UPDATED (June 2021): 17-distro multi-boot image for Pinephone (incl. 3GiB variant)

[Diagon]

I think those two and Mobian are the ones I'm going to work with.  Though I will get out a USB keyboard and see what I can do with Arch.  Thanks for that. It should probably be possible to get it working at least as well as Manjaro, no?

I've only had problems booting Arch from Megi's multiboot image. If you install (either to eMMC or SD card) from here, it should work as it's worked for me both times I downloaded an image:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_S..._Linux_ARM

And again, Arch was an everyday carry contender for me. Right now Megapixels camera is broken in Mobian and I actually use my Magapixels  camera quite often, despite its minimal feature set. I might try Arch again soon.

Also as I recall, on the multiboot image OSes all share a common custom kernel so you can find performance and behavioral differences between the normal (official Pine / unoffical OS releases and the multiboot.

I recommend trying OpenSUSE Tumbleweed too:
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_S...s#openSUSE

But I did have trouble finding a media player that worked well with media files on SUSE. I think the default player was the only one that handled audio correctly. Also, the software repository selection is rather limited. You're not going to find programs like Handbrake, for example, which actually works in Mobian! In addition to mp4 and mkv video files, I've played actual DVDs to my television using Mobian and the dock with an external DVD drive. However, SUSE Tumbleweed is pretty solid with the few proggies that come installed, in my brief experience with it anyway. I don't know if it interest you but youtube-dl and mkvmerge (both CLI) have worked in every Pine OS I've tried. I've found mplayer (I use CLI for videos) and gmplayer (GUI for audio files) work the best for me, overall. Anyhow, I sometimes think the PinePhone+dock makes for a better personal computer than a phone (whereas Android and iOS phone are crappy PCs)! It makes me want to buy a PineBook Pro, if they ever sell them again!

Boy, this is rather lossy forum software.  My whole post was eaten ...

Using your USB keyboard idea, I was able to update that second Arch distro.  Now I get one onscreen, but oddly while Manjaro allows dock + ethernet + power, Arch doesn't (???)  Weird.

I was also able to log into the first Arch CLI-only distro (alarm/1111).  I can't get the ssh server daemon started, though.  It's installed, but I keep getting status as "Active: failed."  It also won't accept dock + keyboard + power.

I'll definitely try out OpenSUSE.  And thanks for the heads up on the kernel differences.  If you have any suggestions for unofficial OS releases, I'm all ears!

Handbrake on PinePhone!   youtube-dl/mkmerge too.  Excellent.  (I noticed youtube-dl had to make some changes after google threatened github/Microsoft.  I didn't see what the changes were, but they couldn't have been good.  And MS couldn't stand up to Google??)