Daily Driving My MNT Pocket Reform (Impressions After A Month) (March, 2025)

It's been a month since my Pocket Reform arrived, and as I started daily-driving it a few days later, I took an hour or two to reflect on and to write down my first impressions today.

Pretty in Purple - Why I Bought It

I first came across the larger MNT Reform sometime around 2018 or 2019 at a hardware flea market near Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin while visting friends who lived there. I fell in love with their approach to hardware design, but the form factor wouldn't have worked for me too well - I’ve always preferred smaller devices.

I kept loosly following their projects over the years, and I’m glad I did. After the Pocket Reform announcement in 2022, it became the first computer in nearly a decade to genuinely excite me, as:

so it was an obvious thing to consider this my next computer, especiall as I tend to keep using my computers for 10 years and longer.

What Setup I Use

After having spent the first couple of days configuring it, I settled for a fairly simple i-would-rather-want-to-use-exwm-but-want-wayland-so-this-is-a-close-enough-thing setup revolving around labwc and centering my computing environment around emacs.

I thought of using a tiling window manager, but decided against doing so opting for labwc instead. My labwc setup is minimal — it autostarts Emacs, ensures all applications launch maximized or fullscreen, and lets me Alt-Tab through open applications, mirroring the workflow I used back on my 7” EEE-PC with Openbox more than a decade ago.

I'm still running the pre-shipped Debian on it, with guix as a foreign package manager, but that'll change to Guix System, when I'm finally able to wrap my head around how to build a U-Boot package for it and a nonguix kernel; as much as I would love to run this device entirely on free software, I want to continue using the WiFi hardware it already has.

First Impressions: A Modern More-Lavender Libretto

After a month of using my Pocket Reform daily — either hooked up to a 27” Dell display at home or as part of my travel setup (Steam Deck for gaming, Pocket Reform for everything else), and in various settings like libraries, trains and the office — I’m convinced this is the coolest and most fun computer I’ve ever owned... and probably the one with the best keyboard.

The hardware design feels to me like it is a nod to the late '90s and early 2000s, think of devices like the Toshiba Libretto 20 and the IBM Palmtop, or even the Gamecube. There are some rough edges; like a battery switch that requires me to carry a paperclip or earring to access. I also ran into flaky WiFi and heating issues during the first week, but both improved after I replaced the top cover with a custom purple aluminum one I had CNC-milled.

An Actual Personal Computer

And that’s exactly what makes the Pocket Reform stand out in my eyes. The ability to mod, repair, and tinker with it actually resonates with my personal values a lot.

To add some context: I grew up on the outskirts of the queer folk punk and DIY scene in the late 2000s and early 2010s - values like autonomy, repairability, and a community over corporate mentality were what drove me towards being invested in FOSS, and especially Emacs, initially; so having a computer that reflects that, feels punk in the loveliest way, and that is the opposite of the capitalist paradigms of planned obsolescence, glued components, and walled gardens is refreshing.

On top of that, the SoC is easily upgradable as well, even though my i.MX8MP module works well enough for me and will probably work well enough for a pretty long time so hardware performance upgrades aren't really on my agenda.

All in all, the pocket reform feels like an actual personal computer - and is great fun to use!