I was using the version still using Xorg at the time. I did try Sway and Wayfire and uh… I kinda extremely don’t click with both. Wayfire is almost usable for me except for Waybar just… does not do what I want it to do. At the point I’d gotten frustrated with both, a Debian Unstable update bricked Wayland on the system, and I switched to the Debian 12 image (and helped fix some bugs with the 12 image on RK3588). On 12, Sway is broken for me (the right click menu in Firefox doesn’t work) due to a bug that has been fixed in later versions and Wayfire is… nonfunctional. Ended up using KDE Plasma Wayland which… 95% works except for notifications from Flatpak apps. (But the X11 version of KDE displays those notifications just fine!!!)
I… extremely don’t like using Debian Unstable. It’s a testing artifact and not a end user distribution, and unlike other rolling release distributions like Arch, there is absolutely no insulation between you and things catching on fire immediately (because Arch is actually tested prior to rolling out for people). Going by the forum here, stuff’s catching on fire for Pocket users a lot with updates. It’s just kind of too much hassle for me to deal with and unfortunately, while the 12 image sorted that out the flakiness of my hardware just made me go “screw it” and get out the ten year old Skylake netbook again.
Like occasionally it just failed to detect my NVMe drive on boot? And if I hit Hyper+Enter then selected boot, it’d crash from cold power sometimes as opposed to holding Hyper+Enter.
Yeah I have learned that if things are all working for me that I only update specific applications and not the system. I just felt like I lost my coat too many times on that. Debian stable is where I would like to be as well. We’ll get there eventually though.
The stock Debian image has worked well for me so far, but I don’t expect it to last based on past experience with unstable. I have lost more than one unstable system to a bad update in the past and messing with apt borkage is not enjoyable to me. I am hoping to get to a working stable NixOS setup using lykso’s past work, once I have time to focus on it.
I use my Pocket Reform often for reviewing and especially typing new flash cards with Anki. I would eventually like to use it for e-mail, password manager, etc but I don’t feel like the ecosystem is mature enough for that quite yet. I think using it for constrained, specific use-cases is probably much more practical than “daily driving” at this stage but ultimately I do use it quite often!
So I’m one of those living in the reality distortion field - I use my pocket as my primary personal laptop.
Some bits of context that probably make this possible:
I’m running the RK3588, performance is no longer a consideration.
I love the form factor and the ideal, so I want it to work. I find the keyboard a joy to use (no really, I used a Planck and a Corne before this so key combos, ortholinear et al are fine for me. The size is a little cramped, but I’m the sort of person who’d solve that with more key combos and fewer keys)
I am very much prepared to put the time and effort in, and to be entirely honest I was not really very surprised by any of the original pitfalls and quirks with the device because I’d been following the community and adjacent to a lot of other users for a while.
Related to the above, I’m in IRC all the time so I have a lot of context about current developments
I’ve daily driven an arm64 device before, I knew what I was getting myself in to
I’d previously used a GPD P2 Max as my daily driver, so I knew what I was getting in to when it came to small form factor
I’d say the things that I find most difficult about it as a device is Debian Unstable. At some point in the future I’m liable to switch back to Arch for more stability and easier off-repo package building. In the meantime I make liberal use of package pins when apt-listbugs finds something untoward. I work in security so it’s pretty much the same as vulnerability reports - you read it and decide whether it’s going to fuck with you or not.
Realistically, I got this laptop because I wanted something of the form factor that I could upgrade, repair, modify, whatever. I knew it would be work. I’ve installed new i2c devices, modified system controller firmware, modified the lpc kernel module, installed an alternative trackball… And at this point most of the really frustrating bugs have been ones I’ve introduced myself!
The reason I talk so much about myself here is because I think there’s a fairly well shared idea of what the pocket actually objectively is and the remaining gap is in expectation. This device is pretty much what I expected it to be. I expected to be helping to test out reliability fixes when I preordered the thing. I don’t know whether other people had that context or expectation, and I think it is fair to question whether that expectation was reasonably set for people coming to the crowdfunder or product purchase page.
I’m obviously biased but I’m using my Pocket Reform daily, in fact I’m using it right now (with RK3588 processor) as my desktop PC, connected to a Dell U2724DE monitor over USB-C, which is also charging it and providing it with all sorts of USB peripherals and 2.5G ethernet.
The launch firmware for USB-C PD was absolutely lacking, which I’m sorry for (not enough time spent testing different chargers initially), but that quickly got fixed. Nowadays one can use almost any random charger that does more than 5V.
I have long left Xorg behind as all the people who develop graphics drivers and major desktop environments did. It would have been a big time sink and dead end for us to try to support it. There’s however the possibility to run basically all old X11 desktops in the fullscreen one-app compositor cage. This also fixes any tearing issues for free.
Trackball cutting out doesn’t sound normal and you’re eligible for warranty replacement of faulty parts like this. Have you ever gotten in contact with our support? We are a tiny team but still managed to do a lot of warranty replacements.
In any case, sorry you are so frustrated with the device. If you want to get rid of it I’m sure you can recover most if not all of the money you spent on it by selling it to someone else here or on eBay.
I’m in love with my Pocket and I am very much looking forward to the Next. Right now I think the RK3588 I have on the way is going to elevate my Pocket even more than it already is. I feel that the i.MX8M+ is plenty fast for most of the things I am doing. In conjunction with Sway I barely ever experience slow downs.
Just working to get psuspend to be super stable so I basically leave my Pocket running all the time. Once I can do that, I will basically use the Pocket all the time.
I also finally got a 21 cell (18650) powerbank that does PD and it works perfectly with the Pocket. 54,600mah. I think keeping the pocket charged while it sits in the car at work is going to be a piece of cake.
As for the limitations? They bother me sometimes, but the design and the durability of the MNT line just keeps pulling me back in.
Really looking forward to getting the RK3588 in my pocket.
Edit: All typed and corrected on the Pocket Reform.