Soon It Might Be Possible To Finally Have A Nice ARM-Powered Linux Laptop

[schmidtbag]

I'm not interested in who is convinced that it will work and what they told each other in their conferences. They made netbooks too (which "sold" because they were cheap but sucked balls on any metric and got a ton of flak and were eventually discontinued over that).

The issue is and has always been applications (and the Windows store). If enough third party software developers actually care about providing software for ARM then it's going to fly, if not it's going to fail the same as Windows RT (and phone) did.

And no OEM nor Microsoft have power over zillions of application developers. If Microsoft started pushing UWP applications seriously (aka MS-style, aka coercing) and the store took off somewhat I could see that, but I don't.

Again, I don't think you're wrong, but this is a LOT of major companies on-board with something with such a high probability for failure. MS and Qualcomm are both very greedy, and HP tends to be go cheap about things that aren't promising (and the Envy X2 isn't cheaply made). With so much financial incentive in developing these laptops, I don't think these 3 companies would've attempted making this if failure was so probable, or more importantly, profitable. Asus lately is getting pretty experimental about things, so to me, their efforts aren't all that surprising.

Also I'm not sure if you're aware, but MS has an x86 compatibility layer for these laptops. It's horrifically slow compared to a native binary, but unlike Windows RT, these laptops can and will run most "traditional" Windows programs. This alone may actually be what prevents these laptops from being total failures (but, I still suspect they won't be successful).

[SyXbiT]

Thank god for this. Finally ARM laptops will be modern!

Since with FOSS operating systems, whether you use Intel, Mips, POWER, ARM, etc, there is almost no difference to the user (some don't even notice), I think it is madness that anyone is hesitant.

That's not true. Just because I use a FOSS OS doesn't mean every app is open source. I use Chrome. I don't think that's available on ARM. You'd have to compile Chromium. I also use enpass, Steam etc.. They're not on ARM

[Palu Macil]

I want to be excited, but all my build tools and IDEs will probably fail and I'll go back to using an x86-64 machine as my primary, and I don't really use computers for things other than development.

[andyprough]

Nice. Expensive. Fewer packages available. Slightly longer battery life (maybe). Lots of driver questions.

Shut up and take my money.

[edwaleni]

Last time I checked, ARM based Chromebooks do not qualify under Crostini. Only x86-64.

So while running Linux apps on ChromeOS may be a victory overall, those who bought into the ChromeOS on ARM platforms will be reaching the end of the road soon.

I got a notice that Google is starting the deprecation of several ARM Chromebooks. My Samsung Exynos based Chromebook is hitting EOL and I have no recourse. I will have to bin it.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

If this work out with Qualcomm's 1000x chips - I am in. Not right now, as I just got Dell 7285 LTE model with 16 GB RAM four months ago, but in a few years I could replace it with something that deliver longer battery life, like HP Envy x2.

[Vistaus]

Windows had no ARM support, that is why.

Oh, so Microsoft released Windows RT in 2012 with faux-ARM support?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT

[zoomblab]

Does the different ARM motherboards still require custom linix distributions? This is what has put me off in the past. Each motherboard vendor gives you a specific version of lets say debian or ubuntu and that is it. There is not an generic ubuntu that works across all ARM boards and that is updated through the regular official process.

[Vistaus]

That's not true. Just because I use a FOSS OS doesn't mean every app is open source. I use Chrome. I don't think that's available on ARM. You'd have to compile Chromium. I also use enpass, Steam etc.. They're not on ARM

Buf if your goal is to run Linux apps inside ChromeOS, as most people will do with this thing, then you're already running Chrome for ARM as it's the main browser on ChromeOS. And ChromeOS also has Android support, so you could run the Android version of Enpass. You're right about Steam though.

[andreano]

My RPi 1B based laptop burned up on my commuter train in 2012 when I connected the LiPo battery the wrong way. True story.

If no soldering is required this time, then please take my money.