Newbie's first experience

[chrispop99]

I am new to the Pinebook Pro, but not Linux in general, and wanted to share some first thoughts on some tests I have made. Please note these are offered in the spirit of wanting to help, not as criticism. I am not in need of help to fix these things.

At first boot, I ran the updater. it shows 0 updates needed. This seemed unrealistic, so I ran sudo apt update in a terminal; it showed 90 updates available. I ran the updater again, but it still showed 0. I updated successfully anyway from the terminal.

Launching Chrome showed the Keyring request - potentially confusing for a newcomer?

I tried opening some standard testing files I use:

• Graphics files opened in Nomacs as expected
  
• Video files opened in SMPlayer, although there was a message warning the version of SMPlayer was out of date
  
• A PDF file tried, but failed, to open in LibreOffice Draw; it seems there is no app for PDFs installed
  
• MP3s open in SMPlayer, not RhythmBox. I was able to change that.
  

Using Caja, I tried browsing shares on my local network with the following problems:

• Attempting to play video opened SMPlayer, but it crashed
  
• Graphics files (PNG and JPG) tred to open Firefox, but failed. Forcing Nomacs works for the first image, but not subsequently
  

There appears to be no means to add a printer. Mine is connected to the local network. I got it working as follows:

• Install system-config-printer
  
• Install cups
  
• From the run (Alt-F2) dialogue, run gksudo system-config-printer. (I subsequently modified the menu entry to run it as sudo)
  

This enabled the printer to be found and installed.

[*]Hope at least some of this might be of help.
[*]

Chris

[Arwen]

@chrispop99, in regards to the updates. I too was confused. The non-Debian updater is for Pinebook Pro specific things like the kernel & boot support files. So it's possible you got the latest kernel. So it is reasonable to see what you saw.

The Chromium prompt for password saving annoyed me, so I disabled it. (I use a different method for saving passwords.)
I've added that Chrome prompt issue to the Wiki;

Wiki - Pinebook Pro - Chromium flags

As usual, feel free to correct, improve or comment, (good or politely bad).

[chrispop99]

@chrispop99, in regards to the updates. I too was confused. The non-Debian updater is for Pinebook Pro specific things like the kernel & boot support files. So it's possible you got the latest kernel. So it is reasonable to see what you saw.

The Chromium prompt for password saving annoyed me, so I disabled it. (I use a different method for saving passwords.)
I've added that Chrome prompt issue to the Wiki;

Wiki - Pinebook Pro - Chromium flags

As usual, feel free to correct, improve or comment, (good or politely bad).

Good to know about the updater - thanks.

Chris