OK, so I have been trialling trixie on my PinePhone running from an SD card for a couple of weeks now. As before, some applications, usually Chromium/Electron based do not automatically trigger the appearance of the on screen keyboard when you click in a text field. 

This has been the case in all versions of mobian I have used.

In the bookworm based version you can hit the miniscule keyboard icon at the bottom right of the screen to bring up the keyboard. Hit and miss on the PP, works much better on my PPP.

In trixie that icon is not present and I cannot for the life of me work out how to get the on screen keyboard (squeekboard in my case) to appear manually.

What is the magic incantation that the Phosh developers landed upon to allow users to get the OSK to appear manually?

I am vegetarian so if it involves boiling body parts of various creatures in a cauldron of ox blood over a fire made of elm and oak branches at full moon then I will have to get an Android phone instead.

Thanks, as ever in advance for any useful information.

(12-23-2025, 04:34 AM)grump_fiddle_reinstall Wrote: OK, so I have been trialling trixie on my PinePhone running from an SD card for a couple of weeks now. As before, some applications, usually Chromium/Electron based do not automatically trigger the appearance of the on screen keyboard when you click in a text field. 

This has been the case in all versions of mobian I have used.

In the bookworm based version you can hit the miniscule keyboard icon at the bottom right of the screen to bring up the keyboard. Hit and miss on the PP, works much better on my PPP.

In trixie that icon is not present and I cannot for the life of me work out how to get the on screen keyboard (squeekboard in my case) to appear manually.

What is the magic incantation that the Phosh developers landed upon to allow users to get the OSK to appear manually?

I am vegetarian so if it involves boiling body parts of various creatures in a cauldron of ox blood over a fire made of elm and oak branches at full moon then I will have to get an Android phone instead.

Thanks, as ever in advance for any useful information.

Hi there,

If any one is looking for an Explorer Edition I have one for sale here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/267520057218

I have been unable to get sound working during calls since I changed the motherboard out leaving me frustrated, so it's available to anyone else who would liketo tinker with it.

Kind regards,
David

It seems strange to me that this topic is not discussed at all, but are there tariffs to be paid on delivery to a US address? I'm thinking about ordering a Pinecil with accessories, and it's not clear to me at all if the $25 "US Special" delivery fee is everything that will have to be paid, or I'll be hit by some more or less ridiculous tariffs and associated fees (because you don't usually get away with paying just the tariffs, you'll also have to pay the guys taking your money, for taking your money). And the "Shipping Method – Shipping cost covered tariff charge" is really not clear, according to some sources it means "the sender (seller) is responsible for paying all applicable import tariffs, duties, and taxes upfront, before the package reaches the recipient" (DDP), according to others "Shipping is paid; customs fees might not be" (DDU).

Does anyone have a clear answer to this? Has anyone ordered recently and paid or not paid anything extra?

Hi all

I'm hitting dead end after dead end trying to find a working legacy / LCD image for the LTS that doesn't 404.  Does anyone have a source?

these will be used in a closed environment to control smart home, so not fussed about OS age. They'll be barred from the internet, so no concerns there.

Hey guys, 
I’ve been having a bit of a struggle with my Pinebook Pro and could really use some advice. Here’s what happened:

When I got the device here in China, the previous owner had already messed up the system on the EMMC. I downloaded a Kali image, booted from the TF card, and tried to write it to the EMMC—but the process kept freezing with a blinking red light.

A friend here suggested ditching Kali for Debian, so I DD’d Armbian straight to the EMMC. That didn’t boot either, and later even my TF card with Kali wouldn’t boot. I realized I was locked out.

After some searching, I tried DietPi. It actually worked! I got in that night. But the next day, while trying to install xfce4, a package failed and broke apt. I managed a rough fix with some help (thanks DeepSeek), but on the next try, another package failed.

With no spare TF card around, I tried to manually fix apt… and ended up breaking glibc. Now the screen stays blank on boot.

I thought making a new TF card would save me, but the Pinebook won’t boot from it anymore—it just goes to the broken EMMC. I’m pretty stuck at this point.

Has anyone dealt with something like this? Any way to force TF card boot or recover the EMMC? I’d really appreciate any tips!

Trying to use the Pinetab2 as my daily tablet, but the pop up keyboard does not contain all the characters i would like such as Home, End, L Tab, R Tab, F5, would be nice to be able to have these basic functions available from the virtual keypad. Anyone know is there some conf file or something that can be edited to add/change keys to the virtual keyboard? I am running the shipped Arch linux.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Hi all. Is anyone using the Pcie connector on the back of the Quartz64b ? I am revisiting this board after some considerable time. Lets say it has been in storage. Anyway I would like to make use of it again. Which brings me to the Pcie part, Is this used with a flat cable? or is a M.2 card able to be plugged directly into this ? I cannot find much information about it. Has anyone seen a compatible hat that may be used with this connector ? Your comments/experience may point me in the right direction to making use of the Quartz64b once again.

My goal is to compile android for a64+ with the usb simcom76xx drivers included, but I can't even get it to compile stock.  I have tried several guides, several ubuntu versions as host os, various things.  and the 8.1 sdk seems to be missing files (such as .dts) at first glance, on top of no compile instructions.  How do?

The last few updates I have seen hu.org.cameractrls show an update.
Are we close to getting working cameras on our Danctnix Pinetab2s?

Hi,

  I was successfully running Armbian on my Pine A64+ board, using the 7" touch screen from 2016, first using the Longsleep kernel, with mainline kernels from 2021.

See https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=3482 thread for more details.

Regular Armbian upgrades were fine until around the beginning of this year - Armbian kernel 6.1.104 (02/02/2025).

But a kernel version somewhere beween that and the next currently available Armbian kernel 6.6.750 (03/02/25) has broken the output to the touchscreen.

I haven't been able top source intermediate kernels and device trees, so can't say exactly where the change happened that broke the output.

Rolling back to 6.1.104 fixes the display with no other changes.

I don't see any changes in logging boutput related to mipi-dsi or display and don't have access to a serial connection to view the early boot process, so am stuck.

Does anyone else still use this board with the 7" touchsceen and have they been able to run it with a kernel later than 6.1.x?

I'd be very interested to know what changed and how to fix it without freezing the kernel.