08-09-2020, 01:36 PM
(08-09-2020, 01:14 PM)bcnaz Wrote: The Debian OS in the wiki is the original image that mrfixit prepared for the factory preinstalled images on the Pinebook Pro.
( I do still have this running on both my PBP laptops, the original ISO and the later ANSI keyboard models.)
> However, I believe the official 'Debian arm64' download will work soon, or possibly works now.
( I mentioned in previous post, I plan on trying the latest, but I have not yet)
As to the Balena Etcher app, the direct download from their website is a more current version, if you are running Ubuntu, or a direct derivative such as KUbuntu, the Etcher website will automatically pick the newest release that will work on your operating system.
>NOTE: The Balena Etcher app can take minutes to start up after clicking on it, on my computer, but it does work great for me.
I hope that helps,
B.C.
Yes, the wiki says the Debian os in the wiki was the previous official Pine release, which was the reason I tried hard to make it work. No, I can confirm that the previous Debian pine os in the wiki is not working either with Etcher or Gnome Disks. I am getting strange flickers and other kind of oddities when I try it on my micro sd card.
I tried uncompressing with an unxz command on the bash this time and I have a relative success with Ubuntu Focal Xfce. However, I didn't find it usable as it seems to exclude some very basic capabilities such as wifi connectivity. I am disappointingly having problems with Debian family and Ubuntu family.
I am puzzled with Balena Etcher, which I installed based on their instructions on their website via PPA; I am on Kubuntu Focal in my other machine, so it was a breeze to install the latest version. It is just that none of the images I burned with Balena works at all, which makes me scratch my head.
Gnome Disks is doing a superior job than Balena, I was able to burn Fedora Workstation and Ubuntu Focal with Gnome Disks. If I try them with Balena, I end up looking at black screens.
At this stage I am either choosing Debian Bullseye or Fedora 32 Workstation. Bullseye looks nice, but giving me other problems such as sound card, failing to open my 2TB external hard disk etc. It is lighter than Fedora tho.
Fedora is the most polished OS available for pinebook from my experience. Almost everything worked out of the box, I didn't have any issues on opening my 2TB hard disk and the sound card and keyboard are working, so I can get into business quick. It is a bit heavier on the resources tho, but not heavier.
I think I will stay with Fedora as it seems more stable than Debian Bullseye to me.