06-09-2020, 10:56 AM
I got my pinebook pro (called fjord for pythonesque reasons) last week.
It's been nice, but with some hickups, some solved and some unresolved.
I tried a KDE-widget for cpu/net/disk monitoring, which blocked my desktop, but managed to fix it (getting rid of it after hard rebooting by removing the widget before it would suck up all cpu cycles).
Ok, don't do that, gkrellm to the rescue. Sweet, didn't realise it's got a six core engine until that point!
I charged with a usb-c charger, in series with a usb power "doctor", to see how much energy it would take. Next morning, all fine, just over 10.000 mAh.
Next time I left it overnight, it was very hot in the morning, checked and found it was empty?!?
Next time I made sure to put it to sleep before closing it and connecting it.
Again it was hot the next morning, and it was also not working (dead/empty battery) when I took it on my commute.
Not cool.
The next serious nag I have, is the state of the touchpad. It's actually working fine, including the left and right buttons at the left and right bottom corners. I configured Manjaro to have the middle button at the right and left top corners, which doesn't work about half the time. Now about the state of the thing, the right bottom corner is actually higher than the framing plastic. I took a picture, will attach it... as soon as I'm allowed.
I'm not sure if this is regular "made in China" or just badly assembled and I could open/reseat/fix it...
Oh and I've not managed to have it detect a three finger tap - more and more I wonder if this device is of the 2019 batch - can it be, if I ordered it less than 3 weeks ago...?
Some of the other nags or question marks I have:
the wiki and other places mention depressing the pine key plus F11 for three seconds to disable wifi, whereas I just press them together (like the 3-key windows salute) and the triple flash comes immediately.
More than half the time I hit Fn-Esc to put it to sleep, it won't. Just goes straight to the lockscreen.
Not cool, I would like to be able to use it on my commute.
Any hints for a way to put it in suspend to disk? Would be helpful...
The speakers are thin, slightly better when using the device on a table (I use it as a true lap top), but they do for me. When I wanted to show my wife a youtube clip, she kept saying louder, even when I already put it to eleven... She's more used to the Huawei M5 Lite which has superb sound.
On the plus side, it does do all I need it to, and lots that I want it to.
Video playback: has trouble with 1080p x265 (fully expected), other 1080p stuff it played without issue.
VPN: I needed to figure out how to set it up, have used my android phone for ages as my portable device, never used my linux laptop out of the house...
Works fine, yay me.
Mounting my server nfs drives: walk in the park, needed to install the mount.nfs packages.
VNC-viewer: tigervnc does the job.
My home computing has been on a headless server since ages, I use the tablet (M5 Lite), my phone, my wife's desktop or whatever I have (well, those are it, really), to connect, and now I use the pbp.
Which beats all others in screen size and writing abilty. Except the desktop, but that one is not as available.
Web browsing and youtube: Firefox fits the bill and does the job.
I may have to get a BT speaker for better audio though, but it's usable as is for now.
Battery life: except for the current state not being dependable - going into suspend to ram and not having any battery left afterwards - is actually very good. I do try to pay attention to screen brightness and stupid scripts on the web draining stuff (hence the gkrellm and noscript), I seem to get more than 8 hours out of it.
It's been nice, but with some hickups, some solved and some unresolved.
I tried a KDE-widget for cpu/net/disk monitoring, which blocked my desktop, but managed to fix it (getting rid of it after hard rebooting by removing the widget before it would suck up all cpu cycles).
Ok, don't do that, gkrellm to the rescue. Sweet, didn't realise it's got a six core engine until that point!
I charged with a usb-c charger, in series with a usb power "doctor", to see how much energy it would take. Next morning, all fine, just over 10.000 mAh.
Next time I left it overnight, it was very hot in the morning, checked and found it was empty?!?
Next time I made sure to put it to sleep before closing it and connecting it.
Again it was hot the next morning, and it was also not working (dead/empty battery) when I took it on my commute.
Not cool.
The next serious nag I have, is the state of the touchpad. It's actually working fine, including the left and right buttons at the left and right bottom corners. I configured Manjaro to have the middle button at the right and left top corners, which doesn't work about half the time. Now about the state of the thing, the right bottom corner is actually higher than the framing plastic. I took a picture, will attach it... as soon as I'm allowed.
I'm not sure if this is regular "made in China" or just badly assembled and I could open/reseat/fix it...
Oh and I've not managed to have it detect a three finger tap - more and more I wonder if this device is of the 2019 batch - can it be, if I ordered it less than 3 weeks ago...?
Some of the other nags or question marks I have:
the wiki and other places mention depressing the pine key plus F11 for three seconds to disable wifi, whereas I just press them together (like the 3-key windows salute) and the triple flash comes immediately.
More than half the time I hit Fn-Esc to put it to sleep, it won't. Just goes straight to the lockscreen.
Not cool, I would like to be able to use it on my commute.
Any hints for a way to put it in suspend to disk? Would be helpful...
The speakers are thin, slightly better when using the device on a table (I use it as a true lap top), but they do for me. When I wanted to show my wife a youtube clip, she kept saying louder, even when I already put it to eleven... She's more used to the Huawei M5 Lite which has superb sound.
On the plus side, it does do all I need it to, and lots that I want it to.
Video playback: has trouble with 1080p x265 (fully expected), other 1080p stuff it played without issue.
VPN: I needed to figure out how to set it up, have used my android phone for ages as my portable device, never used my linux laptop out of the house...
Works fine, yay me.
Mounting my server nfs drives: walk in the park, needed to install the mount.nfs packages.
VNC-viewer: tigervnc does the job.
My home computing has been on a headless server since ages, I use the tablet (M5 Lite), my phone, my wife's desktop or whatever I have (well, those are it, really), to connect, and now I use the pbp.
Which beats all others in screen size and writing abilty. Except the desktop, but that one is not as available.
Web browsing and youtube: Firefox fits the bill and does the job.
I may have to get a BT speaker for better audio though, but it's usable as is for now.
Battery life: except for the current state not being dependable - going into suspend to ram and not having any battery left afterwards - is actually very good. I do try to pay attention to screen brightness and stupid scripts on the web draining stuff (hence the gkrellm and noscript), I seem to get more than 8 hours out of it.