KOSA is coming (sh.itjust.works)
 

I'm just here to say KOSA is coming and I've decided that this will be the hill I die on. I'm not scanning biometrics or uploading my id. I don't give a single shit what I get locked out of. I know this is not strictly google related but very likely many people will be pissed when they find out they need to age verify just to use a Google account. I'd like to here other people's plans for mitigation.

 

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.

Pinetab2 my thoughts (sh.itjust.works)
 

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.

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