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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • Damned, now I am afraid that I’ve oversold the thing. I’d hate if it came in the mail and you ended up disappointed.

    There is actually one significant glitch with the picture jerking up and down on the display.

    I believe it is a software glitch because I can fix it by maximizing a window on the screen or tilting window left / right. I never get to see it really, because right after login Mattermost client fills half of my screen.

    Now i believe this has actually worsened since before. On previous versions (not sure 37/38) this has happened only seldomly, you had to play with the device a bit to replicate. But I believe it happened both in landscape and portrait mode.

    On Fedora 39 it is absolutely unavoidable in landscape mode - it starts immediately sometimes “jumping up/down” angrily, but does not happen at all in portrait mode.

    I’ve tried to replicate by booting Fedora 38 workstation live from flash drive - but I don’t thing that was a good method looking into it - the “autorotate” didn’t work whitch I am sure works after installation and I couldn’t replicate the jerking at all and I am sure it was there already before. I haven’t done full reinstall since I got it, it is possible it has already gone throught 37 upgrade 38 upgrade 39 and this is something I’ve picked up along the way but I’d be surprised. (Also don’t use Unetbootin to create Fedora boot drive - I keep learning that over and over again.)

    When you mention susped - I’ve never bloody noticed - it does not suspend automatically! My xfce systems have “presentation mode” always activated so I thought it is something i’ve switched on - but if so - I don’t see obvious way to switch it off. I may have seen some error messages about suspend in the past? I press the power button shortly and it suspends light blinking, i press it again and it goes on again. This feels fixable but I don’t mind atm. It suspends reliably when the keyboard folio closes over it too.

    Finally when the keyboard is away on BT for long it runs out of juice. You have to reconnect it to charge up for few seconds and then disconnect/reconnect again to make it work.

    The chasis feels sturdy enough to me, but it ain’t as sturdy as a tablet (iPad / Boox ) with one piece metal backplate. Bottom half of the device back connecting kickstand is made of metal (I suspect that is where the heat exchange happens) and that is where a lot of it robustness comes from.

    I am an admin by trade so I may not be objective. I have heard about but have never used Mint - I love my “xface”. I do exist in deb based environment like you though and I do know default Ubuntu. I’ve played with Fedora before because curiosity and I think the switch is painless. Pretty much same systemd, same Gnome 3, just watch out dnf update upgrades packages unlike apt. Installing this thing I haven’t done a single “smart” thing. Out of the box it was better user experience than installing windows and everything except that jerking whitch before I had to notice over time worked marvelously. I think I recall looking for activation of hw acceleration in firefox and finding out it was already on. I may have used nmcli to set my wireguard vpn profile but that may have been the total I’ve done in shell except using dnf for speed and using ssh / tmux.

    I recall trying Ubuntu on it but while not useless it was far from Fedora. On Ubuntu I kept oscilating between x11 where everything worked but the touch interface was jerky and somewhat useless or wayland where touch was fine but not everything worked as I wanted. Under both scenarious the bluetooth keyboard didn’t work over bluetooth - only connected, and the auto rotation was a no-go. (No “jerking” if I remember correctly!). Fedora provides the best Wayland experiece I’ve seen. IMO well worth learning to deal w/ dnf - even though it’s only one device.


  • Not at all 😉.

    I’ve installed FlatHub originating FreeCAD 0.21.2 from “Software” app (very AppleStore like experience minus the signing in). It spinns up in cca 10 seconds. I’ve opened the “ArchDetail” demo example it offers, after discovering the “Gesture” option in the bottom right corner I can rotate and zoom the model freely using fingers with no impact on performance - no matter how quickly I “twich” with the model I can’t get more than 30% CPU load spike, maybe 25% ( Fedora39 default Gnome3 windowing, CPU scaling on “power saver”).

    The CPU/performance IMO feels really good and not what I would expect from Intel CPUs. 1.1 GHz Base Freqency, 3.1Ghz Burst (single core I believe), some Intel graphics that can take Gnome 3 “zooming windows” with perfect fluency and all that in cca 5 Watts and no fan. The performance feels an order of magnitude better than what RPi3 would provide IMO.


  • Pretty much regular x86 laptop:

    • regular BIOS (press F2)
    • two usb-c ports, both will charge, both can be used to charge other device. I haven’t done it extensively, but it will support additional QHD resolution dispaly if it mattered…
    • has a SIM card slot
    • I honestly don’t know about the battery, I use it mostly around my home, I use it for watching movies and youtube around kitchen - It can do two movies definitely - 3-4 hours screaming at full blast - more - i’d have to try. But i recall that when I got it I was impressed by its battery life. I have the 10IGL5 version. The CPU has 6W TDP.
    • I don’t expect that you would be using the included keyboard very much - way too flimsy for your application - but I can imagine suitable rugged bluetooth or wired keyboard / mouse combo would do …
    • There are no “holes” on the device used for heat exchange and there is (AFAIK - haven’t opened it) any fan. There are some holes for speaker on top left & right corner, but if those get cloged can’t be critical. The whole chasis is sturdy you can press on it hard and it doesn’t give, it can resist a bit of twisting but yeah - it’s an Ideapad - not a Thinkpad w/ magnesium rollcage. It definitely doesn’t mind being splashed with liquids around kitchen.

    I am a hardcore thinkpad / debian / xfce aficionado, I wouldn’t go and search for a device like this myself. A colleague of mine was trying to get rid of his, he bought it for his kid but running windows 10 the thing was bloody useless. I’ve googled somewhere that it does linux good and after limited success with Ubuntu i’ve tried Fedora. I recall trying a touch interface with linux long time ago (around 1st iPads) and it was a laughably misserable experience. This was amazing - IMO deffinitely better than what windows had to offer even though I understand the bar is low here. Better interface, at least as reliable (more). I’ve bought it off my colleague for cca 200 USD / 5000 CZK. I can imagine I would be confident enough bringing it with me on a holiday instead of full 14" thinkpad for mobility & battery life.



  • IMO the main difference between left leaning commedy and the right leaning commedy is that the left can make fun of itself.

    Example: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Biden catches Covid and his press secretary claims, that “despite his illness, the president is not slowing down”. Colbert finds it believable “because he does not thing it is physically possible to move any slower than Biden already is”. Whole theater is laughing.

    Imagine a right leaning commedian said that about Trump. He would get shot!



  • Full qwerty keyboard. I know I am a minority. I don’t need more screen estate, I need to be able to make notes in my diary whithout looking on the screen and not bumping into things while I am walking. I’ve tried the Uniherz offers, but the OS and the quality is really sub-par. I’ve jumped on the Astroslide train, but the manufacturing batches went south over the Covid and I don’t blame the Astro guys for not getting my device. Some US company did buy the BlackBerry licence and I was ready to pay any price for their phone - but they failed to manufacture anything. If only you could jailbreak BlackBerry Key 2 - I’d be carrying it proudly around till today. (written on Google Pixel 6 runnning Graphene with a collabsible pocket bluetooth keyboard - so I can type at least while I am not moving - best among terrible options).







  • Fast / Branded fashion - When I was at grammar school there were attempts at bullying kids not wearing branded clothes. Attempts - because those days I was not only year older and head higher than any of my peers but also one pissed off boy scout. They say violence does not solve anything - I say there are exceptions. I don’t wear clothes with any form of visible branding or statement. No matter if it is NIKE or similar piece of crap or some brand no one ever heard of. My backpack is the model bundeswehr used to use till the late 80s - re-stitched so many times it is probably a totally unique piece of luggage by now. My jeans are de-branded levis or wornstar bootcuts with reinforced crotch (iron-on patches), my jackets are by Polish company Helicon Tex - they mostly supply to military / police - their models are brand less single color rugged simple and big on pockets. I love Source sandals and linen pants for summer. It should be noted that my occupation does not require me to look respectable - I look like a used fiver - and everybody loves me.