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Lini Wants to Be the Portable Workstation Developers Actually Carry
https://glitchwire.com/news/lini-wants-to-be-the-portable-workstation-developers-actually-carry/
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TurboTurbo‘extensive coding sessions’ … with your thumbs? No thanks.
Sorry for no transcript :(
CorneliusTalmadgeTranscript of above image:
It’s 2026, do you even need a full keyboard anymore? This year’s badge is a three-key USB macro pad with only the keys that matter for Al-assisted programming: Y, 2, and Enter. Yes, allow it. Always allow. Submit. You’ve just approved every suggestion, every file edit, every tool call.
Congratulations, you’re a 10x engineer now! This year’s badge is built around a PIC16F1455 with USB-C HID. The board lights up with 25 addressable RB LEDs 22 side-mount SK6812s for edge glow and 3 WS2812B per-key backlights. Kailh hot-swap sockets let you bring your own switches. Now that you’re the most productive person at your company, you can focus on enjoying the conference!
MalReynoldsCould sub Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and Enter and be an old school dev ;)
𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬The company’s website is currently collecting email signups for early-bird pricing. Pricing has not been announced. Neither have display resolution, exact dimensions, weight, or the availability of expansion ports.
So all we know is that some company wants to sell something at some point in the future.
Wow, coding on the worst physical topology/topography for the kind of input you need to perform.
A programmer needs to type fast, navigate the cursor rapidly and with easily attained precision, and needs the information displayed on a large screen so that they don’t go blind working on the code. This machine is a friggin nightmare.
you’d think so as i did, yet people wanted to do it on their blackberry’s back when i did front line tech support.
Wanted to, but how many ppl actually did and were productive?
it was my job back then to enable them as much as possible, so i looked for their perforce submits for follow up and every single one of them did.
most of them did it while on ultra long flights to korea/japan/singapore/tiawan/isreal from san francisco too…. on a blackberry. 🤷♂️
That’s pretty cool. I will say that a little productivity is better than none.
that was the logic that most of them used and i get it a little bit if you’re on 20+ hour flight when laptop batteries lasted less than 2 hours back then, but the thought of writing code in one of these makes my hand hurt:
i supposed it wasn’t so bad for the python or ruby guys, but they were in the minority at the time. most were writing in java and that seems painful with all of the non-romantic characters that it requires wo an ide; atleast this lini device has full keyboard w curly braces.
I had to manage with one of these things:
At least it ran Linux. The one thing the Zaurus had going for it though? Completely readable in sunlight. It was amazing at the time.
peanuts4lifeThis article feels like it was written by ai and this product, while cute, is almost completely useless.
I was thinking the same, but also thinking the product itself is ai. Seemed odd the article doesn’t link to the company site.
It almost seems like it appeared out of no where. Top search result is a mastadon account that registered 2-3weeks back. Their website doesn’t even appear in searches.
Have we reached the point of circularity. Ai creating products to then write blog posts about. Just infinite hype with no real content/products.
I Cast FistCheaper than having real products and trying to sell them, I guess
A portable keyboard and a Steamdeck are a better choice.
This way I can play Halo while deploying or when the Sales Dude complains about the website.
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆Steam Deck is a really under appreciated Linux machine in my opinion.
It’s an amazing device. Playing games, then watching movies from my home server on the plane when I travel, then plugging in a keyboard mouse and monitor and using it as my sole work machine at the remote office.
The desktop environment is solid, everything is there that I need.
ALSO: International travel, it basically gets ignored as anything more than a game machine.
Should have made it foldable. Like early mobile phones….
Miss my Zaurus clamshell (don’t forget the rotating hinge for tablet mode and a pen), definitely was ‘Actually Carry’.
Why is this idea so hard, it’s the difference between pocketable and not.
It would probably make a good terminal if it had an RS-232 serial port. The CM5 would be overkill for that. A Pi Zero would be sufficient and a lot less power hungry.
There’s no way I’m going to be doing much typing on that tiny keyboard though.
danhab99If anyone is looking for a something like this that they can buy today for a reasonable price, check out the GPD Micro PC 2.
ANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86
That thing is sexy and I have a romanticized view of cyberdeck-like devices, but what do people who do this kind of work actually need and use? As cool as this type of device is, are they actually useful?
I remember my team hired a dude that would walk around with one of those old Nokia things. We were giving him a tour and he was logging into each box as we went along. I got the sense he was pretty comfortable with it.
Personally, I don’t get it. I really don’t want to thumb type out anything more than a couple sentences.
Also, probably unrelated, but that dude lasted only a few days.
It made him so efficient that he finished work in a few days.
Amazing.
The extreme portability is attractive. If I’m on holiday and only have to work over ssh to restart some services and edit configs, it’s awesome. I have actually done it with a pi, with a separate screen. It’s great.
No, you just dont work while on holiday and that’s that
I agree in principle, but shit happens, e.g. scheduling conflicts. In smaller organizations, sometimes it’s the only way to unblock the team.
Anyway, I could think of also checking out my personal servers.
Maybe, I would pay decent money for something that’s comfortable to thumb type on for coding/terminal work from bed
What I need is just a de-googled phone with hardware keyboard.
Jolla phone + the other half?
I tried Sailfish years ago and it was pretty bad. Everything from screen unlock to the keyboard was not great. From what I’ve read the latest version still has a lot of issues like that.
I’m waiting for this: https://clicks.tech/powerkeyboard
If the reviews will be good I will try it. Another option is some Titan phone but my Pixel still has a lot of life in it.
Idk why people are so into the trackpoint. I could never get the hang of it.
The idea is that you can move the cursor without leaving the keyboard. For some very keyboard-centric workflows, this is very handy! I don’t personally use one, I’m fine with my trackpad, but I know a lot of people who love the trackpoint nub.
for small devices half the appeal is that you don’t need a big fucking rectangle taking up space on the device.
Personally i think a GOOD trackpoint (one that isn’t miserably stiff, and is well-calibrated) plus a touchscreen is perfection for something like a laptop. The trackpoint lets you do most things without taking your hands off the keyboard, and the touchscreen is a touchpad but.. Borderline objectively superior in every way.
Like.. There’s a reason phones have touchscreens, the idea of using a phone with a touchpad is insane.
basically a stubby joystick.
Back when screens were smaller and lower resolution they were a lot easier to use.
But look at what needed to happen to trackpads for them to stay relevant. Physics only allows you to do so much with a pressure sensor.
WTF is going on with the symbols above the number keys?
Ahh, NM, that entire image is AI slop.
Real curious about the battery life. All of Raspberry Pi’s offerings are notoriously power inefficient; it’s a shame there’s no big competitor out there pushing for that.
The biggest issue is that the Raspberry Pi doesn’t support sleep. So your only option to preserve battery is a full shutdown.
I have a Clockwork Pi uConsole and with even just one 18650 I can easily play something classic like Roller Coaster Tycoon for a couple hours. They’re not as bad as you’d imagine.
How does it (thumb) type?
It’s okay, but the size is the actual issue. You always think a handheld keyboard on a phone feels too small until you bump up to that size. Your thumbs just reach everything, but especially when you factor in the aluminum case and its weight, you’re not going to be journaling on it. It’s more for tasks with light point and click interaction with the occasional data entry. Hence why RCT is one of my go to experiences on it.
No, that’s terrible.
Couple hours of light gaming on 50% battery is terrible?
Yes, should be able to expect twice that from an ARM device.
And which device can do that? My MacBook with ARM cpu couldn’t do couple hours of light gaming on half battery, and that’s ridiculously optimized.
Something’s wrong with your MacBook, then, since mine can go all day.
Sorry but you will never get me to enjoy writing or even reading code on a tiny display.
I don’t understand this form factor. It’s too small for any serious work, both in terms of screen size and typing, and it’s too big to fit in your pocket. So you might as well carry a small laptop around, since it would actually be usable. Feels like a novelty that is just meant to satisfy a cyberpunk aesthetic, if you’ve got the money to burn on something that you’ll probably only use a few times, or occasionally at best.
It fits the aesthetics of my other niche unusable electro junk just fine, thank you very much
Wasn’t this the pitch for the Pilet? Only they originally targeted rpi5 only to switch after significant delays to the cm5, which pissed everybody off that already bought one.
An ARM computer? When most devs develop stuff for x86_64? Sure…
The sooner we ditch this dumpster fire of an architecture, the better.
I was hoping we would at least replace it with a non-proprietary one.
Well… Ideally we’d all switch over to RISC-V, but that’s not happening any time soon. At least ARM is very popular and growing even more popular every day. Plus, it’s very similar to RISC-V, so maybe we can get cross-compatible software without too much work in the near future?
I hope that, with Steam selling the Frame VR headset soon, it will be like the Steam Deck with Linux where lots of money is focused towards making the ARM experience better overall! And indeed, they are supporting fex, which is a bit like Wine or Proton, but for ARM to x86.