I just ordered a PINEPHONE - Beta Edition with Convergence Package Linux SmartPhone and I intend to buy a keyboard as soon as they become available.

Will the Manjaro KDE Plasma Mobile software and firmware work with the keyboard or am I likely to encounter problems with the two working together?

Anyone's response to my question will be greatly appreciated.

sandspur

For some time now (since Bookworm? Or only a few weeks? I actually don't know) I usually don't have internet access via the mobile network.

Sometimes it works, mostly it does not. A restart usually helps, but of course that's not what you want to do when you need to quickly look something up or when you or wait for a Signal/Telegram message while on the move. The problem occurs with two different providers.

Is there anything I can do?

I notice that 3d acceleration works only on old debian images.
Now the rock/rock-pro has amazing graphics. Its a pitty that this is no longer working.
Is this an issue with the chipset that is in the rock/rock-pro?
Is it possible to use a unstable distro that is up to date and brings the old 3d drivers?
Thanks!

Hello, I purchased a used Pinebook Pro but the seller is removing the eMMC due to their privacy concerns. I don't believe I'll be able to talk them out of removing it. Am I in for a world of hurt? I'm fairly familiar with Linux and comfortable installing hardware. 

I understand it can boot from SD, but there seem to be a lot of threads with problems here. Is booting from an SD card reliable?

The laptop already has the optional NVMe adapter installed (but no drive), but I understand booting from this requires some flashing/modification of the boot chip. 

Would it be more sensible to purchase the 64 GB eMMC (in stock currently) and the USB-A to eMMC module?

Thanks!

I stopped getting sms, I updated firmware to the 20211128-2345 release of Phosh, issue persists. I looked at https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=14697, it didn't work, I got

Compare to tasks done on a Pinebook Pro to the PinePhone Pro, is the difference between both is noticeable?

Hello,

I'm interested in the RockPro 64 NAS build, but I see that the NAS Case is out of stock.

Is there any plan to have new cases in stock in coming months or should I look for an other option?

Thanks!

Since I broke my android phone, I figured I would give the pinephone a shot at being my daily driver. The specs to start off:

Pinephone : postmarketOS Edition 3gb
Distro: Arm Arch for the last 7 months. First month was PMos.
Carrier: Google Fi talk/text/data unlimited
Two pinephone batteries

First off, nothing wrong with PMos. It worked without issue. I just happen to be an insufferable "Arch BTW" user on everything else I own so it was too good to pass up yet another reason to irritate people with talk about Arch. Installed directly to EMMC.

The SIM dropped in with a size converter kit and functioned on startup. I didn't have to change anything in settings to get it working. Has good enough signal for me not to notice outages.

I explicitly stated two pinephone batteries because if you aren't planning on charging it mid-day then it will absolutely die before a normal 8 hour work shift. Now, I will assume that since I work in a basement and it is constantly trying to find a signal, that is draining the battery faster than it usually would. But even on the weekends with very light usage during the day it will die before I would normally plug my original phone in. I would unplug and pocket it at about 6:30-7 AM, if I use it a few times a day to browse reddit or look up a recipe, it will die by about 8PM. All that considered, I pocket the battery out of my braveheart edition just in case I need it. I am hoping that the keyboard+battery will remedy this and remove the need of having to carry a 2nd battery. Time and luck getting one will tell.

A few months back I didn't realize I wasn't getting text messages. A concerned visit from my parents isn't how I would've liked to find that out but in any case... The modem had filled up with text messages stuck in "receiving" and I had to use mmcli to remove them. I am uncertain if they are texts that I received and read/replied to, or if they were stuck in limbo and I was never able read them. It is a concern that I still harbor now, they may be something serious that I never receive. Currently my fix for this is to just check it myself daily. I should make a script to auto remove anything stuck, I just haven't got around to it.

I have no evidence to back this up other than speculation. But I believe this is due to text messages getting queued up while the phone is dead and just doesn't know what to do with all of them when the phone is cut on. The modem firmware update that I've read about may fix this, but as this is currently my main phone I don't have alternatives if I brick it.

Other than that hiccup, the call quality is quite nice and I haven't had issues with receiving/sending calls.

Performance with web browsing and applications isn't great, but I barely use a smartphone for more than phone calls and texts. When I do need to use it I can definitely tell I am waiting a while longer than even a 5+ year old mediocre android phone. Not a deal breaker for me and the pinephone pro looks like it will remedy this issue just fine.

All things considered, I will say if you are prepared to deal with a few inconveniences, the pinephone can definitely be used as a daily driver. If you use your phone constantly everyday for social media, videos or anything really I would have to recommend at least waiting til the keyboard+battery comes out and hope it gives it enough juice to keep up all day. If you hate pressing a button and waiting any length of time I would wait for the pro and hope for the best. For someone like me who just uses texting/phone and maybe one or two webpages a day this is a fantastic device. Hopefully I can get a pro and keyboard to use as a daily driver as I think they will invalidate all the negatives.

So the Linux kernel (as of 5.x) has received quite a few new bits for Rockchip devices, making it easier to install a number of distros on the RockPro64 (using official ISO installers now results in some perfectly bootable operating systems). But it's evident that depth of support isn't equal across distros: While some install and boot just fine from the system's microSD reader the very same operating system will not boot from an internal eMMC flash drive, nor from an external SSD. Conversely, other distros employing a 5.x kernel boot from all those storage mediums without any fuss; then there's that part about text not getting printed to the screen (i.e. openSUSE Leap 15.3 and Debian 11), while others have incorporated this very basic (and expected) feature as standard!
As an example, Fedora 35 is a distribution that works beautifully when installed to a microSD card, but installing it onto my eMMC, or SSD, results in several GRUB errors (i.e. "You need to load a kernel first") then going back to the boot menu. Again, everything seems to just work when Fedora is installed to an microSD card. But I need something faster.
Then there are distros I've tested that run just fine off the eMMC, like openSUSE and Debian. Unfortunately those two refuse to print any text to the screen, forcing me into an X session every time (although I can type 'blindly' into a tty session). I need to see text output. I want to see the logs scroll by. Why did they not put the effort in, when Fedora does? In my opinion, Fedora aarch64 is quite simply the best Linux I've used in my limited time with ARM64: It makes for a sane, stable, and responsive system.
Here is what seems to me a general problem: I fail to detect any overt effort on the part of Pine64 to work with distro-makers and get these extremely basic features working, across all releases. It's really looking like a fast-accumulating hodge-podge of distros which might or might not be suitable to task. Things like text console support and booting from recognized storage shoudn't be considered a luxury on any platform. The inconsistencies are staggering.
Still, I'm still hoping for some small breakthrough that'll get Fedora loading from eMMC, or USB 3.0 SSD. Any idea?

I have noticed that there have been reports of not getting 'panfrost' graphics acceleration working properly. I have problems myself recently with the installation of vanilla Debian Bullseye. I found that there is a hidden dependency on a kernel module that is not yet loaded during early boot, and will (probably by coincidence) be loaded late. Too late for 'panfrost' to initialize before Xorg starts. Consequently, Xorg starts with 'LLVMpipe' DRI display support. Basically, no graphics support.

In the case of Debian, (configuration works slightly differently in other distributions) I fixed this with a 'modprobe.d' config file: