Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions

[pineitup]

update

after being able to successfully destroying the shipped OS I started a more thorough investigation. since already on it:

- encrypted the ROOT partition (left BOOT uncrypted) (through sd booted manjaro with arm installer onboard). here I did all steps separately as root (export CRYPT="y" and bash manjaro-arm-installer). all this mentioned sudo and su sudo was crap. 1. su, 2. export crypt 3. install -> works fine
- backup strategy with rsnc (ssh) failed (due to modified file attributes) so I applied clonezilla and built eMMC images (worked quite fine) (rsync now for /home data only). Restore tested ok, including the encrypted ROOT
- cisco VPN via sudo vpnc and networkmanager-vpnc -> ok. both available via pacman
- firewall ufw via pacman worked out of the box

took me two days to crash and rebuild (partime) and I learned a lot about the ARM based "PC".

And yes: I do enjoy the simplicity

Drawbacks:
- the trackpad is crap. I dont mind because I alsways work with Mouse. hopefully a software weakness that will be improoved one day (not a showstopper, but nothing for the dayly work).
- I am not able to warmstart the system ("reboot"). when rebooting the system stops with dark screen. If I apply power cycle/cold start everything works fine.


Next steps will  be to try it as dayly driver for mobile situations (netbook applications)

My work for a living (SW-Architect) will remain on my thinkpad extreme G2, but I am looking forward to enjoying the pine in other allday situations.

Can you expand on the root encryption process (or link to any tutorial you used)? And how you then install the new manjaro?
It would be very helpful! Thanks