Ubuntu MATE for the GPD Pocket and GPD Pocket 2

Oh my gosh, everyone! I didn’t realize my old GDP Pocket is supported by things now! DL’ing this right now! MATE is my jam anyway.

https://ubuntu-mate.org/gpd-pocket/

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Im having pretty good luck throwing bog standard gnu/linux distros on mine as long as the kernel is recentish. About the only thing I need to do is rotating the display and touch screen in XOrg.

GPD hardware is seemingly remarkably standard. Which I approve of.

Though I think that Ubuntu MATE package is nearly official at this point. GPD has been offering Ubuntu OEM style with their last few models and I suspect its in partnership with those folks.

Id still recommend checking out compatability reports after new models come out. ( They had a recent accident with linux support and the MicroPC model I think. ) But GPD has been doing a good job.

EDIT

Picked up a GPD Pocket 2 off ebay. I am writing very post on it. Had been looking for something lighter weight I could use to tote between home, work and class and the full blown thinkpad is a hair cumbersome. Had considered waiting for the PineBook Pro but I suspect my courses work will demand Windows in a VirtualBox instance at somepoint, which does force me to go x86; and attempts to adapt a chromebook to my needs did not go well.

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That’s weird, as I technically live in “ebay”, and yet @tim posted about that 3 hours ago and you already grabbed one?! Damn, @trashHeap, you are my hardware person, for sure!

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3 posts were split to a new topic: GPD “Known Issues”

My GPD Pocket 1’s wifi card is not detectable by vanilla Debian 9.x, which is what i really wanted. But this is working well for me.

How are you liking it??

I got my Pocket 1 during the initial IndieGoGo campaign; twas on the bleeding edge. I even won a leather case from them for tweeting something and got mine early. I got mine before almost everyone else. From what I’m reading, my thermal situation is much better than the more general run.

I hadn’t used it for much until I just saw this. I am super curious if I can get my work dev docker stuff all running on this as I’d love a small backup machine for work, and for all my future game dev. (It’ll happen, really!)

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Poking around, it seems like there is a known work around for Debian if you wanna try giving it a whirl again at somepoint.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185661
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/GPD/Pocket

The keyboard is pretty serviceable which was my high point of nervousness with it. Im also getting to the point of muscle memory where im no longer reaching for the wrong location for some of the keys they had to shift around. I haven’t had the time lately at work to try coding on it, but im pretty sure it will be serviceable there.

In terms of performance, even though I got the celeron model its quite speedy. No doubts it will handle a windows virtual machine when I need it. Kinda surprised Celerons support VT-X these days, but thats the world we live in and im not complaining. Could easily handle 2d and limited indie game needs too.

Ive got a beefy powerbank in my bag, that I used to keep it topped off. Between the two and sleep mode, im getting several days between actual charges at outlets.

The whole setup of both and a bluetooth mouse is probably still a fifth the weight of the X200T. So it seems likely its going to work out exactly as intended. Will probably know for REAL once classes get going in august for me again.

Also it will make for an easier squeeze into my carry-on than my laptop, next time I visit my sister I wager.

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If you didn’t have a GPD, would you get one, or a PineBook, or a :rpi:4?

If I didn’t need VirtualBox ( which requires a x86 processor with virtualization extensions ) then I would have gone pinebook pro (few months away).

My coursework is eventually going to force me to run windows though. Thus the need for VirtualBox.

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