Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions

[bcnaz]

In response to  a few recent posts,
 The Only accessory I think they will ship with a Pinebook Pro is the NVMe adapter,  That is loose somewhere in the package,  

  I did not find mine until I was cleaning up the packaging materials.. !  (a small envelope)

 IF you ordered any other accessories you can expect those to come separately.

[bcnaz]

So my new ANSI Pinebook Pro arrived exactly as DHL had said it would within minutes of their ETA.

 Overall the packing is excellent, however the power pack and the NVMe adapter are kind of floating around

in one of the outer bags, I did not find the NVMe adapter until I went back through the packaging materials, a small envelope.

  The Pinebook Pro looks great as we have come to expect.

  I wanted to charge it up before hand   (New shipping laws say lithium batteries must be charged less than 30%)

>  * My charger is damaged or defective,  it did not show up when I plugged it in. (little red indicator light)

     SO  I just used my charger from my ISO PBP,  which worked fine, including the red indicator light. 

   When I  fired it up,  wifi connected quick, good signal shows both my 2.4 and 5.0 and some of my neighbors as well.

   We are on 2 acre lots so it is not like an apartment next door.  Very good reception.

   Did the mrFixIt updates including the widevine,  no problem. (also Debian updates)

   BUT  for about 5 minutes the screen started flashing, bright and dim, bright and dim..  ?

    It did clear up,  and no more problems the rest of the first night.

    Then this evening I had it turned on for a few minutes and it started flashing bright and dim again

    but after flashing for about 5 minutes it did clear up and has been steady for hours now....  ?  ?

     I must have the NEW keyboard firmware as I tried the 'Luke test'     a finger on the track pad and it still types.

     Though it was set to EU in the keyboard settings,   I added US keyboard,   and then deleted the EU keyboard.

          >>    The @ key and the  "  keys were reversed.

      Except for being a little worried about the flashing spells I Do Like this little PBP so far.

    The keyboard and track pad appear to be operating correctly,  keyboard has the "NEW" feel

     The track pad is sensitive and slightly different from others, but nice

       Enough talk here for now,  I am going to test drive this some more,  and maybe edit here some more latter.

        Thanks Pine64  !

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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.
  

Not really my problem. Their terms of service are to me, unacceptable at any price.

[bcnaz]

Most never read the 'terms of service' (TOS)

They just 'click I Accept'

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Most never read the 'terms of service' (TOS)

They just 'click I Accept'

True enough. But by this point, understanding the tradeoffs required to use Google's ubiquitous services in terms of privacy and data ownership have been made abundantly clear, by even the New York Times. Apple is only a little less onerous.

I'm building /e/ ROMs for unsupported LTE phones, and helping others shrink the data they expose. It's a good effort, headed by Gael Duvel, who's original Mandrake Linux did a huge effort in advancing KDE popularity in those early days. :-)

[bcnaz]

The few that notice, try to explain, .. kinda stand out these days, they get called survivalists, peppers, paranoid, tin foil hat wearers......etc....

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The few that notice, try to explain, .. kinda stand out these days, they get called survivalists, peppers, paranoid, tin foil hat wearers......etc....

As an aside, if I can assemble the right sources from the community and github, I plan for a multiwindow /e/ build of Android for the PinebookPro. It should have a huge battery life! The inclusion of microG and a Google-free app store on an Android build is something more than a few of us would find useful.

I may have to see about a TWRP build first. It could be done without this, but would ease a number of installation and upgrade issues - especially for ADB root sideloading of software with USB.

One thing at a time. I just got my PBP yesterday!

[8jef]

I plan for a multiwindow /e/ build of Android for the PinebookPro

That's something really interesting.

By the way, I've just received brand new 2W speakers that I intend to fit into my pbp. Will post with pictures and sources (and maybe sound bites?) if the effort meets improvement.

[fortran]

Greetings from Dawson Creek, BC, Canada. Where the Alaska Highway begins.

I cam e through engineering (lots of numerical methods), did some sysadmin and netadmin; and now I have the family farm. I've been with Linux since 1.2.13.

At some point, I hope to have a Hardkernel Ordoid-C2 (?) and a Rock Pi 4 doing the twin jobs of GPS base station and NTP base station. The latter being a Rockchip 3399 thing.

I have a 1TB nvme SSD to slide into this Pinebook Pro 64. I proba bly have updates to do before that.

First impression, /boot is 40% full. Is there room to install a second kernel into /boot?

Booting to a root on nvme is a goal.

KDE was nice way back when, but the "semantic desktop" bothered me. I am trying to move things to LXQT. So, I am willing to try and compile what is needed to get LXQT going. Or, at least I am in the winter. I prefer to use btrfs for /home. I've no idea if this is trivial or not.

I run a lot of BOINC jobs here, because at some point I want to look at how global circulation models work with my home. (Home being The Peace Country of Alberta and BC, which is about the size of Germany.)

I dislike systemd, and most of my systems are Devuan. So, I have some interest in makings things devuan if I can.

And 2 days ago, the low here was -40C. We've been in a cold spell of -30C for the most part for a bit more than 2 weeks now. It is time for it to go away.

Have a great day!
Gord

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I plan for a multiwindow /e/ build of Android for the PinebookPro

That's something really interesting.

By the way, I've just received brand new 2W speakers that I intend to fit into my pbp. Will post with pictures and sources (and maybe sound bites?) if the effort meets improvement.

Speakers? That's REALLY interesting.