Being a long time Windows Phone user, I still have a Microsuft USB-C Display Dock lying around.
My Lumia 950 is obsolete, but if possible, I would want to reuse the MS Display Dock.
It charges via USB-C, that's good, but as soon as I plug it in, the Pinebook display starts to blink. There is only the PB built-in display in the Control Centre/Displays dialog.
A keyboard connected to the USB hub won't work either. Strange.
Am I right to assume, that Pinebooks are disposeable items?
My 14" Pinebook died, when I tried to swap the LC unit with a 1080p one. The flat ribbon connector was held in place only by very flimsy soldering pads and the slight tug of releasing the flat ribbon was enough to lift a few connectors off the platter and breaking a few conductor tracks off the platter. No resoldering possible, no spares available, so it went into the stack of to-be-recycled parts. It's still there, if somebody has a 14" mainboard, I could make use of it.
The 11" Pinebook died today. As you remember, the keyboard wasn't registering the numeric row of keys (and "s", as I discovered later.). While dismantling the unit, two heatserts came lose and fell out, not to be seen again, the left display hinge cracked out of the plastic and the keyboard itself is not a serviceable item as it is welded in and removing all the plastic welds would be, given the "quality" of the case, a futile attempt. Still, if you happen to have an 11" Pinebook with a broken motherboard, but working keyboard, I could make use of it.
I know, they're only $99 computers, but still .....
I've yet to receive my Pinebook Pro, as I failed to intercept the DHL delivery person before they got to the delivery office on my work site. It's not sat in postal purgatory until Monday.
However, something that I'm interested in is the possibility of running Gnome 3 desktop on the Pinebook Pro. There are already a few Linux builds using the MATE and KDE desktop environments. As far as I'm aware, Gnome 3 looks to be roughly similar to these in terms of system resource usage.
Just a quick hint for any individuals building or developing Electron-based apps:
If you simply issue npm install electron, the process will fail with a non-specific 404 error as well as an unhandled promise reject during electron's postinstall stage. This is due to, afaik, the electron downloader pulling for the non-existent arm(maybe?) build instead of the more appropriate armv7l build.
So I installed Chromium OS and my PBP eMMC, without realizing that ayufan's uboot puts eMMC before SDs. (Feeling pretty foolish about now...) I unfortunately did not order a USB adapter to flash the eMMC directly.
I've been able to boot to SD again, by opening the case, using the eMMC disable switch and then booting. However, I can't get the eMMC to mount in the SD OS after enabling it again. So now I'm wondering if it's possible to use the uboot that came with the stock Debian install with Chromium OS? I don't necessarily want to not use Chromium anymore, but I want to retain the original boot order as my current method to boot from SD is very inconvenient and far from ideal.
If there's another way to get the PBP placing the SD higher in boot priority, I'd love to know!
I remember some images floating around of the pinephone having 6 extra pads on the back of it that were supposedly for some sort of communication. Is there any update on what the pinout of those pads is?
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Curious :
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With changing taxes and tariffs,
Has there been any thought into shipping the parts to a destination country to be assembled and sold in the destination country ?
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There is at least one cell phone that claims to be made in Florida USA, but I think it is just assembled here.
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Just a thought. Could possibly have advantages ?
Anyone having good or not-so-good luck with USB-C multi-port power adapters and the PBP?
Recommendation, condemnations and reviews...
Maybe a little early, but i think many of us will be interested in this subject soon.
I just wanted to mention a security issue I noticed today when I finally got to play with my new PBP.
It appears that SSH is enabled on startup, and that root access via ssh enabled by default.
With the default un/pw being root/root, this is definitely not recommended.
For those not familiar, you can simply issue this command from another linux machine:
ssh {your PBP ip address here} -l root
Once logged in as root (either remotely or locally) you can modify your ssh config:
vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
On line 32, you will see:
PermitRootLogin yes
Change to:
PermitRootLogin no
Save the changes to sshd_config
If you are doing this remotely, close the session by issuing:
exit
Open a terminal locally on your PBP and restart the ssh service:
sudo systemctl stop sshd
sudo systemctl start sshd
Now if you try to ssh directly to the root account, you will be denied, however, you can sudo your way to root from a sudoers account.
If you don't use ssh normally, you can disable automatic sshd startup:
sudo systemctl disable sshd
If you have disabled ssh on startup, you will have to start it manually to use it:
sudo service ssh start
I would suggest you change the password for both root and your standard user. Make them strong
I would also suggest that if you're going to run around with SSH enabled, you create a separate non-sudoer user for use with ssh, and deny ssh access to your sudoer accounts (unless you really need that level of remote control).
