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…
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 I haven’t tried their other SBCs though, and the Rockpro64 may be outdated at this point.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.