I have received a pinetab2 a few days ago.
At first, I was disappointed by the wifi not working and bluetooth neither, then I qwanted a bit and discovered that both need working. I  then decided to order a usb c-to-c cable to tether (I have plenty of a-to-c cables, but no c-to-c). I don't mind waiting a couple more days.
While I'm waiting for the cable to be delivered, I wanted to try to connect the pinetab to my pc, so I can transfer some files and start using it.
Unfortunately, when I plug the cable nothing happens. Sometimes I hear a sound from the pinetab, but nothing more than that. I'm surely missing something.
The cable is the red one that was in the box, while the pc is a very very old laptop running Debian. Do I need to install some drivers?
Thanks anyone who will point me in the right direction.

I've created a Frankenstein image for Star64 based on Fishwaldo's plasma 1.2 image and the root partition of StarFive's GPU-accelerated image, which was demo'd on Reddit by Slammernanners.

Some context:
On Reddit, Slammernanners showed off a Debian image with StarFive's closed-source drivers and an older Mesa, which only works on the VisionFive 2 board. That board uses the same SoC and GPU as the Star64.

See the video he uploaded here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/...able_as_a/

I inquired about getting this Debian image and Slammernanners gave me this direct link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...2KCQjJ8JI5

I took Fishwaldo's 1.2 plasma image and tried two experiments:

Experiment 1. Clear out his root partition and rsync over StarFive' files and boot it up: This failed. Systemd complained about some files.

Experiment 2. Use dd to copy over the StarFive' root partition verbatim, as it is location independent of course, overwriting Fishwaldo's. This worked. It booted up to the Gnome login screen of Debian and I logged in.

You can download my 4GB Frankenstein image here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u7qiCJv...sp=sharing

There's not a lot of free space in the root partition (#4), so on Linux you'll need to dd it to a larger microSD, and resize the partition and run resize2fs on it.
I'll upload a larger image in a few days with some updates etc.

The login in user/starfive. You can sudo to install packages.
Never do an apt update, as that'll destroy the GPU acceleration.

Watch the boot up of the image on Star64:
https://youtu.be/qzg7ZwHwU5k

Hi all,

I was very happy today to receive my Pinetab2. Naturally, the beta state of the device means that bugs are to be expected and that some patience is needed before the product is fully functional. I have no problem with that.

Now my problem is that one of the USB-C ports, the lower one (the farthest away from the power button, on the lower side when used with the keyboard) can only be used to charge the device. When plugging any peripheral (usb flashdrive, mouse etc.) it's not working while the other is working correctly.

My question is, is that normal (a bug) ? I restarted multiple times and the behaviour is consistent. 

While, as said, I'm OK with bugs for the time it takes to iron out everything, I would like to know if I have an actual hardware defect here.

Thanks for any help.

Just received my PineTab2 and am having some difficulty getting logged in. It boots up to the login screen OK.  In the lower-left it is defaulted to "Desktop Session: Plasma (Wayland)". When I entered the correct password for user "alarm", the screen locked up. I waited a few minutes, but nothing, so I hard power-cycled it. If I enter the incorrect password it does its little head shake thing and says Login Failed, but the correct password always results in locking up. So I tried switching it to "Desktop Session: Plasma (X11)". A little more success this time. I get the black & white chevron and three circles logo. The first time I tried X11 I then got the little KDE info wizard.  Step through that OK, but when I hit [Finish] the screen goes black and unresponsive.  Subsequent attempts to login it skips the info wizard and goes straight to blackscreen.

Is there anything I can try short of reflashing the image? This is my first Pine product and I am a little nervous about doing something wrong and bricking it. Particularly since this is a product I am not yet at all familiar with. Is that even a possibility that doing something wrong when reflashing could result in some sort of unrecoverable failure?

Thanks

Hi,
I will be using PineTab2 mainly as tablet, so the keyboard is of little use and only gets in the way. And because this is my first tablet, so I'm not familiar with the sizes of the tablets with similar size, but is there a case without keyboard that fits the PineTab2? And if not will Pine64 offer one in the near future?

Over on Mastodon, @manut is running Debian (Mobian-Phosh) on his #pinetab2 !

He provides instructions and if I had a day or two just to play, I'd be tempted to give it a swing. Maybe somebody more experienced will provide an image we can just install. I wonder how challenging it will be to pull in kernel/driver updates as the rest of our device is brought online (wifi, camera, suspend). 

I'm long-time comfortable in Debian, though I was very grateful when the Linux kernel became robust enough (and hardware standardized enough) that I no longer had to compile kernels to get the drivers I needed.

I'm wondering what would happen if I installed aur/phosh . Would I be able to choose between it and plasma on the login screen (so as to have a known-working fallback)? Should I worry that it is tagged "Flagged out-of-date"? Better to use aur/phosh-git ?

So, after paying another 65 quid to the Customs&Excise, I finally have my PineTab 2 in hand.
Packaging is great. Lightweight and very protective.
Inside 2 boxes, one with a folding keyboard cover, plastic fantastic, but it will do.
Another box with the tablet and a USB cable.
The Tablet looks and feels miles better than the cheap Chinese kit you would expect for that price. Screen protector already applied, nice.
The Tablet fits nicely in the keyboard case, me like.
Switching it on....
.... wait, it's in portrait while its in landscape being in the case. Really?

Even though the display is only 720p, it looks good enough. But really, there are 10" tablets around with 1080p and even 2k displays for not more money.
Speed seems to be okay'ish. About the same as a PineBook Pro. Not world shattering, but more than acceptable.
Let's look at System Monitor.... U kiddin me? 1.5 GiB of RAM already used?
Can we update? No, no Net, no Bluetooth, no WiFi, no drivers. Thank you.

Well, since it's not networked, I don't need no updates yet.

So let's wor a bit with it...

I just this week received the PineTab2 running DanctNIX Arch from Pine64. 

When I try to use the Discover application to install more applications, I get error messages. 

Immediately after starting the table, when I first start the Discover application, it first says this:  "Unable to Lock Database".  Then it shows me another message, "No Metadata URIs for vendor directory". 

Then when I try to install an application I get this error message:  "PakageKit Daemon has crashed". 

I don't know what these messages are telling me, nor how I go about fixing whatever problem(s) they are cryptically telling me exist. 

(I realize this is posted under Arch Linux on PinePhone, but I couldn't find a category for Arch Linux on the PineTab.  I figured that since my question is focused on the Arch Linux software that this would be the more fitting place.)

1 PineBook Pro has Armbian 23.02 or above installed
2 Go to https://cloud.189.cn/t/u6BrQbZVnuum (password is 5feb), download： deepin23-beta-aarch64-rk3399-Orangepi4-lts_6.3.3-mmc-sd-zh-hans.zip and unzip it.
3 Burn the decompressed image to a TF card of no less than 16GB.（root/Bug23  bug23/Bug23）
4 Start armbian in the computer, enter the graphical interface, insert the TF card into the pinebook pro.
5 Open the file manager, open the u-boot part of the TF card, and re-edit uEnv.txt (or ubootEnv.txt), i.e.: fdtfile=rockchip/rk3399-orangepi-4-lts.dtb replace with fdtfile=rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb，And then save it again.
6 Enter the / usr / lib / of Armbian and copy the two folders of u-boot and linux-u-boot * under the deepin partition / deepin / usr / lib / path of the TF card.
7 Shut down and restart the deepin OS from the TF card.

Note: This version uses the btrfs feature, the main volume is @deepin23, the default is that the @deepin volume is a snapshot of the @deepin23 volume,

Therefore, if the system has a problem, you can manually delete the @deepin volume and then rebuild the @deepin snapshot volume

I just received my PineTab2 and I'm disappointed that I cannot successfully log in.  I booted it up and tried logging in with the default password, but the screen freezes.  I tried this several times before deciding to download the DanctNix Arch Linux image from the PineTab2 wiki.  I followed the instructions and flashed the image to an SD card with Balena Etcher.  I then connected the included USB to UART connector with the switch in the On position and the newly flashed SD card inserted in the PineTab2.  From there my experience differs from what is in the wiki.  Upon booting, I get the PineTab2 Factory Tool screen.  One of the menu options is to Flash OS to eMMC.  I tried that and it appears to flash the OS image.  When I try booting the tablet up without the SD card, I get the same results.  Log in with the default password and the screen freezes.  Not sure what else to do.  I would appreciate any help.  Thanks