11-18-2022, 10:18 PM
Yeah...I would say that the Pinebook Pro is primarily suitable as a (semi-)daily driver only for end users who have very narrow, specific needs and that want them done precisely how they want, trimming every ounce of fat they can find. In my case--a PhD student who frequently spends 6+ consecutive hours working on my dissertation in LaTeX in GVIM, running light computations in GNU Octave in the background--that makes the Pinebook Pro equipped with a customized dwm desktop virtually my dream work laptop.
But...I did not realize this immediately. I spent a year or two using the PBP as my main computer, and...well, I discovered that you can teach a math class over Zoom in a Chromium window using a Pinebook Pro, but I definitely would not recommend it. If you keep an open mind to the PBP's advantages, I imagine you can probably find a good use for it. If nothing else, it may provide a safe hobby sandbox for learning Git and compiling programs from source code. (Don't bother with Chrome or Brave, though; I know from dozens of lost hours that those are lost causes. It's easier to start by learning to compile suckless tools from source code.)
But...I did not realize this immediately. I spent a year or two using the PBP as my main computer, and...well, I discovered that you can teach a math class over Zoom in a Chromium window using a Pinebook Pro, but I definitely would not recommend it. If you keep an open mind to the PBP's advantages, I imagine you can probably find a good use for it. If nothing else, it may provide a safe hobby sandbox for learning Git and compiling programs from source code. (Don't bother with Chrome or Brave, though; I know from dozens of lost hours that those are lost causes. It's easier to start by learning to compile suckless tools from source code.)
