Anyone know what the reason was that MATE was chosen for the desktop environment?
I just installed LXDE and it looks like right off the bat it has a good 250-400 MB more RAM free after initial login. Seems like this would be a better choice for slim hardware like the Pinebook has. I haven't used it for more than about 15 minutes so far, but seems to be much snappier.
Don't get me wrong...I'm not hating on MATE. I use it at work on my Dell desktop with full Compiz effects too. Love it.
I spent some time playing with different browsers and exploring youtube playback options, and in this post I list my findings. Although Chromium is quicker than Firefox on the Pinebook - especially if you put in time to do some modifications - to my knowledge, it lacks a good plugin for easy playback of youtube (and other) videos using external player. I looked all over, read countless threads, but found just one plugin utility for chromium that kinda-sorta works. However, it requires a lot of setup and is not a simple click-and-play solution because it requires you to have VLC launched in the background as well as a VLC server running at localhost:8080. I generally found it quite unreliable.
So I moved onto Firefox. For starters, I did some tweaking to improve Firefox performance from terrible - to usable. Some things can be tweaked from the settings panel while others have to be enabled from a hidden options list. The very basics can be found in Preferences -> Advanced and:
In general: disable Smooth Scrolling
In Data Choices: disable Firefox Health Report
For the more advanced tweaks one needs to enter about:config in the URL bar. There is a search bar at the top so you can look for the settings I list below.
For starters you may want to make sure to prevent pinch-to-zoom behaviour by setting: zoom.maxPercent to 100 zoom.minPercent to 100
Then find and set the following: network.http.pipelining true Network.http.proxy.pipelining true network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 8
Its also worth adding the following integers by right clicking anywhere on the about:config page, selecting New -> integer:
Lastly, similarly to Chromium, it’s a good idea to move cache to ram by setting the following: Browser.cache.disk.enable false Browser.cache.memory.enable true Browser.cache.memory.capacity -1
The last variable can be tweaked; value of 100000 = 100mb RAM. The -1 value, as I understand it, refers to dynamic allocation of RAM usage. I don't know what the optimal setting for this ought to be. Also, you can find out more about how much ram is used and other options by entering about:cache in the browser bar.
Now that faster Firefox performance is improved (subjectively, when running off of eMMC, it’s on par with Chromium in Mate DE) we can move onto enabling playback via VLC player.
The plugin needed to achieve this is called VLC Youtube Shortcut. Extensive instructions are not needed for getting this to work - after installing the plugin, you will be able to just right click the youtube (or other) video in Firefox and select Play Video from link from the drop-down menu.
To get good playback in VLC some tinkering is needed … but that is a topic for a different post.
I purchased a 14" Pinebook and noticed there wasn't a plug type available for the UK (chose EU since it's the closest I could adapt). I was curious if anyone from the tea nation had bought a UK barrel power adapter that worked with their Pinebook?
I've had some pretty so-so experiences buying power adapters so wanted to see if anyone had any recommendations, preferably eBay or Amazon. Looking forward to its arrival!
Oh and anyone who did receive it, did you receive a DHL tracking code?
I want to use i2c-0 as well as i2c-1 in my project. i2c-0 connects to the TP port for use with the touchpanel by default. On the baseboard are 2k pullups between the TWI0-{SCK,SDA} pins and VCC-CTP.
I found that with with the pull-ups installed (R96 and R97), external pull-ups to 3v3 just create a voltage divider and the TWI0 pins don't go high enough for the A64 to detect the i2c bus is idle. (I first tried removing the ferrite bead, FB3, attempting to sever the connection to VCC-CTP, but that didn't make a difference.) I suspect the problem is that VCC-CTP isn't enabled and is instead acting as a strong pull-down.
So here's what I did to make TWI0 functional from Linux on SO-Pine + Baseboard; I think the same should work on standard Pine64.
De-solder R96, R97, and FB3.
Solder wires to the center 2 test points on the group of 6 directly behind the TP connector on the bottom of the board
Connect your wires to external pullup resistors to 3v3. I used Pin 0 on the Pi2 bus for 3v3.
Alternatively there's surely a way to enable VCC-CTP; this is shown as a 3v3 regulator in the AXP803 chip on the SOPINE schematic. With this enabled, one could get 3v3 and ground from the test pads on the back, as well. Or use an appropriately sized ribbon cable. If someone knows how to enable this, please share. I didn't find this while searching.
Loaded up the Longsleep Ubuntu on my working 2gb Pine. But on a working HDMI I'm getting "Format not supported." I didn't find anything in the Wiki or this forum.
What should I try to get HDMI working?, sam
Hi guys, I'm running kernel 7.1 with build https://github.com/ayufan-pine64/android.../tag/0.1.1 in Pine A64+.
Sometime during the boot, there's kernel panic and boot failed. Have to replug-in the power to reset.
Following is boot log get from serial port, kernel panic due to bug:
