Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions

[Arwen]

I had serious wakeup problems when I inittially enabled suspend & hibernate on my newish desktop, (AMD x64). Turns out any key press or mouse action would cause the computer to wake up. That was not something I needed, so eventually figured out a startup script to disable this function.

It was this, (wrapped in a statup script);

Code:

       echo -1 >/sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend
       find /sys -type d -name power | grep -i usb | \
       while read MY_PW
       do
           if [ -f ${MY_PW}/control ]; then
               echo on >${MY_PW}/control 2>/dev/null
           fi
       done

[fpex73]

It does not work.

[Arwen]

@fpex73, sorry to hear that.

Don't know if I will experience the same problem. But if I do and find a solution, I will try and update the Wiki & this thread.

[ab1jx]

OK, skimmed this thread to try to make sure I’m not making redundant comments.  I can’t read the bloody thing, the resolution is just too high to fit in a 14 inch size.  Some stuff is OK but for serious programming in an rxvt or uxterm window where things are a fixed number of pixels it’s hard to tell a . from a , or : from a ;.  Emulators like lxterminal don’t work because they hog too many key definitions and interfere with mc.  I’m glad I didn’t get the 11 inch version.

So, looking for a little advice on changing the screen resolution.  In /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf the video resolution appears in what seems to be a kernel command string.  On my Rock64 that’s not the only place it needs to go, also need to update-initramfs.  You can’t define new resolutions there, you can only pick ones defined at a lower level.  With help a year ago I got my Rock64 to run at 1024x768.

I don’t like the physical touchpad, no visible border around it, no markings where the touchpad leaves off and the buttons begin.  Combined with the all black case it’s very difficult to use in bad lighting.  You can’t feel an edge that isn’t there.  I’ve been using laptops for 25 years, never hit one where somebody decided to hide the buttons before.  Doing a right-drag is lots of fun, or even a left drag.

Some problems are caused by there being no locale defined.  I stuck a copy of raspi-config on and let it fix that.  But it’s Stretch, not Buster, not worth sinking a lot of time into.  Firefox crashes, it’s nice to build from sources, they seem to work better that way, don’t fret what’s in the debs.  I’d consider the OS to be just for testing the hardware but now it’s time to replace it.

I ordered an emmc to usb adapter with it, haven’t found it yet

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Ladies and Gentlemen! All those not adequately addressed!

I just landed after many days abroad, to find my new, ANSI PBP delivered - not one hour prior to my own arrival. I had this stripped out of the box and booted on battery in about five minutes. I'm posting from Firefox and will be purging any trace of Google from the image. ;-)

First impressions align very much with those general recent postings. On first boot, KB and trackpad weren't responsive in Light DM, just frozen. A quick CTL-ALT-F1 got me to a console, tho'. I logged in root, changed password and quickly edited /etc/passwd /etc/shadow and /etc/group, then moved the /home/rock to my new <username>. A quick su - <username> landed me in the right directory, and ownership/permissions were verified, before giving a passwd command for change. I could exit both nested login shells, and ALT-F7 to LightDM, now behaving with the input hardware! Go figure. I was on wireless in less than another half-minute.

Zipping around, it's nicely set-up. I haven't done any upgrades yet to firmware - no mrfixiit updates yet either. "Raw" it's quite usable, as soon as I change the ISO keymap, at least!

I have a couple EMMc modules and the USB adaptor here. I also expect another ISO PBP that I bought from another user on the forum, which should arrive in a couple days. So, after also acquiring a gaggle of suitable SD cards too, I expect some grand experiments to commence. LOL

First will be just a stable Debian and upstream kernel, per the work of Daniel and others here. I'll have my comfortable environment and workflow, to always fall back upon.

Okay, enough spouting! I haven't even plugged the mains adaptor yet. Thanks again to Pine64 and the community for this lovely little machine!

[Der Geist der Maschine]

I'm posting from Firefox and will be purging any trace of Google from the image. ;-)

Not much will be left, then:

• Firefox would not be possible without Google's financial support.
  
• Google Summer of Code projects spread throughout every Linux distribution.
  
• Google is a platinum member of the Linux Foundation.
  
• Google is a major contributor to the linux kernel with more than 10,000 commits
  
• sschaeck@pinebook-pro:/opt/linux-git$ git log --author google.com | grep ^Author | wc -l
  
• 10792
  
• and so on.
  

[jsfrederick]

Got my ANSI PBP yesterday. Ordered when they were announced as I wanted the ANSI keyboard.

Have not opened it yet, but will later this week. I don't expect it to be much different that the ISO PBP that I already have.

On a side note, I did not see the NVMe adapter I ordered in the package. Might it already be installed in the PBP? Has anyone else ordered the NVMe adapter?

I will have an ISO version available for sale if anyone wants a "gently" used one.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[amooke]

I got mine monday morning and so far I've been loving it, had to file a support ticket because they forgot my usb to type H barrel connector but I had a spare usb to usb C cable laying around anyways, plus the wall connector so its no big issue. I'm really impressed with just the general look and feel, it feels like a much more expensive machine and the experience so far has been great besides a few minor issues with chromium.

[Arwen]

@ab1jx, in my opinion, you should not change the video resolution. Two things can help. First, change the font size for various things. More pixels might make the text easier to read, (smoothing and all). Second, changing the X-Windows DPI, (Dots Per Inch), make help too.

I found that I prefer higher resolution displays, but if the pixels are too small, then I change the font size to larger. This means the characters are better formed and for my own eyes, easier to read.

One last comment. Changing the resolution might work. But unless you use like half size, that can cause the screen to have irregular bit to bit ratio. Hard to explain if you've never seen it.

[inkslinger]

ANSI PBP arrived on Monday evening, and was out of the packing and booted up within minutes. I ran the MrFixit updates immediately, but didn't have time for much else. I've had a few hours with it today, run the KB/TP firmware update (which was much needed) and overall I'm quite happy with it.

Having a device with no branding other than the small Pine64 logo on the super key is very nice. I didn't realize how much I would appreciate it until I actually saw it with my own eyes.

The build quality is very good. The metal body is solid. The matte display is quite nice. The keyboard is pretty clicky and responsive, as laptop keyboards go. It's not my favourite layout (I use the home and end keys a lot, so having them relegated to secondary functions of the left and right arrow keys is very annoying) and I've got the same issue with the F9-F12 keys mentioned in this thread, but it's mostly fine.

Other than some quibbles with the keyboard, I am very pleased with both the hardware and software. I'm already learning new things about Linux, which is great fun. I look forward to playing around with other distros in the future but, for now, the default Debian MATE build works very well for my needs (mostly writing, web browsing and video).

Video looks sharp on the matte display and the sound quality is good, if a bit tinny (sounds better with headphones, which is how I would usually be listening while on the laptop anyway, so that's fine). So far, the battery life is impressive; I've mostly just been working in the browser and terminal, so nothing that's very resource intensive, but my ancient Dell running Lubuntu would have died several hours ago from doing the exact same things. It's definitely a step up from the computer I was using as my previous daily driver!

For the price of the device, I'm very impressed and am glad the community is so strong and supportive!