Termux on Onyx Boox Max 2 (and Note?)

[mdp]

Originally Posted by alcedo

bVNC for example is good at forcing landscape mode, but the keyboard is way to big then, utilizing 1/3 of screen or so.
x11vnc is really the most easy way to get it running. I hadn't time to read the whole monitor thread so far, are you sharing your startup options/config anywhere? I just would use it over encrypted home lan.

Why are you using an on-tablet keyboard with bVNC? Are you doing proper remote - the desktop one big network away from the tablet? If the purpose is "monitor", it would be a normal case to have the two machines near and you should be using the keyboard attached to the desktop. Otherwise, if (for some reason) the keyboard has to be attached to the tablet, you should use a BT keyboard - it makes little sense to have the "monitor" obscured by a virtual keyboard.
If this does not make sense to someone: with VNC and remote desktop in general, both devices (the "source" and the "monitor") can be used for input - you can use the source's mouse, the tablet's touchscreen etc.

A sample not-really-optimized `x11vnc` command can simply be
x11vnc -noipv6 -allow 192.168.22.2 -forever -speeds lan
and even less than that (or much more).
I never looked into encryption for Onyx-to-desktop VNC because I do not believe it sensible (for general use, as a default setup) to have other connections than a USB cable. Which, unfortunately, is not possible with this firmware but we are confident the thing will be fixed in a forthcoming firmware.

[sogaiu]

Originally Posted by alcedo

The keyboard has a dark theme, and I guess it cannot be changed, but it's acceptable, though I would prefer a light one.

I looked at the app's settings and found:

"Keyboard View Settings" ->
"Theme and label settings" ->
"Keyboard Theme"

There are 4 choices listed once "Keyboard Theme" is selected here -- may be the "Stone" one is an improvement for you over the default?

On a side note, the settings also allow some degree of configuration for keyboard height.

If termux shows console keyboard is returning after screen is touched, but not so in vim.

For vim installed via termux, I didn't manage to reproduce this behavior.

[sogaiu]

Updated the original post to include instructions for installing jupyter notebook extensions.

Working on scikit-learn.

[alcedo]

Originally Posted by sogaiu

I looked at the app's settings and found:

"Keyboard View Settings" ->
"Theme and label settings" ->
"Keyboard Theme"

How to access the app's settings? I looked everywhere but cannot find it.

Originally Posted by sogaiu

For vim installed via termux, I didn't manage to reproduce this behavior.

What behaviour do you observe? The only way to hide the keyboard I found so far is pressing
the back button. Now if you start up vim, press back button to hide keyboard, and then tap,
what happens? It's not working here, doesn't matter what mode vim is in and what keyboard I use.
(btw, pinch zoom in vim seems to work great).

[mdp]

Originally Posted by alcedo

How to access the app's settings? I looked everywhere but cannot find it.

Onyx Settings > Language > Language
and tap on the keyboard listed at the bottom.

Also, for Hacker's keyboard:
Long tap on Mike > Settings (gear) icon

[alcedo]

Originally Posted by mdp

Onyx Settings > Language > Language
and tap on the keyboard listed at the bottom.

Also, for Hacker's keyboard:
Long tap on Mike > Settings (gear) icon

Thanks!
So slide down is another way of closing, and there is an "activate keyboard by clicking on notification" that
puts an icon into status bar. Unfortunately 2 taps are needed because 1st one pops down status bar menu,
but it's slightly better in vim than leave app and come back by multitasking window.

[sogaiu]

Originally Posted by alcedo

What behaviour do you observe? The only way to hide the keyboard I found so far is pressing the back button. Now if you start up vim, press back button to hide keyboard, and then tap, what happens? It's not working here, doesn't matter what mode vim is in and what keyboard I use.

Ah, I misunderstood originally.

Yes, I see what you mean. After I hide the keyboard, it does not reappear when I touch the screen in vim.

There is a little trick in termux that might help. Swiping from the left of the screen opens a drawer. At the bottom of the drawer are a couple of buttons. One of them is labeled 'KEYBOARD'. Here, pressing that button toggles the keyboard.

[alcedo]

One thing I recognized today is there seems to be some throttling of cpu if device is unplugged.
If I compile something and plug it into usb loader it seems to accelerate tremendously.
Perhaps not only throttled but some parts switched off.

So far it's just a feeling and I couldn't measure it, but there seems to be some strong power
saving on battery.

I also wondered how TDP of rk3288 ? and the mx.whatever from Max1 compare.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by alcedo

I also wondered how TDP of rk3288 ? and the mx.whatever from Max1 compare.

In strict terms of heat or in broad terms of efficiency?

Originally Posted by alcedo

If I compile something

Which language exactly? [:interested:]

[alcedo]

Originally Posted by mdp

In strict terms of heat or in broad terms of efficiency?

Power consumption of cpu also determines battery live. So it would be interesting to know
what is min and max consumption of rk3288 compared to that i.MX6?. Those values are not as easy to
find as are TDP for intel processors.

Originally Posted by mdp

Which language exactly? [:interested:]

I would like to have perl6 for termux, so it's clang pkg provided by termux
and perl provided by termux
https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/issues/1324

[mdp]

Originally Posted by alcedo

Power consumption of cpu also determines battery live. So it would be interesting to know
what is min and max consumption of rk3288 compared to that i.MX6?. Those values are not as easy to
find as are TDP for intel processors.

The rk3288 is an ARM Cortex-A17 and i.MX6 SoloLite is an ARM Cortex-A9.
ARM stated something in the lines of «The ARM Cortex-A17 processor offers a 60% performance uplift and is 20% more energy efficient than ARM Cortex-A9 under the same workload»,
which, if arithmetic (or interpretation) does not fail me (160/80), means that an A17 consumes half of a comparable A9 "per performance".

The first article cannot answer your question because it was issued before the A17, but I mention it since l like it a lot and I do not understand why there are not more of it: 'The final ISA showdown: Is ARM, x86, or MIPS intrinsically more power efficient?'. It's where you can compare your tablet with your desktop.

Freescale/NXP kindly produces nice whitepapers ("Application Notes"), and you may have seen their i.MX 6SoloLite Power Consumption Measurement, or AN4580. Unfortunately, the SoloLite is so intended for humble tasks that more interesting measurements were performed on higher processors only. Onyx did really squeeze that baby.

Attached is a nice graph of an RK3288 at work: you can for example see that some high quality video playback uses, pause, 1 Watt.

[alcedo]

Originally Posted by mdp

The rk3288 is an ARM Cortex-A17 and i.MX6 SoloLite is an ARM Cortex-A9.

Attached is a nice graph of an RK3288 at work: you can for example see that some high quality video playback uses, pause, 1 Watt.

Thanks, interesting stuff. I think A9 is a very good choice for an ebook-reader, given its power efficiency.
I'm not at all negative about Max1, it's an excellent reader and you can do seamless text internet browsing,
where the lower resolution gives automatically a bigger font size, as I realized today in direct comparison.
I also like the non-blurred whiter screen.

With the Max2 they should had sticked to their original(?) plan to provide a dumb hdmi monitor and an ebook reader as 2 separate devices. There's no point putting it together in one. A rant about touch screens: If I want to read from a screen, why should I touch it with my fatty fingers?
So to choose the A17 was probably due to the hdmi support it provides.

Video playback is power efficient if the codec is hardcoded, as is the case here. Another question is what happens if you put the Mali T760 under full load. [nonsense deleted]

[mdp]

Originally Posted by alcedo

I think A9 is a very good choice for an ebook-reader, given its power efficiency.
[...]
With the Max2 they should had sticked to their original(?) plan to provide a dumb hdmi monitor and an ebook reader as 2 separate devices. There's no point putting it together in one. A rant about touch screens: If I want to read from a screen, why should I touch it with my fatty fingers?
So to choose the A17 was probably due to the hdmi support it provides.

Well, A9 is less efficient than A17, so it's legacy - there is to keep it but for specific practical cases (e.g. stock).

And I do not see a need to have two separate devices when you can have one. It makes no sense. You use the same display for different OS, one embedded one external.

You want touch the screen with your fingers to control it: it's uncomfortable without it. For greasy fingers, the solution on glass is to use matte screens, which are pretty much required nowadays since the default portable backlit screen is a mirror and glass looks good in a vacuum, and for extreme cases - since I cannot really see a smudged EPD screen - there are special gloves.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by alcedo

I would like to have perl6 for termux, so it's clang pkg provided by termux
and perl provided by termux
https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/issues/1324

So you used C to compile Perl?

[alcedo]

Originally Posted by mdp

So you used C to compile Perl?

No, not quite. The canonical and only so far Perl6 implementation is called rakudo.
rakudo is written in a subset of perl6 called nqp, which is written in moar, a virtual machine.
Which probably is written in C. Compiling a compiler has stages, and the final is the compiler
compiling itself. Something like that. I'm not really into it yet.