Few questions about flashing to a MicroSD card on the Pinebook Pro

[SanjevR]

Hey all so I purchased another Pinephone and I want to flash an OS to my microSD card. Previously to flash I used my Mac Laptop and it required an acessory with a USB cable to connect the microsd to the laptop. Now I don't want to use a mac but rather i'd like to use my Pinebook Pro since I am trying to make this my main computer. It does seem that the pinebook Pro has a slot for sd cards but it doesn't appear to have anything for MicroSD cards. Another questions I have is it seems that I can't find Balena Etcher in the pacmac-manager. How do I download it?

[bcnaz]

Hey all so I purchased another Pinephone and I want to flash an OS to my microSD card. Previously to flash I used my Mac Laptop and it required an acessory with a USB cable to connect the microsd to the laptop. Now I don't want to use a mac but rather i'd like to use my Pinebook Pro since I am trying to make this my main computer. It does seem that the pinebook Pro has a slot for sd cards but it doesn't appear to have anything for MicroSD cards. Another questions I have is it seems that I can't find Balena Etcher in the pacmac-manager. How do I download it?

The Pinebook Pro does use a 'micro sd' card,  though when discussing it we often just refer to it as an 'sd' card.

It may be handy to use a 'usb to micro sd adapter' instead of the onboard micro sd card slot,  as your PBP will attempt to boot from this
if it is still inserted when you do a reboot, or a start-up.

I have not 'seen' the Balena Etcher app offered for the PBP's operating systems "yet",  currently I use an old Dell laptop running LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition)
to flash the 'sd' cards for my multiple Pine phones.  Both of my PBP's are still running the original 'mrfixit' Debian.

'Etcher has been very dependable for me,  flashing sd cards for both the PBP's and the Pine phones.

[SanjevR]

How do I get an etcher or a etcher equivalent program on the pinebook pro? I don't want to use other laptops to flash i want to use my pinebook pro

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I tried to install the etcher using the build from this link https://github.com/futurejones/balena-et.../README.md instead of using apt-get i used pacman - Syu balena-etcher-electron because the apt-get command was not found.

What am I doing wrong?

Is there anything equivalent to this that I can use to flash a microsd card using my pinebook pro. Please Help

[bcnaz]

What operating system are you running on your Pinebook Pro ?

[SanjevR]

What operating system are you running on your Pinebook Pro ?

I'm not sure. Whatever the default operating system I got when I purchased it from this site.

Where do I check what I operating system is?

[bcnaz]

My Pinebook Pro's were from the first batch(ISO) and second batch(ANSI),
 
I think Pine64 has changed the operating systems that it ships "pre-installed" since then.

I would think it should be listed on the "Start-up" or "splash screen"  ?

I am planning on updating both of mine to the mainstream 'Debian Arm64' pretty soon.

[SanjevR]

My Pinebook Pro's were from the first batch(ISO) and second batch(ANSI),
 
I think Pine64 has changed the operating systems that it ships "pre-installed" since then.

I would think it should be listed on the "Start-up" or "splash screen"  ?

I am planning on updating both of mine to the mainstream 'Debian Arm64' pretty soon.

I ordered my pinebook pro and it came a few months ago I think it came in June 2020. I have also found the Operating system information in the information center. Here's what I found

Manjaro-ARM

Software
KDE Plasma Version: 5.20.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.76.0
Qt Version: 5.15.1
Kernel Version: 5.7.19-1-MANJARO-ARM
OS Type: 64-bit

Hardware
Processors: 6 x
Memory: 3.7 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mali T860

Please note I have no idea what any of that meant not KDE plasma version, not KDE Frameworks or Kernel Version or anything LOL I wouldn't mind if someone explained all that to me.