Questions Before I Buy Anything

[zetabeta]

Hi all,



So my main comp is starting(?) to die and repairing it is rated as "pain in the butt."  So alongside researching that, I'm also looking into a cheap daily driver.  Pinebook Pros sound like that, though I still have some questions.



How "snappy" is it? -  Right now I'm using a old Windows Tablet and it can barely handle Win10.  Its aggravating as all get out. 

• What I mean is say, when I try and load a website, is the only restriction my internet speed, or is there a the lack of RAM that gets in the way?
  
• And more broadly, how quickly do the usual suspects, (like firefox, libreoffice, the music player,) load?
  

Can it remember where it was?  Like, I was on Mastodon with Firefox on this shabby windows device earlier and went to a new tab and shopped for a bit.  When I came back, Mastodon had reloaded back at the top, having to reallocate its RAM to Walmart.



How is the keybaord/touchpad?

• Is there any lag to characters appearing on the screen?
  
• double presses/ignored presses?
  

            Can you tell some other issues I have with this current machine?

• do the keys feel logical? I've had laptops for years and never got used to the layout.
     Not this one!  An old HP I had.
  
• backlit?
     A high hope for something so inexpensive, but I do enjoy them.
  

I was thinking of adding an SSD if I get one, do I need a heatsink too?  I've never done that on any computer.  I see Samsung 980s are on sale.  There are also ones with built in headsinks.



I've mooched around with Mint as a Virtual Machine, but that's my extent of Linux experience.  Is there anything I should know abut Manjaro before diving in?

• Does Discord have a reliable distribution for it?
  
• Does Steam run at all?
  
• Itchio etc?
  

~~~



I might think of more questions, but thanks in advance!



Leia

first, i own pinephones and pinephone pro, not pinebooks or pb pros.

i don't answer everything here, but reading between the lines, i don't think pinebook pro is a device for you. you might be better off with x86(64bit) laptop.

let's start cpu architecture, it's a hardware feature. windows usually runs on x86 (64bit) cpus, and even most linux distributions runs on x86 cpus. software is heavily available for x86 windows, and many software is available for x86 (64bit) linux as well, like discord, steam. i have used discord and ms teams on x86 linux, but not steam.

pinebook pro uses arm cpu, (risk-v version uses risk-v, for pinetab-v). it means lot of software is not available. my short guess is, forget discord, steam and similar. some software could be compiled into arm version, but because arm o.s. has some differences, therefore compilement may not succeed.

what i'm reading here and there. software and o.s. for pinebook pro is in development more or less. except some bugs. at least wifi driver is buggy. actually, pinetab2 and pinetab-v is in development.

edit: correction, risk-v is for pinetab-v. and confusing with pinebook pro and pinetab2.