Hi Everyone!

I just picked up my Pinebook from the post office. Though because my country is far away from where they are produced and consequently I had to pay over double the price to get my hands on one, fate smiled upon me and I received one without dead pixels (I heard this is a possibility) and even the blue plastic casing is completely intact so I can re-use that (probably glue some protection inside to use it as a travel case). Though not new to Linux this is my first venture into a project this technical and also my first non X86 machine ever (phones aside ofcourse). 

I bought it because of sheer enthusiasm - I support community projects like this (hence I didn't mind paying the premium) and I like the look of the Pinebook. 
Also, the community support here seems very nice. 

So... my plans. For the moment I think it would be best to tailor the notebook to be a lightweight travel companion. I'd like to take it with me when traveling by plane, motorcycle travels... just to have a small and lightweight companion for basic webbrowsing, email and the like. There are some things I want to find out, though. Because I borked the password from the get-go I ended up reinstalling the thing 30 minutes after unboxing it   so I'm happy to see the process was straightforward: Just flash the SD card, insert, press yet and Bob is your uncle (though mine is not called Bob, but that's beside the point I think). 


First: Storage. I bought the cheapskate 16GB EMMC variant. I understand it can boot from SD too (just used it to reinstall) but EMMC is faster.
What are my options to boot from EMMC and use an SD card as sort-of permanent storage? Won't it try and boot from said SD card everytime? Or can I avoid that by not having a boot loader on the SD card?

Secondly: Replacing EMMC storage. I understand this is pretty straightforward, but what's a reliable source of 128gb EMMC modules? Can I just source any module, or are there better/worse ones? 

Thirdly: Backlighting. Call me a princess but I love to have keyboard backlighting. Being that this laptop was built to tinker with, what's stopping me from soldering a few LED's inside the case, right? I can solder alright but if you have any idea's/tips to share concerning, I am willing to listen and learn. 

Last but not least: Alternative OS'es. I've seen the options the installer gives me, and several of them mention being "SD boot only" or EMMC capable. 
Specifically: this list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

mentions Armbian (I am a Debian fan) should be EMMC capable, but it's not listed in the installer (flash utility). 
Should I download a custom image somewhere else (where?) and supplant that? I'd rather run from EMMC to keep the SD slot free because of point #1. 


Loving the experience so far, hoping to get some lovely ideas from you. 
And other mods interesting or pertaining to my intended use are very welcome as well, of course. 

Greetings from the Netherlands!

Has anyone tried to install the RTC backup battery on the v3 board?

I'm making some tests but when I disconnect power cord, RTC clock resets to 2016-1-21

I tried to place an order but when I clicked on the payment step, the internet error, but I visited it back before, was fine, I don't understand why that is so?

I just received my Pinebook today. I am having issues connecting bluetooth headphones. They say they are connected, but they will not play though my BOSE headphones. If anyone knows what I may be doing wrong, I would be extremely grateful.

Also, my touchpad. I can use a two finger scroll, but it will not allow me to tap instead of clicking. I cannot find a button within the programs or setting to enable this function. If someone can help me with this one, that would be awesome.

Thanks.

Can anyone explain what's going on in this picture? My Pine has been running (Debian or Ubuntu, I can't remember which) flawlessly for about 2 years now, but recently it just stopped responding to network connections. I got my monitor hooked back up to it and reboot it, and this is what I am getting. The output from the console goes by too fast to see the top of the dump, and hitting shift+pg up doesn't scroll up when it hits this phase either. Curiously, it does not show the pine logo in the top left corner like normal. What is also strange is that it responds to pings once it it gets to this stage, but I can't SSH in since it's not done booting. Switching to another console (alt+f2,f3,etc) just leaves me at a blank screen. If I hit ctrl+alt+del when at this stage, it cleanly reboots, but gets to this stage again.

I pulled the SD card out and stuck it in another linux system and ran fsck on it to make sure the OS was ok, but the card is fine. I'm not sure what else to do at this point. Any pointers or suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks!

Just got my shiny new Pinebook! Clicked the "run this first" installer thing. It was doing it's thing. I left the room.

Came back and it had gone to sleep, woke it up, but now it's on a default user called "KDE NEON" (which is also the OS name, I know) and I have no idea what the password is for it.

I did set up a user for myself before doing all this, which I can try to log into, but would be interested to see if there's a solution for the other user so I can get in there and shut it down and control it properly, etc.

Tried various things like pine64 and root and admin and kdeneon but no dice.

Thanks in advance for any assist!

I didn't see a discussion group for the old Pine64, just the Pine64+ so the moderator will probably need to move it.  I just purchased and installed the Pine wifi card for my board.  It didn't have any instructions or ducumentation included so I assumed the installation would be automatic.  Not so.  The system doesn't appear to recognize the board...at least in the configuration.   I'm not sure if drivers need to be installed or updated, etc.  If been running on ethernet for some time and the systems been running pretty good...although slow but wireless would be nice. If I run iwconfig I get this:

dan@pine64:~$ sudo iwconfig
[sudo] password for dan: 
eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     unassociated  Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Sensitivity:0/0  
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

enxc8d719d80388  no wireless extensions.

so it appears the system sees is but that's about it  Anybody know what's happening?

Since the Web site and forum have been updated, I cannot get it to work with Tapatalk.  It was working fine before the update.

All I get is the forum sections, but no messages/threads in the sections.

Anyone else having issues?

I've just set up my server but I'm not happy with the write speeds.
When I send a 2GB file from my computer to the NAS I'm only getting around 50mb/s write speeds.
I know the board is capable of a much better performance than this - probably double.
That said, I'm wondering if anyone uses any specific speed tweaks with their build?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Added LibreELEC(KODI) - 20190324 to Wiki and PINE64 Installer.