I have the exact opposite experience: I recently installed Fedora (stock, so Gnome) and had 0 issues. It was easier to install that Windows. The sidenote is that I have a Framework laptop, so my hardware is fully supported. And I was a Linux user before, so nothing looks alien to me. I didn’t need the terminal to get everything working, including wireless printing.

It didn’t work well for me on a 13” laptop screen. I didn’t want to give up that horizontal space.

Alternatively, they could just charge to 80% and show that it is 80% charged, like iOS and macOS do.

edit: I seemed to have misread the comment above. It’s useful to not be lied too, in my opinion, because then you still have the option to charge to 100% when needed.

One of those cheap 12-15$ AliExpress DVD R/RW USB C drives did the trick for me.

You can find some builds at the bottom of the page here (edit: when logged in) : https://github.com/ByteWelder/Tactility/actions/runs/12659191949 These files expire in 30 days though.

While it definitely is a cool project, it’s a micropython one, so the target audience is similar but not the same.

Thanks! Good to see there's an ESP32 community too. I just subscribed ^^

I didn't know this exists! I'm currently using a dependency to load ELF files: https://components.espressif.com/components/espressif/elf_loader I guess it would make more sense to have the memory mapping done inside elf_loader, so that S3 devices can load to PSRAM and non-S3 devices can load into IRAM. Thanks for the tip!

I don't expect regular Python apps to ever run on Tactility, as the memory requirements are likely too high. There is at most about 8MB of RAM for apps available. Perhaps a special build of micropython could work at some point.

You can open the Files app and there's a folder named "sdcard". So far, all SD card implementations are done via a serial interface (SPI). I cannot mount them on-the-fly yet - only at boot.

There is indeed no way to create new virtual memory mappings. When a binary is loaded, it's manually mapped into IRAM (instruction RAM).

The target audience for things like Lilygo T-Deck is probably the more technical side of the Flipper Zero audience. I can see how it could also become an end-user device (like Flipper Zero is to many people), but we'll need more apps for that.

And sure, you could use a Raspberry Pi, but part of the fun/challenge of this project is that it hasn't been done for ESP32 before (as far as I'm aware). Some differences: a Raspberry Pi draws more power, costs more, and generally doesn't boot in under 2 seconds. I'm also not aware of compact Pi-based handhelds like the Lilygo T-Deck is to my project. edit: There's the uConsole, but it's twice the price, likely has 6+ months delivery time, is much larger, and weighs much more.

In its current state, it's mainly a tool for developers to be able to build prototypes or experiments quickly. From a user perspective, there isn't enough yet. We'll need more apps before it's useful for end-users. I want to improve the core functionality before I build more apps: I already have to maintain about 2 dozen apps and I'd rather spend my time on building a better platform for now.