Among other things. My first question was, is the hardware open? Couldn't find an answer to that.
Edit: Apparently revision 2 of Purism will possibly have Coreboot.
The figures were about 1500 CPU-seconds for the desktop and 3000 CPU-seconds for the Chromebook. Of course, wall-clock time was significantly less for the desktop due to having many more cores, but that's showing that per-core, the high-end Intel was only about twice as fast as the ARM.
I do development work on the Chromebook, via a Debian chroot inside Crouton. And you know what? It's fine. It's probably the fastest laptop I've ever owned. The filesystem's a little slow, but compilation speeds are perfectly adequate.
Render Time:
Photon Time: 0 hours 0 minutes 1 seconds (1.256 seconds)
using 11 thread(s) with 1.456 CPU-seconds total
Radiosity Time: No radiosity
Trace Time: 0 hours 2 minutes 18 seconds (138.426 seconds)
using 8 thread(s) with 1099.214 CPU-seconds total
I would be very surprised if the Chromebook's 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 was only 3x slower. Googling around, I see people mentioning numbers like 10,000 CPU-seconds.
Try a native install on the Flip, it is nice: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/
> The C100P Flip is the best netbook I have seen in eight years.
That's quite the praise! This thing must be really good.
> The default ALSA config was completely silent. Enabling Right Speaker Mixer Right/Left DAC fixed that. Supposedly there is a risk of burning out the amp if you thoughtlessly enable every option.
Uhh... wow. Well, OK.
> After suspend/resume, wifi will not work if the btsdio module was automatically loaded.
The best netbook in eight years, yet it can't even suspend/resume properly? What?
> The best video output mode is X11 video output. Despite what everyone says about being slow, this is the only driver that doesn't have major desync problems.
> Stellarium would run at a buttery smooth 60 FPS for a few minutes and then everything would die.
> Chromium will not run on this hardware.
> Screen rotation through xrandr doesn't work at all...
Then under "Things to Fix":
> - HMDI output. Very wonky, usually crashes X11 after a few minutes.
> - USB ethernet. The cdc_ether module will load but nothing happens.
> - Webcam. Crazy bucket of fail here. Maybe 25% of the time fswebcam can grab a single frame. Good luck with video.
> - Multitouch on the panel. No idea how to get that working.
To me, —even with the fixes and workarounds you describe— that device sounds like a nightmare to use.
8x i7-3770K: 1123 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 144 seconds)
4x Cortex A17: 3196 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 963 seconds)
I just wish it had more cores, but I suspect that Rockchip are raking in money from these things, and I expect we'll get more cores next year.
The 12x Xeon was my work machine. I might have to have a word with them about it.
And then if I want to use a real OS, I switch to my fullscreen Debian installation running awesome and all my xterms and it all just seamlessly interoperates. Except I don't need NetworkManager or PulseAudio or any of that nonsense because ChromeOS does it all for me. The brightness buttons work! The audio volume buttons work! Suspend and resume works! Everything works! There's even two-way clipboard support! Which works!
I've been using Linux for years, and I think this is the first time I have ever had a Linux-based laptop where all this stuff wasn't a total PITA.
Everything else comes down to software. Some of the difficulties were because I prefer to do things a difficult way. Eg, Arch is going to require more configuration and sound Just Works if you use Pulse. Having ALSA correctly autoconfigure everything except a single boolean flag is pretty good in my book. The warning about burning out hardware is just me passing on the advice from an engineer who actually works on these boards.
Suspend/resume is in fact flawless. It has never failed to come out of suspend, unlike quite a few thinkpads I've used. However linux does the wrong thing here with the bluetooth module. Trivial to fix, and it happens on other hardware too. Not the fault of the Flip.
Chromium doesn't run on Arch Linux ARM at all. Any hardware, regardless. So you can't hold that against the Flip. And I don't use Chromium, so this is a non-factor.
Almost everything else is the usual crap you have to put up with using garbage closed source video drivers and a kernel hacked out of ChromeOS. But I spend the majority of my time in the terminal, so the graphics are nothing I am concerned about. Similarly, I don't care about the webcam or multitouch, or HDMI because I don't own an HDMI monitor. I feel they are irrelevant details hardly worth mention, but they sound like dealbreakers to you.
Literally all I do is typing, reading, listening to music. I wanted fanless, all-day battery life, that weighs under a kilogram and is under $300. The Flip delivers and overall it has been a better experience than running Linux on a thinkpad. There are very few netbooks that could meet those requirements, and none that do it as elegantly as the Flip does. Therefor it is the best in my regard. If you disagree, it is up to you to name something superior according to the given criteria.
Linux boots in 6 seconds. Caps is mapped to Mod4/super, you already have a GIANT control key. Linux does not need NM or Pulse either. And the operating system is not in the middle of being axed by Google, so while updates are not automatic I don't have to worry about them stopping.
But the two biggest points: Linux gets you an extra five hours of battery life, and lets you configure charge limits so that the non-replacable battery won't rot away in three years.
I spend about 10 hours a day on my main computer. If I upgrade every 18 months, even a $1500 machine only costs 28 cents per hour. Set aside frustration with drivers or software bugs; expensive laptops win for purely economic reasons. If a $1500 laptop makes me even 10% more productive, it's worth buying. This is the case for practically anyone who works in tech.
My current laptop is a base model 12" MacBook. It is, without a doubt, my favorite computer ever. It's small. It's light. The screen is gorgeous. It resumes before I'm done opening the lid. It has an amazing trackpad, excellent battery life, and a wonderful keyboard. With current technology, it could scarcely be improved upon. I wish there was a combination of hardware and software that could compete with it, but so far, nothing I've seen has come close.
With regards to being able to buy more equipment: I do have a powerful rack-mount server in addition to my MacBook. But being able to buy five ordinary laptops for the price of an amazing one? That's not very relevant. I can only type on one keyboard at a time. If anything, more laptops would slow me down. I'd have to keep all of their software up-to-date, sync data between them, ensure their batteries were charged, etc.
Imagine making the same argument in other domains. For the price of one plane ticket, I could buy five Greyhound bus tickets to the same destination. For the price of one quality memory-foam mattress, I could buy five innerspring mattresses. For the price of one Aeron chair, I could buy five AmazonBasics office chairs. So what? I don't want more. I want better.
It is irresponsible to always buy the "best" when you should be looking for the best value per dollar. Your own bank account is zero-sum, be more effective with it.
But on every single other laptop I have ever used Linux on, there has always been something that hasn't worked properly, whether it's audio not waking up properly after a suspend, or occasionally suspend not actually working and I discover a red hot laptop in my bag spinning at 100% CPU, or some such issue.
Having a machine which I don't have to fiddle with to make work is a totally new experience for me.
We think that once you actually see and touch the Librem, hands on, you will find the hardware is even better than a MacBook in many ways.
The Librem is definitely much faster, and the screen quality is amazing. The feel is very sturdy.
The usability, look/feel of the amazing Mac OSX is harder to exceed but we are working on the UI and ease of use in our Linux-kernel-based PureOS. It's all a work in progress.
And one more thing -- we are structured more like an Open Source project than a traditional corporation, so we are able to iterate very very rapidly.
The Librem is really created with the feedback of the backers and the community. This is what makes it at the core, very different than any other computer.
"What is my data worth?"
What is your privacy worth?
What is it worth if even one time you have your identity stolen or tax return hacked, or your company's reputation is ruined by a data breach?