2025 will be the year of
LinuxRISC-V desktop!!do they come with all the necessary drivers? Or are they hoping they magically appear in the linux kernel after they’ve sold a bunch?
The one for Framework seems fine, although generally weak so… depends on the manufacturer?
Unless all the other hardware is bespoke, it’ll use the same drivers as it would if it ran x86 or ARM.
I’m not talking about drivers for stuff that is not the cpu itself. But the processor itself usually contains a bunch of peripherals that need their own stuff.
If someone could spit out some nice high-performance RISC-V CPU with an integrated open-source and most importantly mainlined GPU (which also includes a video encoder/decoder which could handle 4k 264, 265* and AV1) … I’d be SO happy…
- Yes, I know the intellectual property/digital restrictions management cesspit would do everything they could to prevent this from happening. One can dream, though.
does it run Linux? I’m waiting for a good low power CPU laptop that I can install a standard distro on. preferably arch…
Yes, it runs Linux (you didn’t hink they were shipping it with Windows on it, did you?). Debian, Ubuntu, and Gentoo should all have support. I don’t know about Arch.
I didn’t think Debian had support for RISC-V until 13.0 Trixie comes out later this year.
Huh. Thought they did. Maybe I’m wrong—it isn’t my distro of choice, after all.
It does run Linux, but it would probably more precise to say it walks Linux.
Check the destro of your choice to see if it’s supported.
Not just Linux, but also FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Not sure about NetBSD.
This could be cool if:
- battery life is fantastic
- form factor is good (my preference: 14")
- performance is good enough (better than RPi5 ideally, or at least on par)
- price is reasonable - <$1k
- marketing is appropriate - don’t imply gaming performance when games won’t work
I don’t need much from a laptop anymore since I have a Steam Deck for games on the go and a desktop PC for everything else.
Keyboard with good travel, decent screen, slots for additional SSDs, integrated 5G connectivity (maybe LoRa too), GPIO pins.
100% yes on “keyboard with good travel,” I’m honestly okay with missing the rest on an initial model.
I can download more RAM now.
Now this is indeed great news
We could have had ARM laptops much earlier, if some manufacturers at least tried to. I cannot really believe that the same chips that power SBCs couldn’t been put into some small laptops.
