Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions

[mamboman777]

Ok...I feel like I've been using my Pinebook Pro-ANSI long enough to give a fair review.  

First impression: I really like the hardware.  For work, I was given a HP Chromebook with a 14" touchscreen display and an all metal chassis.  I like the screen of the pinebook better.  It's much brighter and I like a matte display.  I do wish the display folded back more, but it's not a problem that often.  The keyboard is SUPERIOR to the keyboard in the HP.  I enjoy typing on it.  It has a decent feel and pleasant sound.  (I'm used to using a keyboard with MX Blues).  

Accessing the guts of the system is easy.  I've done it multiple times (you can see my NVME chronicles if you're interested).  I am disappointed with the NVME kit I was supplied with (the cable needed to be folded to work).  That being said, it gets covered up by the bottom cover, so no biggie.  Properly seating the bottom panel was a bit tricky, but I figured it out.  I have to start by getting the sides of the panel in place first using the corner screws before putting the rest of the screws in.  There's pretty good instructions about this on the Wiki.  

I love booting from SD Card!  What a great feature!

I think most of my areas for improvement would be regarding the software and ease of installation.  Here's my wish list: 1. The trackpad still does not disable for me in the Bionic image.  I've done the update and can confirm that it's working in Debian, but can't figure out how to get it going in Bionic.  2.  NVME issues.  I had to return a Samsung NVME (I think it was too power hungry.).  My NVME cable is folded.  The software implementation does not include APST, which could improve battery life.  Also, I am coming from a Thinkpad running Ubuntu Studio.  I'm used to being able to plug in a hard drive and have it work.  I am disappointed to find out how much tinkering is necessary to boot from NVME.  I ended up putting my home on the NVMe and booting from the eMMC (it's fast enough IMO).  3.  I would consider myself average with the terminal and getting around linux.  Setting up my machine has taken me a moderate amount of work.  I loved setting my my Debian SD image.  The instructions on the wiki were very clear and the Mr. Fixit updater was great.  I prefer using the Bionic Mate image because I believe it's more responsive.  Setting up widevine in Bionic took a little more research.  I couldn't find or figure out what needed to be done.  And there is still the trackpad issue from #1.  I also have a Chromium image which was easier to get widevine going once I knew how to do so from Bionic.  I think both Chromium and Bionic are smooth and good to use.  

That being said, I've figured it out now and it is good enough for my daily computing needs. 

There you go!  It doesn't get said enough to the developers: THANK YOU!  

Thanks to pine64 for making such a neat device.   

-Josh