OS for 512mb?

[joshdude58]

Hello, I recently received my Pine 64 512mb model and have yet to successfully get it booted. I have tried installing android 5.1.1, remix os, and arch linux (all listed on the wiki page), but had no luck. I understand that these state they are tried/require the 1gb model, but I am very eager to get started with my pine. Are there any operating systems the pine 64 512mb model can run? Thanks!

[frewind]

Hello, I recently received my Pine 64 512mb model and have yet to successfully get it booted. I have tried installing android 5.1.1, remix os, and arch linux (all listed on the wiki page), but had no luck. I understand that these state they are tried/require the 1gb model, but I am very eager to get started with my pine. Are there any operating systems the pine 64 512mb model can run? Thanks!

Hello and Welcome

I take it you've read this thread http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=514 on the top reasons not booting...

Can you let us know what you've tried and we'll see if we can help....

[tllim]

Hello, I recently received my Pine 64 512mb model and have yet to successfully get it booted. I have tried installing android 5.1.1, remix os, and arch linux (all listed on the wiki page), but had no luck. I understand that these state they are tried/require the 1gb model, but I am very eager to get started with my pine. Are there any operating systems the pine 64 512mb model can run? Thanks!

As mentioned on KS page and also FAQ, Android, including Remix, not suitable for Pine A64 512MB board. The best OS for Pine A64 board is ArchLinux.

[ottu]

Hello, I recently received my Pine 64 512mb model and have yet to successfully get it booted. I have tried installing android 5.1.1, remix os, and arch linux (all listed on the wiki page), but had no luck. I understand that these state they are tried/require the 1gb model, but I am very eager to get started with my pine. Are there any operating systems the pine 64 512mb model can run? Thanks!

As mentioned on KS page and also FAQ, Android, including Remix, not suitable for Pine A64 512MB board. The best OS for Pine A64 board is ArchLinux.

Looks like Arch Linux for Pine has been discontinued. I downloded a xubuntu minimal version from the same developer and it doesn't boot, installed Debian and it's so slow that I am considering whether my Commodore 64 is a better option. All the other OSes are for 1GB according with the Pine official page. I tested a few of them and in fact they don't seem to work. Any suggestion? Should I use my long waited Pine A64 board to play frisbee?

[Luke]

Hello, I recently received my Pine 64 512mb model and have yet to successfully get it booted. I have tried installing android 5.1.1, remix os, and arch linux (all listed on the wiki page), but had no luck. I understand that these state they are tried/require the 1gb model, but I am very eager to get started with my pine. Are there any operating systems the pine 64 512mb model can run? Thanks!

As mentioned on KS page and also FAQ, Android, including Remix, not suitable for Pine A64 512MB board. The best OS for Pine A64 board is ArchLinux.

Looks like Arch Linux for Pine has been discontinued. I downloded a xubuntu minimal version from the same developer and it doesn't boot, installed Debian and it's so slow that I am considering whether my Commodore 64 is a better option. All the other OSes are for 1GB according with the Pine official page. I tested a few of them and in fact they don't seem to work. Any suggestion? Should I use my long waited Pine A64 board to play frisbee?

Debian runs really nicely on the 512mb board. I dont know about using a de (I would presume it will be sluggish) but for headless applications its great. I have just gotten my 512 board and moved my webserver to it. Works great. Why would you get a 512 board if you want a de ?

[ottu]

Hello, I recently received my Pine 64 512mb model and have yet to successfully get it booted. I have tried installing android 5.1.1, remix os, and arch linux (all listed on the wiki page), but had no luck. I understand that these state they are tried/require the 1gb model, but I am very eager to get started with my pine. Are there any operating systems the pine 64 512mb model can run? Thanks!

As mentioned on KS page and also FAQ, Android, including Remix, not suitable for Pine A64 512MB board. The best OS for Pine A64 board is ArchLinux.

Looks like Arch Linux for Pine has been discontinued. I downloded a xubuntu minimal version from the same developer and it doesn't boot, installed Debian and it's so slow that I am considering whether my Commodore 64 is a better option. All the other OSes are for 1GB according with the Pine official page. I tested a few of them and in fact they don't seem to work. Any suggestion? Should I use my long waited Pine A64 board to play frisbee?

Debian runs really nicely on the 512mb board. I dont know about using a de (I would presume it will be sluggish) but for headless applications its great. I have just gotten my 512 board and moved my webserver to it. Works great. Why would you get a 512 board if you want a de ?

Hi Luke, thanks for your reply. Good to hear that for headless applications works well. I was trying to use the built in web browser and gave up because it was too slow, then installed konqueror and it was even worst. I have an old netbook running Linux Mint and it works fine. I was hoping to find a similar distribution for the Pine A64. No frills, just web browsing, open office and nothing more. Should I assume that it's impossible to achieve with the pine A64?

[xalius]

That doesnt really sound like a Pine issue to me, running modern DEs with applications like Firefox/Office/.... just easily requires more than 512MB RAM... a Firefox with a few tabs  open for example quickly needs a couple hundred MB .... there are some lightweight window managers for X and lightweight browser and office applications but I guess you will have more fun if you find something for your Pine that doesnt require a full graphical UI...

[ottu]

That doesnt really sound like a Pine issue to me, running modern DEs with applications like Firefox/Office/.... just easily requires more than 512MB RAM... a Firefox with a few tabs  open for example quickly needs a couple hundred MB .... there are some lightweight window managers for X and lightweight browser and office applications but I guess you will have more fun if you find something for your Pine that doesnt require a full graphical UI...

Hi Xalius, I didn't even try to start office, and not even tried to open more than 1 tab of the browser as with one tab was already so slow that was practically impossible to use. I would be more than happy to find an alternative lightweight distro, but so far doesn't looks like there is one that works on the PINE a64. Do you know any?

[xalius]

I would suggest to start out with a minimal Debian or Ubuntu image, check what RAM you have left with a bare system and then slowly go from there, install X and maybe try Xfce then check again what RAM resources you have left and see what applications you can run. It's also important to have a sdcard that has good performance with random I/O if you plan to run desktop type applications... see http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=497 or http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=376 for example or the Debian image with LXDE (see http://lxde.org/ )

[Luke]

Hello, I recently received my Pine 64 512mb model and have yet to successfully get it booted. I have tried installing android 5.1.1, remix os, and arch linux (all listed on the wiki page), but had no luck. I understand that these state they are tried/require the 1gb model, but I am very eager to get started with my pine. Are there any operating systems the pine 64 512mb model can run? Thanks!

As mentioned on KS page and also FAQ, Android, including Remix, not suitable for Pine A64 512MB board. The best OS for Pine A64 board is ArchLinux.

Looks like Arch Linux for Pine has been discontinued. I downloded a xubuntu minimal version from the same developer and it doesn't boot, installed Debian and it's so slow that I am considering whether my Commodore 64 is a better option. All the other OSes are for 1GB according with the Pine official page. I tested a few of them and in fact they don't seem to work. Any suggestion? Should I use my long waited Pine A64 board to play frisbee?

Debian runs really nicely on the 512mb board. I dont know about using a de (I would presume it will be sluggish) but for headless applications its great. I have just gotten my 512 board and moved my webserver to it. Works great. Why would you get a 512 board if you want a de ?

Hi Luke, thanks for your reply. Good to hear that for headless applications works well. I was trying to use the built in web browser and gave up because it was too slow, then installed konqueror and it was even worst. I have an old netbook running Linux Mint and it works fine. I was hoping to find a similar distribution for the Pine A64. No frills, just web browsing, open office and nothing more. Should I assume that it's impossible to achieve with the pine A64?

Was too slow ? no way. I will PM you the site I'm hosting so you can try it out. Nothing spectacular, but you can hardly call it slow ... How did you set it up ? 
Think that comparing an old netbook to the pine isnt really fair - CPU architecture, RAM type/size, type of storage, etc. But that is besides the point - the 512mb board will be very limiting for desktop applications ...