It’s hard to know for sure why people opt for Apple products… It could be any number of things.

Surely the idea of open or free is always going to play better than closed, locked down and proprietary…? idk

Pure speculation : the idea of open source sells. It’s more appealing than the alternative.

The Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A coming with Debian pre-installed, is arguably the first consumer RISC-V device.

Qualcomm has good reason to focus on RISC-V. I’m expecting them to bring out SoCs as soon as they can. And with the Nuvia team, they have the design prowess to produce some very performant silicon.

:) Nice one! Thanks

:) That’s an idea from the film The Interpreter. I like nice sounding words too.

I used to collect and make up stupid names : Aiden Abbott Amanda Boat Amelia Cooke Andy & Bunty Hall Arthur & Holly Day, Dawn Day & Annie Day - Day’s Travel Emporium Ben Nevis Blanche and Hugh Allbright-White Carol Singer Charlie (Chuck) Ball - “How very singular” Chit Price Chris Cross (real) Christopher, Lord Sandwich II (Chip Butty - a chip off the old block) Cliff Edge Didier Dolittle - schoolboy Dorothy Morse (Dot) - Former cryptologist at Bletchley. She’s dotty about her dachshund, Dash Drew Leith Dustin Ledger Ed Clutterbuck - Librarian and wannabe author with writer’s block Edna Cloud Ms. Ella Fitz Grant Watts Ezra Goodfellow Mr. Gus ‘the’ Bus - bus driver Heather Moore (real) Hugh Green (real / stage name) Ivy Four Izzy Humble Jack & Constance Dawes - keen ornithologists Jack Hughes Jo Lein - Paul King’s gf Keir Royale Kiefer Roux Lance Ennis-Hand Liam Perrin Lou Tennant Fr. Martin Dupre Mary Christmas Megan Bacon (real) Neal Standswick Orla Board - marries Miles Long Dr. Ozzy Foster Paula Piano Randy Vicars Ray Leader (lay reader) Prof Rebekah Elizabeth Newell Red Herring Robyn Banks Robin Holmes Rodney Marsh Rose Hedge Rudi Mentree Russell Sam Hain b. October 31st Seymore Cleverley - Optician Timothy Topless Tyler Taylor Verity Bull Fleur Meadows Walter Lilley Willy Leadbetter Baroness Annabel Butler-Sink (Babs) Anita Book (accountant) Austin Texas Bert Rand Beverly & Beatrice Hayve (spinster sisters) Chris Tingle Clare Voyant Cliff Hanger Duncan Disorderly Dwaine Pipe - Plumber Ellie Fants Emre Board Fin Toil - Irish labourer Florence Chart Gay Abandon Harvey Enna Helena Handcourt - Prosecuting Barrister Honor Roll Hugo Toofa Jim Khana Bitter Lynne Max Profit May Bees Montgomery Christopher Python Mustafa Grumble Penny Dropping Polly Glot Polly Phony Polly Gone Captain Reginald & Mrs. Dee Mented Lady Bird Fr. Christmas Dr. Hale and Dr. Harty Miss Chivers (real - company name) Toucan Build (company name)

My favourite calendar is the UBPorts offering, but I don’t think it’s available as a standalone app.

The GNOME calendar is okay though : https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Calendar

I read recently that RPiOS has a Micro$oft key pre-installed (so that your RPi phones home to Microsoft)… It totally puts me off what is an excellent lightweight OS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/lbu0t1/microsoft_repo_installed_on_all_raspberry_pis/

I think UBPorts’ calendar is excellent… I don’t think it’s generally available as a standalone Linux app though, sadly.

Perversely; I’m always less inclined to buy a product that I’ve seen advertised… “Why do they need to advertise it? It can’t be up to much.” And “Part of the ticket price has gone into advertising, so it’s not so valuable a thing.”, usually being my first thoughts.

I guess this is a fair indication then of how much Meta receives per person from advertisers…

There’s a community effort, porting KDE: https://liliputing.com/pinetab-v-tablet-with-a-risc-v-chip-gets-community-supported-software-builds-including-kde-plasma-desktop/

What are your predictions on consumer hardware for the next decade in relation to RISC-V?

I had 2023 marked as the Year of the RISC-V SBC. But I think it’s more than that : with the Lichee Pi coming with Debian pre-installed, and looking stable, RISC-V is on the verge of consumer-grade hardware. There are other devices from Sipeed, Pine64 and others too, of course, including laptops and tablets.

I think the real watershed will come in 2025/26 though. It’s widely predicted that more powerful RISC-V processors will be ready by then.

We know that some Chinese tech organisations are working tirelessly on RISC-V, and I think we can expect to see them really pushing the technology. But Qualcomm, Broadcom, NXP etc. are going for it too. Qualcomm (feat. Nuvia) have real design prowess, and also have every reason to go RISC-V.

I really like the Lichee Pi 4A, and I hope to get one when I next need to buy a computer. My computing needs are relatively light, and I think the Lichee Pi would be perfectly sufficient.

I check the Alpine repository from time to time - https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages - just to see what apps are available for RISC-V : and actually, it’s impressive to see the amount of work that has gone into rebasing apps. Godot doesn’t appear to be there for RISC-V though, sorry.

So my advice would be to realise what apps you really need, and check if they’re available yet. And if they aren’t it’s always worth contacting the app maintainer.

To quote a Linux tech writer:

"You literally cannot boot a raspberry pi zero, one, two, three or four without running ThreadX which is a Microsoft product.

“So whether the OS pings a repo or not is moot. The whole damn computer is run by a proprietary sealed Microsoft binary.”

This is sad news. Condolences to his family and friends.

Perhaps at that point the consumer will opt for the repairable options.

A sign that the smartphone has reached maturity, I guess. People don’t feel the imperative to upgrade any more. That’s good for the planet!

No open sourced RISC-V processor? Not interested.

And courting Micro$oft…??

He’s lost the plot