What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.
Firefox is actually pretty good in low-memory situations, silently discarding tabs when under memory pressure, but the main benefit comes from being able to run proper adblocking. Chromium-based browsers just can't compete these days.
Otherwise, a bog standard Gnome-based Debian Trixie desktop should be pretty doable. I'm currently using an 8 GB machine with 3.7 GB RAM free - Firefox, evolution, gnome-calendar, and gnome-software are the only apps that using more than 100 MB, and none of them are obligatory.
Any familiarity with Safari and blocking performance? uBlock Origin Lite is a simple option, AdGuard can do more (injection?) though uBO feels more trustworthy still…
as in, I click "open in new tab", some time later I switch to them... only to get hit with "new tab", even though a moment ago it displayed tab name and I could right click -> bookmark to preemptively copy the address
Bookmarks do not store click history, the trajectory you took to arrive at the page. With tabs, the contexts is a backbutton away.
Some time ago I got myself a similarly priced x86-64 Windows tablet on Amazon (Celeron N4020 + 4 GB RAM). I installed Linux Mint on it with a slightly customized kernel (some extra quirks were needed).
I connected an old SSD to it with a SATA2USB adapter, and I use it as a home file server and HTPC. It has a micro HDMI output, and it is connected to my TV. During the day it is playing music non-stop, in the evening it is playing some movies. It has no problem with high bitrate full HD movies, the CPU doesn't even break a sweat. I think it could also play 4K content, if I had any.
(Previously I used a Mac Mini with VLC for this for a few years, but I'm happier with my current setup, it's more stable)
That sounds like an problem Windows could solve.
If people have to buy new PCs, that’s more $$$ for Microsoft.
Since I have a desktop I do use rustdesk way more often to just boot into that.
But you’re doing much better than me.
main trouble to me has been caused by unity games - those are the big ram devourers, even most basic 2D ones (I still don't understand how that happens, why such regression since KSP days)
and plenty of 2D games work perfectly fine (devs really overestimate minimal requirements)
Generally it's probably just bad optimization. But that only gets you so far because Unity's asset streaming is designed to work with level-based games. It will only let you unload assets if you package them per-level and then swap them in and out at load screens between levels. Absolutely useless for games like KSP.
and yet KSP flies fine, while visual novels crash
The key is to have downstream sources and be very very conservative with the AI, slowly build step by step.
You also have to know C and have a spider sense of what's acceptable or not.
Another key is to ask for approval before editing any source with a patch of what it intends to do. This way you can judge what it wants to do and ask for a double check of the patch. Go quality over quantity.
This isn't web frontend with Tailwind, you have to be very strict and somewhat knowledgeable. Nobody can use AI to write kernel code without some good low level and engineering knowledge.
I completely agree, this is not the place to let AI blindly edit kernel code. The useful approach is to use it conservatively: understand the error, compare against downstream sources, propose a small patch, review it, test it, and then move one step further.
I’d be happy to work together on an article or guidance document, where to start, how to approach debugging, what to never let AI touch blindly, and how to build confidence step by step. That could help others avoid a lot of mistakes and maybe give a second chance to other devices.
As for PostmarketOS, I've built my own tooling scripts around it to make it easier to build patches, debug hex variables, switch between downstream/mainline and rebuilding everything with a single command. (Unrelased yet though).
I find their tooling okay for a release for end-users but a bit clunky for debugging.
My address is my username @ism.rocks
Alternatively, if you released the article on your blog, I could just follow the RSS feed.
I prefer spending my time doings I actually want to do. Let the machine do the boring things.
Once the news gets out about epic breakthroughs on commodity hardware and devices, there's unfortunately a likely spike in the purchase cost, even if such devices can be found at all anymore on the usual online sources of new and used goods.
- Bookworm rather than Trixie looks like a conscious choice. Does 13 (either via apt upgrade or direct installation) not work?
- What's the performance of this hardware like? I've got an old Samsung tablet that's not rootable and it's really creaking on recent android. I'd much rather something like this, but I don't want to swap one too-slow thing for another.
Performance is usable, especially compared to stock Android, because there is less background bloat. It’s fine for terminal work, light browsing, VS Code, and small experiments.
If you want you can check my video: https://youtu.be/DbX13_mahKc
This tickled my imagination and I wondered about a AI assisted reverse engineering platform with a complete build system in which the AI is connected to ports (serial console, gpio, i2c, spi, etc) normal physical switches (on/off, reset, etc) of the target board and a logical switch that can rotate among multiple SD cards either to the development PC and to the board so that the AI itself can download, build in parallel and test images and software freely offloading the most time consuming parts.
Here's an excerpt from a Claude snapshot, probably too long to post entirely (I don't have a GH account, thinking of opening a Codeberg one some day). I later moved everything to Deepseek because Claude became unusable giving just one single prompt before hitting the daily limit; I was about to subscribe to a paid plan but paying users started complaining about shrinking limits as well, so I left. First came Armbian, then I wanted to have a lighter OS and ported Alpine which boots from a Armbian kernel that then gives control to a full Alpine userland. Feel free to ask if you need further details. I'm sure the same process could be automated by removing the incredibly slow human and building an interface that would let the AI probe, try and fail, essentially brute forcing unknown hardware until it responds.
GIADA NI-A20 - BOARD SNAPSHOT 2026-03-21 ========================================= Board: Giada NI-A20, Nano-ITX form factor SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i) - see snapshot-soc-allwinner-a20.txt RAM: 1GB Storage: SD card (primary), NAND (data only), SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2
STATUS: Armbian: COMPLETE Alpine: COMPLETE
HARDWARE -------- SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i), dual-core ARM Cortex-A7, ARM Mali-400 MP2 RAM: 1GB Storage: 8GB NAND (data only, NOT bootable), SD card, SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2 PMU: AXP209 on TWI0 (I2C address 0x34) RTC: PCF8563 on TWI1 (I2C address 0x51) Ethernet: GMAC (Gigabit), interface end0 WiFi: AP6210 (Broadcom BCM43362), SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n Bluetooth: BCM20710 on uart2 (NOT YET ENABLED in DTS) GPS: unknown chip, power enable PC22, UART on ttyS1, NMEA at 9600 baud USB Hub: GL850G on EHCI1, power enable PH7 IR receiver: /dev/lirc0 SATA power connector: JST PH 2.0mm 4-pin (pin1=12V, pin2=5V, pin3=GND, pin4=GND) LVDS: 30-pin dual channel 8-bit, max 1920x1080 COM2: RS232 Tx/Rx/CTS/RTS 4-wire (DB9 connector) COM3: RS232 Tx/Rx 2-wire only VGA: available via J4 14-pin header (non-standard connector) Mini-PCIe: present, intended for 3G module SIM card slot: present, for use with 3G module
GPIO MAP -------- PH1 - SD card detect, active LOW PH4 - USB OTG ID detect PH5 - USB OTG VBUS detect PB9 - USB OTG VBUS drive, active LOW PH6 - USB Host1 VBUS, active HIGH PH7 - USB Hub power enable (GL850), active HIGH PH17 - SATA power enable PH19 - Ethernet PHY power (vcc3v0 regulator), active HIGH PH25 - USB Host2 VBUS, active HIGH PI1 - WiFi WL_REGON, active HIGH (mmc3 pwrseq reset gpio) PI14 - WiFi WL_HOST_WAKE (input) PI20 - GPS UART7 TX (uart7_pi_pins) PI21 - GPS UART7 RX (uart7_pi_pins) PB5 - Bluetooth BT_REGON, active HIGH PC22 - GPS VCC_EN power enable, active HIGH PC00-PC16 - NAND bus
DTS FIX - MMC3 WIFI PINCTRL ----------------------------- The mainline A20 DTS was missing pinctrl for mmc3 (WiFi SDIO). Without it sunxi-mmc driver silently skips mmc3 initialization.
Fix applied to: ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/patch/kernel/archive/sunxi-6.12/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts
Added to &mmc3 node: &mmc3 { pinctrl-names = "default"; pinctrl-0 = <&mmc3_pins>; /* <-- this line was missing */ vmmc-supply = <®_vcc3v3>; mmc-pwrseq = <&mmc3_pwrseq>; ... };
DTB recompiled manually (Armbian build used cached version): cd ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/cache/sources/linux-kernel-worktree/6.12__sunxi__armhf/ sudo touch arch/arm/boot/dts/allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts sudo make ARCH=arm allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb
CRITICAL: DTB lives in /boot/dtb/ not /boot/ on this board. U-Boot boot.cmd looks in ${prefix}dtb/ directory. Correct location: /boot/dtb/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb
WIFI - AP6210 (BCM43362) ------------------------- Chip: Broadcom BCM43362, SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n only Driver: brcmfmac + pwrseq_simple Firmware: brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin + brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt Location: /lib/firmware/brcm/ Board-specific symlinks (created by build-image.sh): brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.bin -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.txt -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt
No CLM blob available for BCM43362 (chip predates CLM blob requirement). Result: limited to channels 1-11, TX power 31dBm. The driver logs "no clm_blob available" - this is normal, not an error.
P2P error at init is harmless - BCM43362 does not support P2P mode.
WIFI BOOT SEQUENCE: 1. eudev starts at sysinit runlevel 2. pwrseq_simple loads from /etc/modules 3. mmc1 (SDIO) initializes, BCM43362 detected 4. brcmfmac loads from /etc/modules 5. eudev firmware rule instantly rejects missing clm_blob (no 60s timeout) 6. wlan0 appears, wifi OpenRC service starts wpa_supplicant 7. dhcpcd obtains IP on wlan0
eudev firmware rule (/etc/udev/rules.d/50-firmware.rules): SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", ACTION=="add", \ TEST!="/lib/firmware/$env{FIRMWARE}", ATTR{loading}="-1" Purpose: instantly rejects missing firmware requests instead of waiting 60 seconds per file for a userspace agent that never comes. Without this rule: 120s boot delay (2x 60s timeouts for clm_blob + txcap_blob) With this rule: WiFi up in ~15 seconds
Would like to try this out, but getting an incompatible machine would be a real bummer.
Edit: OK, I think the Android 15 is this one: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/DOOGEE-U10-Tablet-WiFi-128GB/dp/B... (Nov/Dec delivery)
On the units I tested, the board says: RK3562-v1.0 2024.06.28.
This is the listing I used, but it is currently out of stock:
Linux can be trimmed way down and with an efficient stack on top can make many devices extremely useable.
Here is a related comment on user software side I made recently.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alchemist1e9#4800737...
No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there.
The tablet boots Linux directly from SD without modifying internal Android storage. Remove the card and Android still boots normally.
The process is intentionally simple: write the image to an SD card from any operating system, insert it, and boot. No flashing tools, no bootloader unlocking, no custom recovery, and no permanent modifications to the device. It can even be prepared directly from Android itself using an external SD card reader.
I used Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT heavily during bring-up for driver debugging, DT syntax, and kernel configuration issues. They accelerated development significantly, but the actual reverse engineering still required hands-on embedded Linux work: boot-chain analysis, DT bindings, panel timings, register experimentation, and kernel panic debugging.
This project also convinced me that modern mobile hardware is massively underutilized once vendor support ends. Many phones and tablets already have hardware comparable to SBCs, but simple external boot support could extend their useful life for homelabs, edge computing, local AI inference, and embedded workloads.
Any feedback, ideas, or contributions are very welcome.
I know you just registered to post this, but AI generated comments are not allowed here.
The project looks very cool. Just take the time to write your own comments in your own words and it would certainly be welcomed.
I feel the frustration of reading "slop", but on the other hand the projects that surface do usually bring something useful to the table.
Should we simply judge the submission based on its technical merit? Why do I feel annoyed that an otherwise cool project uses typical LLM prose? For how long will we be able to recognize LLM-generated text, and what happens when we can't?
The people who don’t even take 30 seconds to write their own comments aren’t here to share their knowledge or discuss the project. It’s self-advertising. They might be following instructions from the LLM to post it here. There was a project a couple days ago that still had the AI-generated marketing plan in git which instructed the person to post it here and then on some subreddits, including marketing copy to include.
The projects often don’t work, too. Remember the guy who claimed to have uncovered a multi billion dollar Meta influence campaign? When I read the documents they had output from Claude saying that it failed to access the documents, but then it guessed what the document might include. The whole report was full of this, but it was posted here and upvoted as if someone had done deep research.
Very much not the case with the comment I responded to.
There is a stark contrast between the AI written first comment and some of their other comments.
I know many here don’t like any accusations of AI writing because they aren’t as attuned to picking it up, but the comment I responded to was as blatant as it gets.
I tried to give a more friendly encouragement to share self-written comments.
For Wi-Fi, I even contacted the chip factory. They didn’t answer at first, so I wrote again in Chinese with AI’s help and eventually got the drivers.
We are not yet at the point where you give AI a tablet and it magically returns a working image. AI helped a lot, but it also introduced bugs more than once. The real work was still testing, breaking things, fixing them, and repeating.
I posted it here because I think the project is useful and could attract people who want to build on it. All the devices should be more open, repairable, and reusable, so we can actually own the hardware we buy.
That's exactly how I'd write it, save for the em dash with spaces around it, which is not how em dashes are normally used in English language.
I think it's an overreaction.
I think surrounding it with spaces comes from people using a regular dash (the em dash is not readily accessible on the keyboard), then surrounding it with spaces to make sure it’s not interpreted as a dash.
I've read a few typography related books and checked some style manuals in my time, but no-one has ever 'corrected' my usage so I think it's alright.
I was listening to a podcast recently that had interesting information about the birth of mdash - "99% Invisible: The Em Dash".
Episode webpage: https://99percentinvisible.org/?p=46542. (Antenna Pod is a great podcast player!)
How are you able to boot Debian from an SD card, and without unlocking the bootloader?
Does the bootloader look for an OS on SD card by default? SD and eMMC are basically the same thing, is it just the same lines but an SD card takes priority over the eMMC? And does it not enforce verified boot properly / at all? Maybe being a Rockchip and not MTK/QCOM has something to do with it, but it’s still an Android device and I would assume there’s something in CTS/VTS/GMS licensing that makes verified boot mandatory.
But the answer is fairly simple, on a lot of Rockchip devices I’ve used, if there is no SPI flash or custom boot order, the BootROM checks the SD card first and then falls back to eMMC.
That is what happens here. Take the tablet out of the box, write the image to an SD card, insert it, and it boots directly into Linux instead of Android.
So the eMMC Android bootloader can be locked, but it doesn’t matter much if the SoC boots from SD first. Verified boot applies to the Android boot chain on eMMC, not to an external boot path that is accepted earlier by the Rockchip boot flow.
And now you’ll never know if this was an AI answer or not :)
Judging from the build.sh, it looks like this is just using unmodified upstream u-boot and tools from the rockchip-linux repository, so "from scratch" is really just analyzing the DTB to see what drivers need to be loaded?
here the hardware is fixed and undocumented. I didnt modify the tablet, I had to figure out what was inside, what could be supported, where to find missing drivers and how to integrate and debug everything until it actually booted and worked.
I am not claiming to be a C or kernel developer. I am just someone hacking around until the device works. Maybe for others this is trivial, but for me it was a very exciting project.
Is full 3D acceleration eventually possible and how's battery live?