NVIDIA Tegra X1 Chromebooks Appear Closer, Support Added To Coreboot

[schmidtbag]

The only way I'd be interested in a K1 Chromebook is if it easily supports a Linux disto like Fedora and has respectable performance running that disto.

ARM does have respectable performance, people are just spoiled by Intel and SATAIII SSDs. Also, I'm pretty sure Fedora does support a lot of these systems.

From what I've seen so far the lack of CPU performance is a real negative with ARM based PC's, the hope is K1 would be good enough. I'm not a fan of big.LITTLE either.

big.LITTLE is ok in concept, but I think how some of them use 4 A7 cores is a bit excessive; 2 cores is enough for background tasks. Linux, to my knowledge, does take advantage of both sets of cores.
Remember - even though an 8-core big.LITTLE has more silicon involved, under the right conditions, it is more power efficient than a quad core with equal performance. One of the advantages of ARM is how they don't have leaky transistors. Intel has greatly improved on that but there's only so much they can do about it.

Oh one more thing these machines almost universally need more flash.

Get the proper build of Chrome and you should have flash support. Also, you don't NEED flash. Pretty much the only commonly used websites that still use flash and aren't game-focused are porn websites. If watching porn on a portable device is that important to you, get an intel-based phablet (or should I say, faplet).

[Michael_S]

The sweet spot for a Chromebook with Linux is the $300-$400 range, because I generally can't find 13.3" or 14" traditional laptops with 1920x1080 display resolutions in that price range. If you don't care about the display resolution, a used x86_64 laptop gives you equivalent or better performance at a lower price. If you care about display resolution and performance, you can get a used 1920x1080 x86_64 laptop for $500 or $600 on Ebay and then spend another $100 replacing the traditional hard drive with an SSD.

I'm not factoring battery life. If that matters a lot to you, then Chromebooks become more attractive relative to x86_64 laptops.

[schmidtbag]

The sweet spot for a Chromebook with Linux is the $300-$400 range, because I generally can't find 13.3" or 14" traditional laptops with 1920x1080 display resolutions in that price range. If you don't care about the display resolution, a used x86_64 laptop gives you equivalent or better performance at a lower price. If you care about display resolution and performance, you can get a used 1920x1080 x86_64 laptop for $500 or $600 on Ebay and then spend another $100 replacing the traditional hard drive with an SSD.

I'm not factoring battery life. If that matters a lot to you, then Chromebooks become more attractive relative to x86_64 laptops.

I personally want a laptop for everyday tasks (which for me, isn't much beyond some programming, web browsing, or office tasks) while being portable. That means I don't want a screen larger than 11", I want decent battery life, and I prefer it to be light-weight. CPU performance is a lower priority to me, and GPU performance should really just be good enough to handle HD videos at 60FPS. If the display ships as 1080p, great. If not, no big deal. ARM fits into my demands nicely, with the additional bonuses of being cheaper than intel, more power efficient than intel when idle, and generates very little heat. I already own 2 desktop PCs connected to a 32" display, so if I really want the extra performance I'd use those. Laptops, in my opinion, make terrible all-purpose PCs.

[Michael_S]

I personally want a laptop for everyday tasks (which for me, isn't much beyond some programming, web browsing, or office tasks) while being portable. That means I don't want a screen larger than 11", I want decent battery life, and I prefer it to be light-weight. CPU performance is a lower priority to me, and GPU performance should really just be good enough to handle HD videos at 60FPS. If the display ships as 1080p, great. If not, no big deal. ARM fits into my demands nicely, with the additional bonuses of being cheaper than intel, more power efficient than intel when idle, and generates very little heat. I already own 2 desktop PCs connected to a 32" display, so if I really want the extra performance I'd use those. Laptops, in my opinion, make terrible all-purpose PCs.

Sorry for the late reply. I prefer a desktop too. But even with a laptop, I have minimum standards for display size and resolution. 11" won't work for me. I prefer a minimum 15 inch display and 1920x1080 resolution - even if the device spends most of its time parked and plugged in to an external monitor.