alt Hacker NewsC100 Developer Terminal
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A few things about this stand out:
- Calligra with two 'l's is the name of a KDE office suite.
- Why does the keyboard have macOS keys? At least as a Linux user, I've felt like most Linux desktops reflect the Windows keyboard layout more.
- Can I have pictures of the internals of the machine, or is this a 3D rendering?
- The Workbench OS makes a lot of claims that I want more information about. Is this a rice on a common WM or something they made themselves? Why is it "suitable for sovereign and secure deployments"? Won't having homebrew and DNF lead to conflicts (this is more of a general question, since I genuinely don't know)?
Nonetheless, I have to say that it does look cool from a design perspective, and with the pace of DRAM prices, maybe the actual system price won't actually be that crazy in a few months.
Why do I feel like this is kinda like the hipster carrying his typewriter on the bus?
It seems like stuff like this is more about presenting an “identity “ instead of actually doing anything real. My immediate assumption from seeing someone with this would be that they are more about appearing to do a thing than actually doing it… so perhaps a good ux designer.
"Get out of your way" is marketing speak to cover for missing applications. I've rarely seen such a blatant piece of marketing. "A computer for experts". Any computer with access to a terminal prompt is a computer for experts.
There are few more photos of this HW here [1] and [2]. Apparently a real HW already exists. Also, it seems there is a storage space inside the box [3] and that the keyboard is foldable..
[1]: https://www.pentagram.com/news/caligra-computers-for-experts
A laptop without a screen for the price of a regular laptop?
I get that economies of scale don't apply to something so niche, but that's just a bad deal. I'd rather get Framework Desktop.
I was hoping to see a flip up 12” x 4” screen. A bunch of devices have been showing up recently with this particular format of OLED. Here’s one that may or may not be vaporware, but which links to a couple of other devices with the same screen, so presumably something is shipping:
https://liliputing.com/kernelcom-is-a-compact-mini-laptop-wi...
Alas, this is more of a BBC B / Amiga format nostalgia fest, from the homeland of the hipster dads, Central Shoreditch.
This device could certainly add real value though if the OS / hardware integration gets nailed. That is, after all, where the Raspberry Pi really shone brightly: defining a standardised and working platform.
Not much of a terminal without a monitor, is it? Or is its output entirely audio?
I'm curious what the physical size of the machine is. Is it GPD MicroPC-sized or are we talking about a normal laptop? 100g or 10kg?
When I worked in a call center I learned to use the Data General terminal's keypad to type in people's credit card numbers as fast as people could say them. I would not want to use this keypad because I wouldn't be able to use my right hand on it, and that's the hand that knows the keypad. Then again, I don't do that much numeric data entry these days.
What's the ⌘ "interesting feature" key for?
This isn't made by developers, that's clear, and I don't think it's going to be very functional. However, I do love the aesthetic and I do love that someone is trying something new.
While I do applaud the idea of "re-thinking the computer for deverlopers", this looks little more than "thinking", to me.
A back of a beermat business idea, pulled through an expensive marketing machine.
My rule of thumb: if something has a concrete price, but the something itself isn't made yet, it's either way too expensive or a ploy or both.
Maybe its a "find if there's need for it" phase. But if you cannot make that "it" concrete, I -and I suspect many more of the target audience- cannot answer this question.
So yes: kudos for bringing up the "developers need other hard and software than general audience" idea. But I would strongly advice to first make it concrete and deliver pieces and parts. Release the DE and OS so we can experience if this solves "problems" that devs have. Finetune that. Again. And again. Then pair it with hardware. Personally, I'd go for hardware thats already popular with devs.
For me, thatd be: Ship me a high end Lenovo, with Ubuntu¹ pre-installed and loaded with software like neovim, zsh, git, ripgrep, chrome, firefox, zed, slack (we all require it, don't we?) vscode. Maybe some icing like starship, a nice theme. It could be opinionated or extremely configurable (and remain stable at that over years).
Or, on second thought: I have all that. So what problem does this solve?
That's a weird keyboard, some computer specs and a weird linux distro... that's going to cost you $2k.
$100 to have the rights to reserve one? That's really nice of them.
Well... Good luck guys!
Who is this for?
Because it's not for the developers I know – they either want a Macbook or an infinitely configurable (hardware and software) workstation, whereas this has the configurability of a Macbook with the ease of use of the workstation, clearly not a combination people want.
I can only assume this is for mechanical keyboard collectors. Developer-adjacent tech enthusiasts who like the idea of Linux, without an actual professional need for it. People who like well built devices, but don't really care about swapping out hardware. People who have a lot of disposable income and want to buy cool things.
If that's the target market, that's fine. I guess the problem is that market only buys it if you claim its for a different market, developers/etc. As a result it's going to rile up developers every time as they always feel the need to push back with "this isn't what I want".
It’s an odd keyboard layout for a Linux computer. They should have gone with what I consider the true Unix layout - the Sun Microsystems Type 7 Unix keyboard: https://imgur.com/PftSNnk
> Computers for Experts™
I do find it funny they were able to trademark that kind of statement.
Not really sure I am the target audience for this, actually I'm not really sure who is to be honest.
Given target market, I’m very surprised at lack of detailed technical specifications.
Secondly, I find it odd to see the numpad on the left side of the keyboard, rather than on the right. Maybe the ergonomics are fine, but it caught my eye as unexpected.
I love the fact that somebody tries to do something with computers and computing!
Rather than being the usual bunch of grumpy armchair critics (raah raah, too expensive, raah raah, suboptimal GPU), we should be happy that there are still people who are willing to ignore the Statlers & Waldorfs of HN and try to compete with the current status quo.
I’ll be really happy if this becomes a market segment. A commercial desktop specifically for technical users on Linux is great to see.
If Teenage Engineering made a computer.
Expensive, not ergonomic, probably totally useless.
I've been following this for a while, great looking hardware, but the target market knows how to buy a computer, they don't need custom boxes.
For me this is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. I like the look, but it wouldn't even really suit my desk, I like to have my keyboard push quite far forward, and the back of this C100 would prevent that.
Really nice, might even buy one, but there is no way this succeeds long term.
There are some way cooler versions of this over on https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/
I don't quite get who the product targets. The only advantage I can think of is its retro design and its unique OS. But honestly, they are not attractive enough for me to pay 2k USD. I could build a more powerful server with the same money.
the choices made on the keyboard layout seem weird to me, though I do like the left hand numpad. But the big esc? the Fn key up top right seems like it makes key chords with it kind of hard. No ins key? no prt scr? is that 3 ctrl keys? or is that a caps lock? arrow keys etc seem a bit far away from main keyboard...
Put in a couple of MIDI ports and I'll pretend it's a modern day Atari ST and run some Cubase...
i’ve been following this for a while and still find it completely wild that you can preorder but there’s effectively no details.
theres a couple completely unimpressive videos (like 15s long) from employees on linkedin where they show off… tiling window management.
So, basically, a headless laptop with a custom linux distro. 2K at that.
Alrighty then.
Too expensive. I want something like this, minimalist hardware and a opinionated linux distro with minimal fluff. No screen persee, bit of a cyberdeck vibe maybe. This just seems overkill for running a terminal though
- $2,000 price
- GPU is equivalent to a NVIDIA RTX 1650
- "Low profile" mechanical keyboard rather than a regular mechanical keyboard.
- Low modularity similar to a laptop.
- Holes right on the top where your spilled coffee goes
I just scanned through their ToS, "pre-installed with the proprietary Linux OS". Looks not good to me lol.
Here's someone trying to build a serious PC focused on Linux. But the comments are very negative. And people wonder why the year of the Linux desktop still haven't arrived.
If you want PCs targeting Linux with good support... don't complain when someone tries doing exactly that.
Beautiful webpage but I would like to know more about both the machine and the OS.
96GB is a hell of a lot of ram for a terminal... Am I using my terminal wrong?
The first thing I see is the badly designed keyboard.
The legends have insufficient contrast and quite a number of them are too small to read. The legends for ², ³, home, end, page up, page down, return, control, num lock and the four arrows are wrong, or in the case of escape, do not fit the theme. Minus and underscore are indistinguishable from each other. The small letter g has the wrong font weight. The level 3 and 4 legends are incongruent with /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/eu. Despite level 3 and 4 legends, there is no level 3 shift key. The return key is misshapen and the escape key has a grotesquely large size. The place of the insert key is usurped by the fn key.
I would behoove the designer to pay attention to ISO 9995 and verify the result with users before sending it off to manufacturing, the company could have avoided a lot of trouble.
The hardware is totally ridiculous for the price. You are paying a lot of money so that the CPU can be close to your fingers, instead of in a much better cooled box half a meter away.
The OS is totally mysterious. What exactly is it? Just Fedora with a custom rice of some wm?
By the way "Entertainment, Advertising, Shopping, Attack Surface, Distraction" is something you do not have in most distros anyway. So hardly a selling point.
Who is this for? Companies with too much money? Individuals with some aesthetic sensibilities for putting your hardware right below your keyboard?
Is there any videos of this thing or maybe just the OS?
That's quite the long esc key. An ortholinear layout would be nice too.
their in-house Workbench distro seems really cool, looks super light and minimalistic. IMHO it's also priced reasonably enough.
Computer for Experts™
This product is a massive downgrade and the price is devoid from the functionality that you can get from a typical laptop.
A Macbook Pro M5 running Asahi Linux would still be more cheaper than this trash scam.
No thanks and no deal.
Hard pass. Another Linux laptop with another sus distro won't teach anyone how to focus. Save a hand-me-down laptop from the landfill, install a known good distro, and do the hard work of culling distractions.
Is the market engineers and scientists, rather than devs?
Vaporware
Until this 'linux based' OS is ultra minimal, including the SDK (exclude de facto ultra-complex syntax languages).
sure hope you can choose which side that ten key is on
Ooooh, someone is asking for it from Amiga fans. Marketing an AIO keyboard PC with a deep back and calling the OS "Workbench"?
Courteous of them to put the numpad on the left where it BELONGS (apologies to late-80s Northgate Systems). And it's funny because I was just watching a vid about the Asus Eee Keyboard PC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee#Eee_Keyboard) that this looks like a modern version of.
Much better specs than that old thing though, but given that it has a "vibe-designed" look about it, I think I'll pass on preordering.
This looks like the next Trump Phone.
ive seen this advertised for months now. still have no idea what the hell it is.
There are huge black rectangles where screenshots should go. I'm assuming that's not supposed to be there...
[dead]
"We've removed the distractions..." So, no browser is included then? That won't be very useful.
And also "Commercial-grade media support". Those two things are at odds, aren't they?
And why is it a "terminal" and not a "computer"? Is it because "terminal" is a geeky word?
And no pictures, other than the very obvious render? How thick is it? What kind of connectivity/ports does it have? Is it completely flat, or wedge shaped? Can the keyboard be detached somehow? What's the deal with those weird keys? What does it look on the inside? What's the software that it's actually using? What WM is that? Can I install it on my laptop? Where is the source code? So many questions.
It looks a lot like vapourware to me. And at that price point, I'm not sure who is going to buy that.