which distro + DE are you using these days on the Pinebook Pro?

[halogen]

quite some time has passed since the last similar thread was posted. the list of available Linux distributions has grown massively.

which distro and desktop environment are you using, and why?

what are its strengths and weaknesses compared to other combos?

[jomyer]

I bought it to run Ubuntu MATE, but it does not do that.

The audio volume is so low that it is mostly useless to me.  And as a new Linux user, I did not anticipate the differences in Manjaro and Ubuntu.

Provide Ubuntu MATE support and maybe I can use external speakers.  But oh - was there a problem with audio and video sync also?

[TRS-80]

Armbian are finally publishing some desktop images now.  Although I almost hesitate to recommend them as it's early days for desktop, so I would not expect them to be as stable and polished as the headless / server images are for Supported SBCs for instance.  Graphical environments are much more complex.

Having said that, someone raving about how well their PBP was working (with one of said images) in #armbian was what got me looking more at Pine64 in the first place, so there is that... 

[KC9UDX]

I have not run a Linux distru on mine in some time. My wife still runs Manjaro, but I suspect the reason that I never have to fix it is that I have only updated it once in the past year.

I have found that NetBSD with KDE4 does everything that I need my PBP to do, albeit the inbuilt WiFi still does not work.

[moonwalkers]

Debian Sid here. Almost stock - just extra acpid hackery for speakers muting/unmuting on headphones plugging/unplugging, WiFi/BT firmware, asound.state with immutable flag. Oh, and u-boot-rockchip from Debian Experimental. The only thing that doesn't work is deep sleep.

I installed mine completely manually, doing essentially the same thing that debootstrap does automatically, but official SD card image with u-boot from experimental should work too, though partitioning would likely need to be done manually and u-boot also needs to be installed separately from experimental.

[User 22018]

Manjaro & i3.

Find it to be pretty snappy, and the Manjaro i3 ISO has some nice defaults and everything works.

[linuxad]

I've tried quite a few distros on the PBP. The best experience I've had is Sven Kiljan's Arch Linux: https://github.com/SvenKiljan/archlinuxarm-pbp.

[halogen]

Debian Sid here. Almost stock - just extra acpid hackery for speakers muting/unmuting on headphones plugging/unplugging, WiFi/BT firmware, asound.state with immutable flag. Oh, and u-boot-rockchip from Debian Experimental. The only thing that doesn't work is deep sleep.

I installed mine completely manually, doing essentially the same thing that debootstrap does automatically, but official SD card image with u-boot from experimental should work too, though partitioning would likely need to be done manually and u-boot also needs to be installed separately from experimental.

why did you choose Debian Sid?

I'm asking because I'm after a distro and DE combo that provides the greatest performance and stability on the Pinebook Pro. (I should have pointed out in the opening post.)

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Manjaro & i3.

Find it to be pretty snappy, and the Manjaro i3 ISO has some nice defaults and everything works.

thanks. which desktop environment do you think is the best?

[alpopa]

Debian 11 Bullseye (aka Testing, but will remain with it after release) + Mate. It covers all my needs.

[KC9UDX]

Better to ask us which one is right for you. In that case, please tell is what you already prefer.