I installed manjaro on my PBP, and am very happy with it. But I really need pandoc in order to make it my daily driver, and manjaro does not have pandoc in their repos for arm64. So I thought I would ask people running different distros to check and see if pandoc is available from their respective repos and indicate yes or no in a reply? Any help or suggestions are much appreciated, and I would add that pandoc on my pinephone would be awesome too.

Thanks.

So far I don't have Pine anything here at home to toy with and am waiting for a Pinetab w/keyboard to ship.  But while I'm waiting, I got to thinking what could be possible for it and maybe the Pinephone as well.  Like VOIP softphones maybe?  Linphone looks interesting and I'm sure there are others.  Could be useful when hanging around a hotel where your cell service doesn't work since it's wifi calling.

Thinks it's possible?

Thanks for your input!

Hi all,

I was wondering about making completely floss linux setup on pbp. Avoiding binary blobs/proprietary packages is potentially good for security and privacy so small inconveniences like usb dongle for wifi instead of integrated are understandable.

It is great laptop is initialized with u-boot avoiding proprietary bios in usual x64 systems.


While does anybody know if there is a way to get most/all binaries out of the linux set-up?

I currently work on manjaro, set up was made using very nice script from Dan Johansen: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/a...-installer

By default pinebook pro requires certain firmware blobs for basic functionality.

By running through pbp gentoo and debian installers (https://github.com/Jannik2099/gentoo-pinebookpro https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pineb...installer/) I narrowed down those binaries:

BCM4345C5.hcd
fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin
brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob
dptx.bin

first three are for wifi/bt

while not sure about the last one (usb-c video out? but needed during boot?)

Is there a way to remove those blobs keeping laptop functional. I have usb wifi, but not sure how critical is dptx.bin?

Are there any other binary blobs?

Also gentoo, debian (installer script) and manjaro use the same manjaro kernel, while I'm not sure if this one is distributed with baked-in binary firmwares or they are supplemented in separate package (as very conveniently in gentoo)

Deblobbing kernel is possible (or using this one: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-libre/) but easier to uninstall blobs if provided as a separate packages.


Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Thanks







Would be great to get suggestion

General shipping information
[24 August] Shipping of all devices is about to start. I'll make sure to keep you up-to-date on the shipping progress in the coming weeks.
I have a kind request to all of you waiting for your gear; please be patient and don't email support/ info to find out when your device will ship - ask in this thread instead. If support and sales drown in emails, then people who are facing actual shipping/ import problems will have to wait longer to get their queries answered.
Thank you!
[5 September] I posted some pictures of the PineTab, Pinebook Pro ISO and PinePhone (Europe) shipments on our Twitter. These are just crates ... so, perhaps not super exciting, but if you want to check them out then click here.


Pinebook Pro (with Manjaro KDE)
[24 August] The first round of ANSI Pinebook Pros will begin shipping tomorrow, August 25. The ISO units may ship as early as August 28 (Friday) or as late as next week (31 Aug.- 5 Sep.). Once the units get picked up it will take some time for them to actually leave Hong Kong. Once they depart Hong Kong - depending on where you are in the world and how / if DHL handles import tax in your country, shipping will take between 5-10 days.
[28 August] Some of your should have already gotten your ANSI Pinebook Pro shipping notification, and indeed some should already have received their units. Expect more notifications over the weekend and start of the week. As of today, everything is on schedule and going smoothly. Expect next update on early next week.
[3 September] More Pinebook Pros - including most if not all ISO units - will be on their way soon. DHL shipping notices should be going out by end of this week.
[5 September] ISO Pinebook Pros are awaiting DHL pickup
[6 September] Pinebook Pros are now shipping. If you haven't received your notification yet, then you can expect it within 48hrs.
[21 September] Pinebook Pros keep will keep on going out in smaller batches until they sell out completely. Currently only the ANSI units remain in stock.
For more details related to Pine Store PBP stock please see this month's Community Update.

PinePhone (postmarketOS CE)
[24 August] Both regular and express PinePhones pmOS CE shipments are scheduled to start shipping tomorrow, 25 August. Following our problems with shipping the UBports batch, we're now using a different 'standard shipping' service. Since we haven't used this service previously means that I cannot give you an estimate how long the parcel will take to reach you. However, my guess is that shipping ought to take 14-25 days, depending on your geographical location and other factors.
For those of you in the Europe, please be aware that we're trying out a completely new shipping/ distribution process in this territory - I'll keep you updated on how it goes once it starts.
DHL shipments, once they leave Hong Kong - which may take a couple of days - should arrive within 5-10 days regardless of your geographic location (depending on import procedures and customs in general).  
[28 August] The pmOS CE PinePhones have left for our Hong Kong warehouse on the 26th and are now awaiting DHL and Standard shipping pick-ups. I expect that people should start receiving their shipping notifications over the weekend. Everything is on schedule and going well so far. Expect next update early next week.
[31 August] Some of you should have already received your DHL shipping notifications - more are coming in the next few days.
I suspect that redistribution from the EU warehouse will start at the beginning of next week.
[3 September] Since many of you ask about shipments European shipments - PinePhones destined for European countries ought to start shipping next week. The reason why I write this a bit tentatively is that the sorting process at the EU warehouse is new and not performed by Pine Store's shipping team. Regardless, I suspect most EU end-users will have their phones, or at least shipping notifications, end of next week.
[5 September] PinePhones destined for European countries are awaiting DHL pickup
[11 September] PinePhones destined for European countries have arrived at the EU warehouse; redistribution will start on Monday, September 14. Those of you in Europe should get a shipping notification early next week.
[15 September] PinePhones from the EU warehouse have started shipping yesterday, September 14. Expect shipping notifications in the next 72 hours.


PineTab (with UBports Ubuntu Touch)
[24 August] PineTabs ought to begin shipping this Friday, August 28, but this date may be pushed to the following week (31 Aug. - 5 Sep.). DHL parcels with the PineTabs, once they leave Hong Kong (which may take a couple of days - depending on on-the-ground circumstances), usually arrive within 5-10 days regardless of  geographic location. That said, customs and DHL function differently from one country to another so the process may take longer depending on local import procedures.
[31 August] PineTab shipment process will start Wednesday or Thursday. Once shipping commences I'll update this thread with a confirmation.
[3 September] Shipping of PineTabs is taking place at the end of this week. Thank you for your patience; we had to bundle the PineTab shipments with Pinebook Pros - which are also shipping now - for strategic reasons.
[5 September] PineTabs are awaiting DHL pickup
[6 September] DHL PineTab shipment is in the process of going out. If you haven't received your shipping notification yet, then you can expect it within 48hrs.
Regular shipment of PineTabs (non-DHL) is scheduled for later this week. I'll let you know when it happens.
[21 September] Remaining PineTab's going out via regular shipping departed on September 17th; today's update is quite overdue, for this I apologize.

Can anyone suggest a capacitive stylus with right/lift click buttons? Seems like a basic product that should exist but internet searches have yielded nothing.

Edit: So they're marketed as active pens but seems linux support isn't their strong point. I guess keyboard/mouse will be a safer bet.

Ex-Solus Head Dev Ikey Doherty will be releasing thier new Linux Distro, Serpent with day one support for the PBP! 



"Serpent OS is that it will ship with a full-featured KDE Plasma desktop environment. However, the initial pre-release builds will be shipping with Sway, a tiling window manager and Wayland compositor, since Serpent OS will be a Wayland-only distro."



Link:  https://9to5linux.com/serpent-os-to-offe...kde-plasma

More detail on the SerpentOS.com about page:

"As we’re taking a distro-first, compatibility-later approach, our design decisions will allow us to take some bold steps. We’ll also be able to incorporate all of the more sensible design improvements in Linux distribution design over the last decade or so:

    No more usrbin split
    100% clang-built throughout (including kernel)
    musl as libc, relying on compiler optimisations instead of inline asm
    libc++ instead of libstdc++
    LLVM’s binutils variants (lld, as, etc.)
    Mixed source/binary distribution
    Moving away from x86_64-generic baseline to newer CPUs, including Intel and AMD specific optimisations
    Capability based subscriptions in package manager (Hardware/ user choice / etc)
    UEFI only. No more legacy boot.
    Completely open source, down to the bootstrap / rebuild scripts
    Seriously optimized for serious workloads.
    Third party applications reliant on containers only. No compat-hacks
    Wayland-only. X11 compatibility via containers will be investigated
    Fully stateless with management tools and upstreaming of patches
    Lots, lots more. We’ll blog about it.

Opinionated By Default

A recurring theme that holds back the development of world-class Linux, is high tolerance for those holding Linux back. A perfect example is NVIDIA* and their lack of support for accelerated Wayland support on their GPUs. Consequently, our project won’t tolerate such decisions and will instead blacklist the NVIDIA proprietary drivers from the distribution.

There are other examples that will emerge over time, and will become quite clear.

The time for Linux distributions giving in, with thousands of man hours wasted working around negative actors, had come to an end."


...Very interesting

Results:Mobian/2020-08-24-Verizon.html
           Mobian/2020-08-24-TMoblie.html

Conclusion: OS not Ready for pinephone to be daily driver.

Notes: Hey guys. Im taking over this thread from @plainenough  We have added a few test cases. Also we are testing on more than one carrier. Verizon, only allows for 4G calling, reinforcing the idea that 4G calling is a requirement for the pinephone to become a daily driver on Mobian. With this in mind, 4G and 3G calls are broken on this Mobian build. We will not be incorporating any data tests this week. Feel free to comment with any results on your own tests to share with others.

Results: ubports/2020-08-24-TMobile
               ubports/2020-08-24-Verizon

Conclusion: OS not Ready for pinephone to be daily driver.



Notes: First and foremost: I have added a few test cases. Also I am now testing on more than one carrier. I will always test Tmobile first, so for results on non carrier tests you can simply refer to that link. Verizon, only allows for 4G calling, reinforcing the idea that 4G calling is a requirement for the pinephone to become a daily driver on ubports. With this in mind, 4G outbound calls are broken. Verizon text messaging inbound also appears to be broken. We will not be incorporating any data tests this week. Feel free to comment with any results on your own tests to share with others.



@AmazingNutria Will be taking over my mobian testing.

I ordered a Pinebook Pro in August 2019 and my unit arrived sometime in December. I had a US ANSI keyboard model. However over the last few weeks I started noticed weird power behaviour, the laptop would be left on overnight on charge but in the morning I would find the battery completely depleted or the device had randomly powered itself off for no valid reason. I have not taken the device out of my house, and just move it between a few rooms - so I put it down to linux being linux. I would unplug and replug it, power cycle and notice the battery seemed to be getting a charge but that there did appear to be some kind of power related issue but did not think much of it. Until it died.

Now, the pinebook pro will not even charge on the barrel jack. The pbp died completely 3 days ago, when I connect two different PSU's (which I tested at giving 5V out each with a multimeter) on the barrel jack, I got absolutely no red light indicating power, the laptop was completely dead. I left it charging via USB-C which did give me a charge indicator, it took several hours to get enough charge to power on the laptop. Once I booted the laptop I noticed that the battery indicator stated "discharging 0%" and after a few minutes with the device powered via USB-C, it would just switch off anyway (after a good 12 hour charge).

I opened the case, disconnected the battery, connected the bypass wires and then powered from barrel jack - nothing, the barrel jack is completely dead, however the USB-C power input would work but was not able to give it enough power to complete booting from the NVMe. The pbp is hosed, so I looked to see what the fault could be.

I have identified that one of the transistors besides where the "bypass" cables are wired appears to have let out the magic smoke, additionally I am disappointed at the state of the soldering job on those wires - they are basically soldered on in such a way that undoubtedly these bypass cables have moved around over time introducing a short - the metal contacts of the wires runs right across the flex cable battery connector, this I believe is what has caused the transistor to blow and break the charging circuit. The cables are half exposed when connected to the PCB and are soldered on in a blob method right across the battery contacts and alongside where the blown transistor appears. Picture below.



I have ordered a new replacement pinebook pro mainboard as unfortunately I was using this thing for actual coding work at night time and aside from the exploding transistor of death it's been a rather decent little machine! in the interim I will try to swap out the blown transistor - does anyone know what component that is on the board above, its the middle transistor that has clearly cracked open? One thing I would definitely do on my new unit when it arrives is remove those bypass cables unless I actually intend to power it without a battery direct from DC, as undoubtedly I believe they are the reason the board short circuited on the power circuit at some point (at least that is my best guess right now). Oddly, those are both soldered with VCC + GND connected to the same pads, they should be removed if not required. Is anyone else noticing the poor connectivity of these wires? Is this a known fault? Have others experienced it?

The machine was powered on most days, didn't have anything plugged into it aside from USB controllers and an RTL-SDR so nothing else can seemingly explain the transistor of death.

I post the above linked thread in the Hardware section as I first thought that my emmc is broken. But as I'm able to boot the factory image from May 17 and other distributions, I believe it could be a PM OS issue.

This is the thread from the hardware section and below my last thread with my "workaround":

This is the observed issue:

I have PM Os installed on the emmc, the sd card as an additional drive. It worked very well with the stable branch. Three days later it was dead. When pressing the power button it stucks with the 'led test' and makes a short 'click' (which seems to be specific to pm os) and restarts over and over again. that it quits at the "led test" reminds on the error bieps from bios, when something essential did go wrong. So: no boot screen, nothing.

What I already tried:
- completely charge the battery
- flash the sd card with jumpdrive:
The phone booted into the jumpdrive modus, but: lsblk did not show the emmc nor the sd card (which is strange). I can unplug the usb cable while it runs jumpdrive, so the battery works well.



https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10962