12-10-2025, 05:19 AM
With the support and some helpful hints by the fine people on the pine64 discord, i have finally verified on my own that both installation and operation of wmlive on the PBP using the aforementioned installation media work as intended and without the risk of bricking it.
Of course, the actual merit belongs to the Debian developers who managed to enable the debian-installer to finally do the right thing also on ARM based hardware like the PBP.
Compared to the many hoops still needed to jump through years ago when trying to install a Debian on the PBP using Daniel Thomson's Pinebook Pro Debian Installer, this basically behaves like a normal Debian installation procedure as we are used to on other hardware platforms.
In any case, i am very happy now that finally wmlive also installs and runs fine on the Pinebook Pro. So there is almost no difference anymore between my trusty old Thinkpads and the PBP, leaving aside the superior Thinkpad keyboards and track point and lack of software (torbrowser is sorely missing).
Here is some recent press coverage regarding wmlive: https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/m..._live_132/
The wmlive project has recently been introduced on the puppet linux forum and the much larger presentation and discusion there might be useful to better understand the main ideas and motivation behind wmlive: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16063
If you are interested in testing wmlive on your own PBP and don't want to wait until the password to unpack the 7z archive containg the required ISO image is revealed in about tree weeks, please feel free to get in touch.
Of course, the actual merit belongs to the Debian developers who managed to enable the debian-installer to finally do the right thing also on ARM based hardware like the PBP.
Compared to the many hoops still needed to jump through years ago when trying to install a Debian on the PBP using Daniel Thomson's Pinebook Pro Debian Installer, this basically behaves like a normal Debian installation procedure as we are used to on other hardware platforms.
In any case, i am very happy now that finally wmlive also installs and runs fine on the Pinebook Pro. So there is almost no difference anymore between my trusty old Thinkpads and the PBP, leaving aside the superior Thinkpad keyboards and track point and lack of software (torbrowser is sorely missing).
Here is some recent press coverage regarding wmlive: https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/m..._live_132/
The wmlive project has recently been introduced on the puppet linux forum and the much larger presentation and discusion there might be useful to better understand the main ideas and motivation behind wmlive: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16063
If you are interested in testing wmlive on your own PBP and don't want to wait until the password to unpack the 7z archive containg the required ISO image is revealed in about tree weeks, please feel free to get in touch.
Devices: Pinebook Pro & Pinephone (Braveheart)