Fedora 31 on Pinebook Pro?
#1
Has anybody tried this yet?  I'm looking at the Pinebook Pro as a solution to x86 laptop woes, but there's still a bunch of questions about compatibility.

Fedora updates to the latest stable kernel soon after release while Debian doesn't.  They also mentioned that the panfrost driver is available now, and they've shown it running Fedora Workstation 31 w/ stock Gnome3 on an RK3399 SBC at some kind of trade show (I forget who had the link).  According to Collabora, the panfrost driver was supposed to have been mainlined in Linux 5.2.  So is this actually usable now?  Has anybody tried it with Fedora 31 aarch64?

Also, there's the question about the other hardware that makes the PBP unique from its SBC counterparts, namely things like screen compatibility and the big elephant in the room: wireless and Bluetooth support, specifically in Fedora.  I'd like to see some kind of 802.11ac wireless that DOESN'T require proprietary firmware blobs, but that situation is looking pretty grim, with no manufacturers committing to changing for "WiFi-6".

The PBP looks good, but I also work with GTK3+ apps and want to target Gnome3 development, so this is a requirement.

I'm debating whether to invest money into a laptop that could still have compatibility issues, or to go with an SBC that lacks some of those troublesome hardware for OSS.
#2
Peter Robinson is working on a port for the PBP.
You can find me on IRC, Discord and Twitter


#3
(11-28-2019, 11:01 AM)JCjr Wrote: Has anybody tried this yet?  I'm looking at the Pinebook Pro as a solution to x86 laptop woes, but there's still a bunch of questions about compatibility.

Fedora updates to the latest stable kernel soon after release while Debian doesn't.  They also mentioned that the panfrost driver is available now, and they've shown it running Fedora Workstation 31 w/ stock Gnome3 on an RK3399 SBC at some kind of trade show (I forget who had the link).  According to Collabora, the panfrost driver was supposed to have been mainlined in Linux 5.2.  So is this actually usable now?  Has anybody tried it with Fedora 31 aarch64?

Also, there's the question about the other hardware that makes the PBP unique from its SBC counterparts, namely things like screen compatibility and the big elephant in the room: wireless and Bluetooth support, specifically in Fedora.  I'd like to see some kind of 802.11ac wireless that DOESN'T require proprietary firmware blobs, but that situation is looking pretty grim, with no manufacturers committing to changing for "WiFi-6".

The PBP looks good, but I also work with GTK3+ apps and want to target Gnome3 development, so this is a requirement.

I'm debating whether to invest money into a laptop that could still have compatibility issues, or to go with an SBC that lacks some of those troublesome hardware for OSS.

I'm a long time desktop fedora user and will very likely give it a go on the PBP when available. However currently on the PBP I'm using Manjaro with a gnome (3.34) wayland session using the 5.4 mainline kernel with Panfrost. They've got bluetooth and wireless working well, still some issues around suspend tho. check out the threads currently running about manjaro and mainline kernels in the forums, those might answer a lot of your questions.
#4
> I'm debating whether to invest money into a laptop that could still have compatibility
> issues, or to go with an SBC that lacks some of those troublesome hardware for OSS.

With Tobias' work PBP is in pretty much the same state as any other RK3399 based community board (e.g. there are a binary blobs in the bootloaders and the blob for the WiFi is not in mask programmed ROM so it must be loaded by the kernel).

Other than that however there are a small number of patches over v5.4: updated to panel-simple to support the display, new driver for the fuel guage and a devicetree. The patch count is fairly high because Tobias is avoiding rebasing but when these changes are squashed down for upstreaming I'd expect there to be no more than 6 or 7 patches.
PineTime: wasp-os and MicroPython, Pinebook Pro:  Debian Bullseye
#5
(11-28-2019, 04:17 PM)pjsf Wrote:
(11-28-2019, 11:01 AM)JCjr Wrote: Has anybody tried this yet?  I'm looking at the Pinebook Pro as a solution to x86 laptop woes, but there's still a bunch of questions about compatibility.

Fedora updates to the latest stable kernel soon after release while Debian doesn't.  They also mentioned that the panfrost driver is available now, and they've shown it running Fedora Workstation 31 w/ stock Gnome3 on an RK3399 SBC at some kind of trade show (I forget who had the link).  According to Collabora, the panfrost driver was supposed to have been mainlined in Linux 5.2.  So is this actually usable now?  Has anybody tried it with Fedora 31 aarch64?

Also, there's the question about the other hardware that makes the PBP unique from its SBC counterparts, namely things like screen compatibility and the big elephant in the room: wireless and Bluetooth support, specifically in Fedora.  I'd like to see some kind of 802.11ac wireless that DOESN'T require proprietary firmware blobs, but that situation is looking pretty grim, with no manufacturers committing to changing for "WiFi-6".

The PBP looks good, but I also work with GTK3+ apps and want to target Gnome3 development, so this is a requirement.

I'm debating whether to invest money into a laptop that could still have compatibility issues, or to go with an SBC that lacks some of those troublesome hardware for OSS.

I'm a long time desktop fedora user and will very likely give it a go on the PBP when available. However currently on the PBP I'm using Manjaro with a gnome (3.34) wayland session using the 5.4 mainline kernel with Panfrost. They've got bluetooth and wireless working well, still some issues around suspend tho. check out the threads currently running about manjaro and mainline kernels in the forums, those might answer a lot of your questions.

Manjaro just doesn't cut it.  I'm looking for a vanilla GTK install for development.  See why here:

https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10...-at-scale/
#6
(11-29-2019, 09:54 AM)JCjr Wrote:
(11-28-2019, 04:17 PM)pjsf Wrote:
(11-28-2019, 11:01 AM)JCjr Wrote: Has anybody tried this yet?  I'm looking at the Pinebook Pro as a solution to x86 laptop woes, but there's still a bunch of questions about compatibility.

Fedora updates to the latest stable kernel soon after release while Debian doesn't.  They also mentioned that the panfrost driver is available now, and they've shown it running Fedora Workstation 31 w/ stock Gnome3 on an RK3399 SBC at some kind of trade show (I forget who had the link).  According to Collabora, the panfrost driver was supposed to have been mainlined in Linux 5.2.  So is this actually usable now?  Has anybody tried it with Fedora 31 aarch64?

Also, there's the question about the other hardware that makes the PBP unique from its SBC counterparts, namely things like screen compatibility and the big elephant in the room: wireless and Bluetooth support, specifically in Fedora.  I'd like to see some kind of 802.11ac wireless that DOESN'T require proprietary firmware blobs, but that situation is looking pretty grim, with no manufacturers committing to changing for "WiFi-6".

The PBP looks good, but I also work with GTK3+ apps and want to target Gnome3 development, so this is a requirement.

I'm debating whether to invest money into a laptop that could still have compatibility issues, or to go with an SBC that lacks some of those troublesome hardware for OSS.

I'm a long time desktop fedora user and will very likely give it a go on the PBP when available. However currently on the PBP I'm using Manjaro with a gnome (3.34) wayland session using the 5.4 mainline kernel with Panfrost. They've got bluetooth and wireless working well, still some issues around suspend tho. check out the threads currently running about manjaro and mainline kernels in the forums, those might answer a lot of your questions.

Manjaro just doesn't cut it.  I'm looking for a vanilla GTK install for development.  See why here:

https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10...-at-scale/

Wouldn't expect you to try Manjaro, just trying to say that a recent mainline kernel with current gnome, wayland and panfrost certainly should work on the PBP and that if you're worried about blobs, the manjaro thread might be a place to look at what they're having to load since fc31 will probably need to do something pretty similar. The only issue I'm seeing with this setup at the moment is that shadows don't seem to work properly - which is an issue for things like nautilus and gnome-logs which have 'greyed' panels which turn out almost black under panfrost, Early days yet tho.
#7
Manjaro just doesn't cut it.  I'm looking for a vanilla GTK install for development.  See why here:

https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10...-at-scale/

What a great link on theming and need for a separate API. Thank you.
— Jeremiah
— Jeremiah Cornelius
"Be the first person not to do some­thing, that no one has thought of not doing before’’
— Brian Eno, "Oblique Strategies"
#8
I installed it on a fast micro SD card (PNY Elite-X 256 GB) and so far it runs amazingly well, I can barely notice any speed issues.

Does anyone know where to get the kernel headers for Fedora for the PBP? I am trying to build wireguard from source. I managed to build it without issues on Manjaro, as the kernel headers were easily available.

Also, does anyone else have issues with gnome extension settings in this build of Fedora? I can install extensions (dash to panel, bing wallpaper, clipboard indicator, sound input & output device chooser) and they run fine, but I cannot access the settings dialog for any of the extensions. When I open it, the tweaks panel just crashes, restarting does not help.


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