How to get started?

[pfeerick]

When that booted I got the desktop but no launcher bar.  I have a task bar at the top with some rudimentary menus.  The "Internet explorer" Kudi I think, does not work.  I will not load any pages.  Acts like it will, but hangs after 70% or so.  I thought I needed to update the OS, so I started the update process.  That ran for 8 hours and failed.  I need a little help getting from here to there.  There, being a useable Ubuntu environment.  Can I use the same image I loaded to the USB drive for my desktop?  Or is the image we download from you specifically made to run on Pine?

Just a FYI, the Ubuntu Mate desktop environment is not like the Ubuntu Unity desktop environment (side launch bar thingy, etc) on PC builds of Ubuntu for the last few years. The Unity DE will be too slow and unresponsive on the pine64, even if it is compatible. Ubuntu Mate is is basically how Ubuntu used to look before the Unity DE came into being, and can run without needing a lot of video/CPU resources. 

Why you were having trouble Midori I don't know. As was pointed out, I would be checking that your MicroSD is working properly, and checking how you're getting your internet connect. If it's over ethernet, maybe you're running into the GbE issue mentioned elsewhere on the forum - but if is over wifi that is a different story, and I don't know anything specific there that would be an issue. 

And no, you can't using the USB for your PC ubuntu to load ubuntu onto the pine64 - they are not compatible. It would be like trying to load the x86 ubuntu onto a PowerPC (Apple) computer - it just will not work. You will only be able to use OS images that are made specifically for the pine64. Pine64 provide debian, ubuntu and android (plus one or two others), Armbian also provide debian and ubuntu builds for pine64, and there is also the DietPi distro for pine64.