What's a good image to use now? [tutorial help as well]

[frank_philip]

I'm trying to get my pinebook pro up and running again. What's a good OS to put on it now? Can someone also recommend a video tutorial for how to put a new OS on the pinebook pro?

[Sb2024]

Armbien is no good. Latest image is not working. When I built my own image, it also didn’t work. I think if I were you I would stick to the stock image.

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinebook_Pr...e_Releases

[KC9UDX]

NetBSD 10 runs very well on the PBP. Though you'll need a small WiFi dongle for now.

If that interests you, I could explain how to get it running. You can get a bootable image from https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/arm/ I wish someone would update the wiki.
The old "Debian Desktop" image still works well, if you can find it.

That's a shame about Armbian; it formerly ran well. Diet Pi did the last time I tried it, too.

[Sb2024]

That’s a good tip, I will try dietpi.

[frank_philip]

NetBSD 10 runs very well on the PBP.  Though you'll need a small WiFi dongle for now.

Needing a dongle isn't so great for me. Would the steps for loading a new image be the same?

I can put an image on microsd(with etcher) but I'm not too sure what the next step would be. I've seen some posts saying you need to flash storage drive but i'm not familiar with doing that. (only ever done OS installation on a more traditional desktop machine and a 2009 mac book pro)

[KC9UDX]

NetBSD 10 runs very well on the PBP.  Though you'll need a small WiFi dongle for now.

Needing a dongle isn't so great for me. Would the steps for loading a new image be the same?

I can put an image on microsd(with etcher) but I'm not too sure what the next step would be. I've seen some posts saying you need to flash storage drive but i'm not familiar with doing that. (only ever done OS installation on a more traditional desktop machine and a 2009 mac book pro)

I use a urtwn dongle. It's one like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/113774031117?mk...media=COPY It barely sticks out the side of the PBP, and it gets better signal than the inbuilt adaptor. You can actually use the internal adaptor, but you have to run NetBSD -current, and even then in not sure the bwfm driver works well yet, I have no idea.

You can run the PBP right from the image on the micro-SD card that you burn. Then you can download and burn the image to the eMMC. That's probably the best thing to do. The simplest thing to do is once you are booted (the user name is root and the password is empty (just press return)) to download the image with ftp, and then write it to the eMMC with this command: `progress -zf file.img.gz dd of=/dev/rld0 bs=4m` (hopefully my memory is accurate).

[Ingen]

I prefer and use NetBSD but Postmarket OS is also a really nice alternative. I have only tried the console version and installed X and i3wm, but this has worked very well in my case.

[Dendrocalamus64]

Manjaro ARM used to be the most supported distribution, but now the stable branch hasn't been updated in 9 months:

Status of ARM Stable Updates: No Major Update Since March 2024?

[Surehand53]

Manjaro ARM used to be the most supported distribution, but now the stable branch hasn't been updated in 9 months:

Status of ARM Stable Updates: No Major Update Since March 2024?

I remember a post on the Manjaro Forum from last summer that something is blocked on the stable branch. I use the testing branch for years and have not felt any issue because of that. In most of my cases the problem is in front of the laptop.
On the Manjaro forum you find in the testing release posts some instruction how to switch to testing. It just one line.

The one problem that could come up is with a wifi app wpa_supplicant. The latest version (2.11, from memory) seems to have trouble with the Pinebook Pro.
Setting the version back (to 2.10 I think) solves that. There is a Manjaro.forum post if you face that issue.

In testing branch Manjaro is a great and up to date distro.

[Der Geist der Maschine]

I use a urtwn dongle.  It's one like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/113774031117?mk...media=COPY It barely sticks out the side of the PBP, and it gets better signal than the inbuilt adaptor.

I use a small linux upstream supported dongle on another laptop and it sucks. It works quite well at home but not in the wild (quite some ping losses on Toronto airport, no webpage loads on Frankfurt train station, no website loads on Deutsche Bahn ICEs). These tiny dongles have tiny antennas. I do not understand how your cheap dongle gets a better signal than the large antenna in the Pinebook Pro. Well, good for you.

What's a good OS to put on it now?

The important question to ask: a) does suspend to mem work and b) do webbrowers as well as (some) video players decode in GPU.