use it more like a laptop than a tablet. However the battery life and no sleep is really annoying at the moment.

there is just a few things that are keeping me from using this as a daily driver tablet. I think they could be fixed in relatively short order so I have high hopes of having a really cool device in the coming months. I say if you have the money pick one up and even if it doesn't work for you now you will have it for when the software has more polish.

Does anyone know what's going on with pine64? There hasn't been a community update in months and it seems like announcements are dead.

My current view is that while I want to promote openness and free speech that can really only work in a context where the person exercising their speech feels some necessity to use it responsibly and in an honest way.

On the internet that takes a lot of self control because the social norms of every day life don’t always apply because:

• no one knows who you are
• there is not a human being right in front of you that you might feel empathy for
• there are no consequences to anything you say
• not all posts are even by humans.

With all these taken together there is a compelling argument that speech may need to be more highly regulated on the internet than in face to face interactions. However there are people with legitimate ( beliefs and ideas honestly held that they wish to discuss ) views that I worry are going to be silenced and further marginalized.

This is bad for society because if people get dismissed or pushed aside it just breeds resentment, distrust, and more misunderstanding. I think as we start defederating and making decisions we are setting up a dangerous situation where it becomes potentially easy to defederate for the wrong reasons.

For instance "we think they are being racist" or "they are spreading misinformation" could have unintended consequences. Some religions and communities might have beliefs that appear to be pseudoscience or even discrimination. However if these are honestly held beliefs that they are willing to engage in civil discourse around I don't think it's right to actually block them.

This is likely just the beginning of a much larger discussion so what are your thoughts?---

There is no point to this post I'm just excited and have no one to tell lol.

So on the home page it defaults to local. When I hover my mouse it says that it shows local communities only. However when I look at the feed there is definitely posts from communities that are not local. So I have no idea what this actually does.