@ljones , I will try and fail spectacularly to explain it short:
- mrfixit's Debian image is using 4.4 kernel with the Mali blobs. gl4es is enabled by default there which gets you to accelerated 2d/3d for games - think of it as translation from desktop GL to GLES2 commands. Lots of various work has been done to get better performance on the Mate build (I think you will be better with Chromium with this Debian build btw).
- To use Panfrost, you will need a distro running the latest kernels (5+) -> more recent kernel the better. Think Manjaro, Arch Linux ARM, postmarketOS, Gentoo, the unofficial Debian installer, Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc (sorry for not listing all upstream distros, great work all!). On top of that you will need to be running recent Mesa version - at the very least Mesa 19.2. Of course newer Mesa version is better.
Since you asked for accelerated X environment, there can be caveats. XFCE on Manjaro is defaulting to Xrender as it's compositor doesn't play well with Panfrost but it's still plenty fast (this could've changed since I last checked it a few months ago). KDE Manjaro on the other hand just needs to have the compositor enabled and you will enjoy very fast desktop experience. Wayland DEs play a lot better with hardware acceleration but may not be your cup of tea.
The great news! Pinebook Pro is near feature completeness in the latest kernels - this is getting close to "plug-and-play" territory for all distros. It's getting really close to the point where no special distro images will be needed
Note:
Lima is targeting the Allwinner SOCs with older Mali 400 series GPUs. Panfrost is the open source driver for the Mali GPU inside the Rockchip SOC found in the Pinebook Pro or newer
- mrfixit's Debian image is using 4.4 kernel with the Mali blobs. gl4es is enabled by default there which gets you to accelerated 2d/3d for games - think of it as translation from desktop GL to GLES2 commands. Lots of various work has been done to get better performance on the Mate build (I think you will be better with Chromium with this Debian build btw).
- To use Panfrost, you will need a distro running the latest kernels (5+) -> more recent kernel the better. Think Manjaro, Arch Linux ARM, postmarketOS, Gentoo, the unofficial Debian installer, Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc (sorry for not listing all upstream distros, great work all!). On top of that you will need to be running recent Mesa version - at the very least Mesa 19.2. Of course newer Mesa version is better.
Since you asked for accelerated X environment, there can be caveats. XFCE on Manjaro is defaulting to Xrender as it's compositor doesn't play well with Panfrost but it's still plenty fast (this could've changed since I last checked it a few months ago). KDE Manjaro on the other hand just needs to have the compositor enabled and you will enjoy very fast desktop experience. Wayland DEs play a lot better with hardware acceleration but may not be your cup of tea.
The great news! Pinebook Pro is near feature completeness in the latest kernels - this is getting close to "plug-and-play" territory for all distros. It's getting really close to the point where no special distro images will be needed
Note:
Lima is targeting the Allwinner SOCs with older Mali 400 series GPUs. Panfrost is the open source driver for the Mali GPU inside the Rockchip SOC found in the Pinebook Pro or newer
Device: Pinebook Pro 128GB No:246 / MainOS: Manjaro ARM
Godot and Flutter - creating something can be fun with the right tools!
Godot and Flutter - creating something can be fun with the right tools!