I’m on board with the privacy and security arguments in favor of a (non-Android) Linux phone. That alone pretty much guarantees that my next phone won’t be Android..  

Another aspect of Linux that appeals to me is that it is more environmentally friendly. Rather than forced redundancy when the manufacturer of my devices decides to stop providing updates (bigger issue with phones than laptops/pcs), I can keep running Linux for much longer – thus reducing resource consumption, landfill etc. However, as relates to phones in particular – my understanding is that ARM devices often have custom kernels. Many of the distros for Pine SBCs have custom kernels rather than mainline Linux kernels.

So.. at long last, my question: is my understanding about custom kernels correct, and if so what does that mean for long term support for a device like the Pine Phone? (Of course, I hope Pine will be around for a long time!) I suppose, being open source there could well be community support for as long as people with the know-how remain interested..

Hi, i post this topic because… i need to talk seriously. It’s not a complaint, i hope i will not get ban for that be for me the android situation on rock64 is not good (and even on other forums).
 
The problem with Rock64 is that even before the PRO was announced, the community was totally asleep, and it's even worse now and that's what I don't understand. 

We have a device that has a lot of potential and I have the feeling that little is being done to give it its glory.

When you ask a question on the forum? Often no answer is given, while the subject is seen many times…. why?...
 
There are many questions that remain unanswered and give a feeling of total abandonment.

On the Android level, first of all, I want to thank you for porting Android Pie to the Rock64 but there are a lot of instability problems for testing it (and I'm not the only one). 
 
I do not accuse the developer of the rom in any way, again a big thank you, i hope you don't do this alone because it's very hard, but it also shows us that there is a lack of willingness on the part of the self-help community to fix bugs or small problems. 

Everyone should, if they have the knowledge, be able to give part of their knowledge to help improve it.
 
On many roms for some phones, there are communities that meet for example under telegram to give advice, suggestions for improvement, participate in development, participate in beta-testing, why wouldn't we do this here? I think it's something essential ! I'm wrong ?

I think it's time to wake up now, and start a real community, let's stop sleeping and give rock64 the potential it deserves.


I hope you will agree with me

I've configured a Debian Armbian to do dummy_hcd and g_mass_storage. I currently have one of my sopine cluster compute modules in the A64 baseboard. I've been able to go through all the steps to set it up as gadget mass storage device. I've also made an OTG cable to plug this setup in to a usb port on another computer. But I am not sure if I have quite got this right at a hardware level. Will the USB on the A64 board let me do this? I have not got any over voltage errors from dmesg but it is not working either. Question was if the Sopine hardware combination will let me bring up a USB port as OTG in this way? 

( in case anybody is wondering why it was because I was exploring this as possible alternate root for cluster booting off the baseboard as opposed to configuring netboot and NTFS etc etc ) ...

I bought a 4GB Pi4 with the official plastic case and PSU. The case is useless because even when idling the SoC gets way too hot. It seems basically that you need forced cooling or a large heatsink in order to control the temperature :-(

I'm now wishing I spent my money on another Pine64 board instead.

Hi, I used Eitcher to flash Ubuntu LXDE image to my rockpro64. Now when i am building ComputeLibrary, it throws error-
"ERROR: Compiler ' aarch64-linux-gnu-g++' not found".
I tried to install it and searched several thread related to this. But not able to find the solution.
Any other dependency i need to install?
Thanks

So, I have been trying out manjaro but have had nothing but problems ranging from needing to compile from source to install older versions of python to inconsistent booting. The worst has just struck, I cannot boot. If the kernel loads (which is inconsistent) then it runs fine until reaching '[OK] Started Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service' then it attempts to load the DE shows a cursor and then flicks between the two screens. If I try to do ctrl alt f2, it loads the tty but then that screen gets added to the loop making it very hard to use. I will share a video showing exactly what I mean as soon as it uploads.

I would like to simultaneously use the USB3 port for an external drive and the USB-C port for a display. Are they sharing a data bus? Could I expect any issue by doing this?

Hi everyone, my first thread ... whoowhoo ... 

Switching from Winblows after 18 years to Linux in 2009, I've been utilizing primarily Linux Mint with the XFCE Desktop as well as MX Linux, also with the XFCE Desktop. Both of these more or less based on Debian, MX Linux moreso than Mint. I use the terminal when I have to, feel perfectly comfortable with it, but really prefer to just point 'n' click as much as possible.

Now I'm seriously considering making a switch from my current Linux over to the upcoming PINEBOOK Pro. My concern of course being whether or not such a switch is even possible since I'm a hobby photographer who uses Gimp almost daily (with reduced image sizes below 2000 px width per image), as well as LibreOffice / OpenOffice (since 2003), Komodo Edit (not IDE) for Webpage stuff, and Thunderbird for all of my email accounts (for the past 15 years or so). There's a ton of other software that I utilize as well, but nothing that I couldn't easily switch away from. The ones that I just listed are really important to me. I'm not a gamer, could care less about all of the gaming junk, but I am seriously hooked on the XFCE desktop environment (Mate is alright too, but I prefer XFCE).

So if I were to get a PINEBOOK Pro, how difficult would it be for me to continue using those mentioned items that I really don't want to do without (Gimp, LibreOffice, Komodo Edit, Thunderbird, XFCE Desktop) ??? Are these already available within the ARM architecture? Is it difficult or even possible to port current Linux apps such as the ones mentioned, over to a PINEBOOK Pro Linux Laptop?
Do ARM based versions of Linux also have Software/Package managers with click to install apps?
Is it possible to utilize 2TB external drives on the PINEBOOK Pro USB ports?
I would sincerely appreciate some helpful input on these questions. Thank you, everyone.

.

Hello all,

My RockPro64 isn't behaving nicely. I first started with openmediavault, arm64, 0.8.3. It took a few times but it finally booted and I commenced to configure. It was okay but the network speed was no more than 6mbs. I tried troubleshooting the problem to no avail. One day, I discovered the server was down. I thought I should try some other options before I got too involved with this iso. So...

I've tried the latest versions of Debian Stretch, Debian by mrfixit2001, OpenMediaVault and Slackware, armhf and arm64, and with pretty much the same results but now - both red and white lights on. I can't seem to fix the red light problem but the slackware and openmediavault, armhf versions, did boot up okay but I did not go through setting them up because on the red light. 

Is there a way to reset that red light or is my board dying?