I want to take it as a tool for reading/writing/studying and super basic browsing. My phone just broke, chat control just got approved and I’m sick of proprietary shit: I decided I’m not gonna buy anything which doesn’t hold free software anymore.
I love e-ink and I love Linux, but how usable is the pinenote with Linux? How hard is the install process? Can an average Linux user/self hoster use it daily? How’s battery? Couldn’t find many reviews online…
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I have one, I wrote a small review for it last year: https://domistyle.gitlab.io/pinenote-2024/ (enable autoplay so the videos play).
You can test Xournal++ and KOReader on any Linux desktop, it’s what works best on the PineNote right now.
They also have an active Matrix group where the main developers are present.
thanks for this, so it’s not that bad and it seems to be working fairly good enough… Mmmh I might think about that, how’s the battery life? How long do the tips last? The pen is active or passive?
I have used the same tip for a year and it’s still fine. It also comes with 2 tip replacement and all of the generic pens for EMR screens work on the Pinenote.
Can’t say much about the battery life but I’m going to leave it running once it’s fully charged and report back.
I notice that on the website they wrote
The first batch of the PineNote will be great to write software for, but not great to write notes on. Wait for a later batch with better preinstalled software if you just want to use the device as an e-reader, e-note, or your everyday computing device.
So i’d wait
I think the second batch is already out, called “community edition”
They are DevKits, as someone else mentioned. Very literally described as such.
Don’t be upset when you get exactly what they state by ignoring their own words.
I see, thank you for the info
I’ve bought several Pine products over the years, and they’re all on a shelf gathering dust. If you like writing software to make a cost-engineered piece of hardware with basically no useful software at all work as you might expect an actual product you paid for from a shop, they’re great.
If you’re expecting a useful out of box experience, or even a useful experience after hours of hacking and tuning, they are not for you.
Notable exceptions IME: the Pinecil, Pinepower, and Rockpro64. I haven’t tried their other SBCs though, and the Rockpro64 may be outdated at this point.
I’ll add the PineTime to that. Doesn’t do anything too fancy but it works well enough.
People say its going to suck to use but like, surely it doesn’t suck to use basic linuxy apps that tend to work well on linux. Like for using as a ereader, the main thing is ability to handle file formats and there’s plenty of simple file management tools for this, for notes nothing gets easier than markdown for text files, idk about handwriting things on them but I saw a couple demos showcasing how good it is specifically on the pine note and from the looks of it, it is definitely useable and seems to not be hacky out of the box. I saw some mention of pine note coming with Debian out of the box but there seems to be much more active development for it on arch and they basically develop on arch and put it on Debian when its good or something like that but I’ve still seen most people reccomend using arch.
I went with a Supermote.
It’s supposed to get Linux support at some point, and it has replaceable batteries. Plus, it works great as a e-ink notebook right now.
I also looked into supernote, it’s expansive, but it’s totally worth the money if they can offer a full Linux support with an e ink device, and it’s better than the pinenote because of the repairable hardware and the pen which doesn’t need tips replacements.
But they have kinda pulled back on the Linux development, it looks like it was more marketing than other, they have been promising it for a while but they’ve stated it’s harder than they thought.
I won’t buy an Android device so I’ll wait until a real Linux support is added.
Fair.
It does what I need, I’m satisfied with it, and I’m fine because it’s still an open source notepad and e-reader.
But if that’s a deal breaker for you, it’s totally valid.
