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Is it possible to install Arch linux? - Printable Version

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Is it possible to install Arch linux? - alxndr.psclt - 01-01-2020

Hi everyone!
I just recieved my new pinebook pro; last one was already stolen from me, just a few days after it came by mail! Crazy story. If anyone sees a pinebook pro on sale around Paris, please let me know; might be mine.

Anyway, I am now finally able to hack on this beauty again.

I'm running Manjaro for now, but I would much prefer a more minimalistic approach. How could I install Arch linux (Arm) ?
I have seen there has been quite some work to get Manjaro running on PBP, so I guess it will be harder than simply installing Arch linux arm - pine64 version (https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/allwinner/pine64) . Or is it that simple? If it is not; which hurdles can I expect and clues on how to fix thoses? I guess many distros will have to do this work in the coming weeks; is there a place to document theses procedures? 

Even Minimal Manjaro could work for a period; but I did not succeed at booting it from an SD card using this install script: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/applications/manjaro-arm-installer . I suppose it is not supported yet; seeing there are no prebuild minimal images for the PBP; just XFCE and Plasma images.
https://manjaro.org/download/#pinebook-pro . But it could also very well be a wrong manipulation on my side. has anyone successfully run the minimal Majaro install on the PBP ?

Thanks to everyone for any info, and thanks to the Pine team for such an amazing hardware.

Best of luck for 2020.


RE: Is it possible to install Arch linux? - tophneal - 01-02-2020

(01-01-2020, 06:10 PM)alxndr.psclt Wrote: Hi everyone!
I just recieved my new pinebook pro; last one was already stolen from me, just a few days after it came by mail! Crazy story. If anyone sees a pinebook pro on sale around Paris, please let me know; might be mine.

Anyway, I am now finally able to hack on this beauty again.

I'm running Manjaro for now, but I would much prefer a more minimalistic approach. How could I install Arch linux (Arm) ?
I have seen there has been quite some work to get Manjaro running on PBP, so I guess it will be harder than simply installing Arch linux arm - pine64 version (https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/allwinner/pine64) . Or is it that simple? If it is not; which hurdles can I expect and clues on how to fix thoses? I guess many distros will have to do this work in the coming weeks; is there a place to document theses procedures? 

Even Minimal Manjaro could work for a period; but I did not succeed at booting it from an SD card using this install script: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/applications/manjaro-arm-installer . I suppose it is not supported yet; seeing there are no prebuild minimal images for the PBP; just XFCE and Plasma images.
https://manjaro.org/download/#pinebook-pro . But it could also very well be a wrong manipulation on my side. has anyone successfully run the minimal Majaro install on the PBP ?

Thanks to everyone for any info, and thanks to the Pine team for such an amazing hardware.

Best of luck for 2020.

Do not use a pine64 image on the PBP, it will not boot. The PBP is different hardware from that board (RK3399 vs A64.)

To get minimal Manjaro, your best bet is to likely boot from a Manjaro live disk and use manjaro-arm-installer to create the minimal image. If you'd really like ALARM, check out their wiki. The Rock64 is a less robust cousin to the guts of the PBP, so you could likely get it working on the PBP.

I would suggest using one of the u-boot images here, and not mainline though, as I believe mainline u-boot has a boot priority of eMMC, then SD.


RE: Is it possible to install Arch linux? - alxndr.psclt - 01-09-2020

Thanks for the info, this is what I did and it works ok.
My understanding is that when the pinebook pro changes are upstreamed to the kernel, it will be easy for most distros to support the PBP? Is this valid reasoning?