Star Labs reveal their new StarLite, a Surface-like Linux tablet
In the market for a new laptop or perhaps a Microsoft Surface-like tablet style system? Well, Star Labs have turned their StarLite laptop into a tablet.
Seems like no stylus? If so it makes the starlite not very surface-like in my mind. Ain't a stylus the reason for something like this?
Ah damn yeah, I was just thinking that this device might be something I'd consider blowing my budget for, if it can replace multiple devices. But the lack of stylus on a device like this is huge let down.
How hard would it be to make it work with a third party stylus?
I have a surface and I love it. At the same time, I hardly use the stylus.
I'm sure it's the reason many get it, but I also think there's a large audience for a tablet without one.
I genuinely dont see the reason for a windows tablet without a stylus. Note-taking is nice with a stylus but for just holding it and watching videos or browsing a surface is honestly too unwieldly and the windows touch interface is also not great.
Agreed. Although I do use the stylus that came with my Galaxy Tab S7 for note-taking, that's the only time I use it. 95% of the time I just use the tablet for browsing the web or watching videos.
My thoughts exactly.
They do have a generic MPP active pen as a configuration option though
I'm not sure on Starlab's background or people's stance on them, but I think this looks pretty nice.
Coreboot, 3:2 aspect ratio, magnetic keyboard, aluminium finish, I'd say makes this a pretty compelling alternative to a surface. Specs aren't super beefy, but I don't think they need to be in this form factor. Introductory price on this seems nice, too.
I’d say makes this a pretty compelling alternative to a surface.
And like a Surface, it puts a desktop OS onto a tablet, basically repeating Microsoft's mistake.
Specs aren’t super beefy, but I don’t think they need to be in this form factor.
There's a difference between "not beefy" and a super crappy 1.00GHz Intel N200. A hardware OEM just needs to go to AMD and pick off the shelf whatever is the closest thing to Steam Deck's CPU.
Well the desktop OS is what made me choose a Surface Go 1 as my main computer. And now that I've switched to Linux (Fedora), I'm even more thankful that you could apply every tutorial you found on the web for that tablet.
Well, presumably the Linux apps are a feature for the target audience. In terms of the OS UX itself, if you had never seen GNOME before, would you call it a desktop or a tablet UI?
I'd definitely prefer to have gone the AMD route for these, but N200 isn't that awful, no? At least comparable to some Skylake gens? Not that that's amazing in the modern day, but I'd say still capable enough with the included specs to not be too bogged down by some of the lighter distros.
Better off with a Chromebook 10/10 times if you need something low powered, but I think it's an interesting entry to the hardware space.
I am of the opinion that if we keep waiting for the “perfect” Linux tablet, it will never exist. The specs of this unit are head and shoulders above any other Linux-dedicated tablet thus far.
I plan on buying one once I see a product review, and if it’s as good as I hope it will be, I hope that Linux users will support it with their wallets so we get more and better devices like this.
The best thing for me is that you can buy a battery for it on their site with instructions how to do the replacement. Nothing is glued together according to the manual (which probably makes it mory clunky than Surface but oh well). Coreboot is an icing on the cake.
It seems like Star Labs is pivoting away from making superheroes and finally decided to use their technology more responsibly!
Was looking for this comment.
I don't need this, I don't need this, I so need this... I mean I don't... fuck!
Well, this month I am already broke...
Always wanted to try a star labs product. What always stops me are the specs. Not enough ram or storage or CPU to justify the price. Even though I know the premium is there because they aren't just white labeled clevos like every other Linux focused PC company
Have a clevo and it sucks.Battery life is poory And the Fans go off for like no reason
Oh no. Man that sucks. Which one? The lemur pro by system76 was a clevo I had it for a bit and thought it was really good all around. I would have kept it but the specs on a M1 were just ridiculous compared to anything out there. No fans, no dust collection was something I didn't know I appreciated so much
I see soo many people complain about the CPU but if your CPU use too much power, your battery is going to take a big hit on battery life, unless the tablet now start at much higher prices. So the 6W form factor makes a lot of sense.
People complaining about it not being AMD. AMD just doesn't make good 6W CPU (other then custom one but that would cost a fortune for such a little company). Intel has been really experienced in this market.
To the people scared about video decoding, Intel has really good HW decoding so 4K isn't an issue. It's better then AMD's one on Linux from my own experience.
Finally this is a $600 tablet, so don't expect a workstation to run Blender. Linux runs well on weaker CPU. My school computer runs KDE Plasma with a few apps open without much trouble and it has a Intel Celeron N5100 and 4GB of RAM.
The problem is that tablets like this generally can't take advantage of the turbo boost on the CPU due to thermal throttling. I'll wait and see, but I expect it to perform worse than an N5100 laptop.
Wait and see
I wish I would have known about this before buying the Pinetab2. I didn't realize (completely my fault) that the Pinetab2 was a development unit without working wifi, bluetooth, camera and other issues. Once again, my fault, not Pine64's.
The point of a tablet is to be secure to use it with a touch interface. If you install just some vanilla Linux distro, that won't work. Is there any touch based interface for Linux that's worth using?
Gnome has a strong touch interface. You just don't see it when used in a desktop.
If you install just some vanilla Linux distro, that won’t work.
My Surface 3 Pro with Debian Stable would disagree. The Gnome desktop does pretty good without a keyboard.
Same here. I've got Debian stable on a Dell Latitude 2-in1 (can't remember the model number) and it works great with Gnome and I can flip the keyboard backwards and use it like a tablet. Although it is bulkier because it has a keyboard attached.
Interesting. Might give that try some time. I'd love to have a tablet with Linux.
Is there any touch based interface for Linux that’s worth using?
Plasma should detect automatically when the keyboard is detached and then apply some changes to its desktop layout. There's also Plasma Mobile but I think that would not work well on the larger screen.
If I were StarLabs, I would probably default to BlissOS which is based on Android-x86 which means all regular Linux distributions are still feasible to install.
Gnome is actually amazing on a tablet. The touch gestures work well and it even does fancy stuff like pushes the content on your screen up when the on screen keyboard is active so you can see what you're typing. The only thing that really needs work is the on screen keyboard, however it is greatly improved by using the "Improved OSK" Gnome extension. If only it had swipe type.
Source: I recently acquired a hand me down Dell latitude 5175 which is an x86 tablet (can be found for cheap on eBay) so of course I had to install Linux on it. If anyone happens to be interested in using Linux on a Dell latitude 5175/5179 do note that deep sleep does not work and neither do the cameras. I also recommend Ubuntu LTS and using X11 instead of Wayland.
If only there was another group of touch first devices, preferably with even smaller screens, oh wait...
Android
Great RAM and SSD, but at the cost of a quad core processor at 1Ghz. Still, I'd consider it a bargain, especially at 500 with the keyboard, as it is right now.
I mean what high processing thing could you do on a tablet?
Opening up any excel file. Exporting any jpeg file from lightroom. Browsing more than one active tab at once. (the Web bloat is amazing)
3D modeling in Blender or maybe CAD of some sort.
Would absolutely get if it had a pen for drawing and notetaking, but otherwise I feel it's just a somewhat underpowered laptop in a neat form factor.
Oh damn, I may actually get it then
Very appealing for a travel device running a Linux kernel. On the product page, they also mention Open Warranty, which makes me believe it will be easily serviceable - this would be a big plus, especially for a travel tablet, being able to switch the disk easily.
Gnome is not so bad. It has a decent on screen keyboard that's very useable. I occasionally use it on my Dell 2-in-1 laptop.
That's an incredible price for 16gb of memory and a 512 ssd. Would be an upgrade from my 14" laptop. I just hope I don't have to wait multiple years to get it.
I didn't see anything in the article, but will it have stylus support?
Does anyone have on-screen keyboard experience with Linux tablets?
GNOME Mobile should have a good one after purism started pushing it, right?
Any more info on this?
It's ok, but you really need the "improved OSK" gnome extension so you can have things like arrow keys, Ctrl, etc at all times. The keyboard is usually very good about popping up on it's own when you tap on a text field. If it does fail to auto show itself you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pull it up that way. There is no swipe to type but other than that and with the extension I mentioned before, it works well enough. Now there are issues on Wayland that makes it unbearable though so I would recommend you use X.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the market for a new laptop or perhaps a Microsoft Surface-like tablet style system?
Well, Star Labs have turned their StarLite laptop into a tablet.
I have to admit, I love the form factor on this giving you the best of both worlds.
You get a sweet fully Linux supported tablet, and you can hook it up to a magnetic keyboard to get a full laptop experience too.
This is a proper Linux system too with open-source firmware powered by coreboot and edk II with updates via LVFS.
They support and test many different configurations, and you get a decent warranty with it too allowing you to to take your computer apart, replace parts, install an upgrade, and use any operating system and even your firmware, all without voiding the warranty.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Damn this might be an easy buy for $600
This is honestly quite interesting. I might get one, if only to play around with and see what cool stuff I can think of to do with it.
Also, their laptops look pretty sweet - I think it strikes a much better long-term balance between framework’s “plug-and-play” approach (which necessarily leads to a slightly clunkier and less sleek design) and Apple’s “inscrutable slab of electronics” approach.
Star’s approach requires more (dis)assembly time and care, but I think that’s fine. You can open up a Framework way more trivially, but well… how often do you honestly plan on disassembling your laptop? For me, it’s:
So, while I appreciate Framework’s approach… I’m honestly not going to crack the thing open more than 3 or 4 times, and hopefully only once or twice, so I am absolutely fine sacrificing super easy maintenance for an overall sleeker and more robust-feeling design.
I agree, I would say a reasonable limit for me would be:
I think anymore would be enough to deter me from doing it the 1 or 2 times a year I really need it.
The important bit not mentioned here is that FW machines are both user serviceable and user upgradable. No need to eat the cost or create the waste of replacing a perfectly good chassis and display, and then sell off the replaced mainboard on the market.
Looks like a dope little device but at that price I think I might be more interested in a Steam Deck.
Steam deck kinda sucks for media consumption as a handheld, and it's much heavier. But this thing isn't gonna game well 😅
I feel like no desktop OS maker has nailed transition to touch screen devices, but I have only recently gotten my first x86 tablet and have only used windows on it, so my experience is limited and I'm only judging from screenshots I have seen online.
(I guess steam OS can count as decent enough, but it's not available yet outside of steam deck and it's gaming focused)
P.S. I honestly would be happy with an iPad if it were not so limited and more non-mobile games were available for it
I think the issue with devices like this is that apps simply aren't optimized for use like this.
I have a Surface. Barely used it as a tablet really, there aren't a ton of uses and Windows in tablet mode is just awful.
With the keyboard it turns into a neat and portable mini laptop, which I love.
The Starlite seems neat, but with the current specs it feels like not quite a tablet yet not quite a laptop either.
Wow, the price and openness of both the firmware and warranty make this a very enticing product. I've been casually looking for a new laptop, something to just watch youtube, browsing and manage my home lab with.
I checked out the actual product page, and it's a bit confusing in the configurator. Seems like the default power adaptor is non-us by default. Easy enough to change, no cost variance. But the keyboard section is confusing. Additional layout options for +~$110. Does that mean a secondary keyboard? What's the default?
EDIT: Any keyboard is not included, after finally finding the "what's in the box" in the specifications section. So, factor in an extra $100 in the price if ya need it.
Y'know what? I may just sell my iPad for this.
FWIW this thing is nowhere near as powerful as a modern iPad. Different universes.
True - but hell all I ever do with mine is watch videos and browse the web anyway...
Waste of an M1 processor honestly
My m1 has rwally crappy Battery life
Great to know, thanks for sharing
oooo this thing looks awesome, I want one.
I've always been fascinated by this type of form factor.
Almost certainly not since the keyboard is $110 add-on. It is not included by default.
That's the same weight as my Surface Pro 9, which is a ton faster and has a bigger battery, fans and a slightly larger screen.
Coreboot too
This looks great and seems very reasonably priced. Pretty sure it won't replace my Android tablet but it might tempt me into trying.
WiFi AC is interesting, mostly because AX has a lot of improvements for congestion
They are using older/more affordable chipsets
Would be great for a plane!
Okay but the real question is does the keyboard use QMK? Mnt Reform has set the standard for open source laptops imo, if I can't program my keyboard then that is a massive downside.
Just use kmonad?
kmonad
Didn't know about this. I'd still like QMK since I like having hardware level control, but this looks like something I'd use in conjunction with QMK. I should try setting it up this weekend. Thanks!
hmm interesting I might get this
I'm running endeavour os on a Lenovo duet 3. It's fully functional including the gyroscope, which is super damn amazing. Windows basically wouldn't run, but I feel like a super user when in using endeavor on it. It's so good.
Hm, I'm interested, although I've gotten by just fine running Linux on my old Surface Pro 3
Oh cool. Glad it's not ARM. Way more distro options.
Does the keyboard work while detached? When I travel, I like to plug the laptop into the TV and control it from across the room with a wireless keyboard and mouse. It would be nice not to have to pack a separate keyboard.
If it follows the Surface design, it doesn't. Surface's keyboard has no battery and no other connector than the proprietary surface pogo pins, so no way to make it work wirelessly.
Once again GoL blog spam. Original source: https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite
I support linking the original site as a general rule, but I don't think GamingOnLinux is blog spam. He curates information from a variety of places, provides a quick accessible summary, and very clearly links back to the article he's referencing.
In this specific case, his table of specs is far more readable and accessible than the obnoxious advertising product page is.
I support linking the original site as a general rule, but I don’t think GamingOnLinux is blog spam.
GamingOnLinux is the OMG!Ubuntu of Linux gaming, a website several link aggregators rightfully banned.
He curates information from a variety of places, provides a quick accessible summary, and very clearly links back to the article he’s referencing.
GOL does less summarizing of hard to read sources than Phoronix and even Phoronix is questionable lots of times.
If GOL does some original reporting: Fine. If GOL summarizes discussions from bug trackers and mailing lists: Fine.
If GOL just rewords content that right there in the original source: Blog spam.
In this specific case, his table of specs is far more readable and accessible than the obnoxious advertising product page is.
I see no problem with https://starlabs.systems/pages/starlite-specification which is accessible from the hard to miss drop down menu at the top.
Thanks
Nice
I was thinking to get a beelink with the n100, but this couls be a more interesting choice... Hmm..
Finally a decent Linux tablet that can actually replace many laptops. Only thing is that it would've been great with an i3-N300.
I'm genuinely intrigued by the potential use cases for this Linux tablet.
In my opinion:
For casual tech activities, I have a Pinephone with a keyboard. Despite the phone's lack of power and the keyboard's quality, its portability and form factor are hard to beat.
It’s too large to hold comfortably on the sofa, such as when reading an ebook;
lol I use a 13.3 inch boox max and the size is beautiful for reading.
I don't get it. I loved my 8" tablet, but they are extinct. I bought a 10" tablet but it is too big to use for a tablet. Who the hell is buying these 12" tablets.
I am surprised I am not seeing, "BuT LiNUx is FoSs hOw DaRE ThEY ChARGe FoR IT?!"
In the words of our Lord Richard M. Stallman, "Free as in freedom."
