The $199 Motile M141 With AMD Ryzen 3 3200U Offers Surprisingly Decent Performance

[danmcgrew]

Michael Larabel--

Between your two very good articles on the Motile M141laptop, there has been interest voiced in an ARM-based Linux laptop; specifically, the Pinebook Pro has been mentioned several times. As you know, I'm sure (but other of your readers may not know), the Pinebook Pro is a $200 (OK, $199.99), 14" 1080P IPS display, Linux laptop in a Magnesium-alloy case; with 4GB of RAM and 64 / 128 GB of eMMC and PCIe / NVMe SSD slot. Full specs and videos are available at the websites given below.

Lucasz Ericinsky and TL Lim (founder) have made it known that they (the Pine Microcomputer group) have set aside a portion of the Pinebook's production to be provided free to technical authors and owners of technical websites for evaluation. You simply have to contact them and express your desire for a Pinebook Pro to evaluate, and share that evaluation with your readers. How about it? Sounds good to me, and it seems as though--by evaluating this machine and publishing the results-- you'd be doing a real service to your readers, as well as possibly / probably getting noticed by the much larger community.
I do not know of a detailed effort (i.e., evaluation of the Pinebook Pro) by anyone of your and Phoronix's stature, to date.

Just a suggestion...

https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/

https://www.pine64.org

[Cape]

Hm... you got to be American. Most young (<45 y) Europeans are in favor of EU. It's giving working people a lot of opportunities, it's easier to get medical help outside your own country. etc etc... any argument I bring will not sway/ educate you anyway so why bother.

Kind regards
Brut.

You must be less than 20yo and not live in Italy.
Europe DESTROYED our economy. Several generations have now seen their job, house, children and ultimately future disappear, in favor of Germany and the northern countries.
If today they told me to grab a rifle and go snap some Germans head to liberate our country from Fourth Reich, I'd do it with honor ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[danmcgrew]

You must be less than 20yo and not live in Italy.
Europe DESTROYED our economy. Several generations have now seen their job, house, children and ultimately future disappear, in favor of Germany and the northern countries.
If today they told me to grab a rifle and go snap some Germans head to liberate our country from Fourth Reich, I'd do it with honor ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One can only assume that commenter is Italian.
Were the Italians not members of the 'Axis powers', right there, waving their fists and screaming at the rest of the world at Germany's side?
After the war, Germany moved on, to become extremely prosperous. Italy could have, too.
Europe has not destroyed your economy; YOU have destroyed your economy, and never have lifted a finger to make it any better, SINCE World War 2. This is an example, on a monumental scale, of that plague which has infected most millennials since the rise of the "Facebook Internet": it's always someone else's fault.

This is not the first time that I've observed that even some Italians don't, can't, or don't want to remember. You can't blame them...


“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

[Cape]

After the war, Germany moved on, to become extremely prosperous. Italy could have, too.

You are CLEARLY uninformed. Before EU we - Italians - had higher standard of livings than Germans.
In the '80s our economy was booming. To put it in a Rally perspective: Audi were shitty looking cars that only had 1 winning streak, while Lancia were winning every year, every competition, with style as well.

Then - a group of traitor politicians like Amato, Prodi, Ciampi, Draghi - sold our country to the Franco/German alliance, and the table turned.
Already at the end of the '90s we lost our competitive advantage against Germany and France....
The rest is history...

Please, get you facts straight. I know it's hard to source such infos. But at least try.
Remember what they did to Greece 🙏

ANYWAY
-- End of the European parenthesis. Back to Linux chatting --

[Brutalix]

You are CLEARLY uninformed. Before EU we - Italians - had higher standard of livings than Germans.
In the '80s our economy was booming. To put it in a Rally perspective: Audi were shitty looking cars that only had 1 winning streak, while Lancia were winning every year, every competition, with style as well.

ANYWAY
-- End of the European parenthesis. Back to Linux chatting --

Italy joined EU in 1958....

B.

But I agree, back to linux discussion.

[vb_linux]

I don't love EU either, but destroying it and reverting back to pre-EU lone nations would land everyone in a far worse situation than the one they are in, regardless of your uninformed opinion.

This applies to US and Soviet*ahem* Putin's Russia as well. Hell, it applies to Iraq and Lybia and Syria too for that matter. They were shitty states when they were totalitarian regimes, but they were at least stable and predictable, and not a constant mess of tribal infighting and constant military revolts and pointless bs like they currently are.

Everyone that says there is an easy way out of a complex socio-economical situation is bullshitting you, destruction is almost never a good choice.

This.

[vb_linux]

"Facebook Internet": it's always someone else's fault.

*“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.*”
― Flannery O'Connor

And this.

[Chugworth]

Well I ordered this laptop back when it was $199 and it arrived yesterday. I spent several hours playing with it and so far I am very impressed. Common computing tasks and web browsing are all very quick. The keyboard seems decent and has a backlight. The screen looks great. Windows even claims that the screen supports HDR (though that doesn't really matter in Linux yet).

I wiped the SSD drive and installed Arch on an encrypted Btrfs partition. Everything has been running excellent except for one significant issue. The 5.5 kernel broke the Intel WiFi chip that's in this laptop. During the Arch installation, WiFi worked fine. But not on the installed system. I expect this will be fixed soon though, and for now I'm just using a USB WiFi adapter.

So far I only have two real annoyances (not including the WiFi issue which is not really the fault of the laptop). First, the fan runs almost constantly and frequently speeds up and slows down as things are happening on the system. And second, the USB-C port does not appear to support charging.

But overall, it seems to be a great laptop. At its current $279 price, I'd say it's still a great deal. But at $199 it was practically a steal. I had been planning to get the Dell XPS 13 9300 when it was released with Linux. When I saw this laptop, I figured it would still get the Dell but use this as a cheap toss-around laptop. Now I'm questioning whether I really even need the Dell.

[danmcgrew]

And this.

Please be more specific...a lot more.

[vb_linux]

Please be more specific...a lot more.

No...