which distro + DE are you using these days on the Pinebook Pro?

[TRS-80]

If you like Debian (I do), I would not recommend going with vanilla unless you are at least medium level wizard and want to build your own kernels, seek out patches, etc...

You have to understand that these ARM SBC (which PBP is closer to) are not at all like x86 world.  There are a lot of blobs, different boot loaders, etc.

I don't want to assume your knowledge level.  But for normal people, you are probably better off with something like Armbian, which is essentially Debian except they take care of all those low level details.  You will have a much better time there than on upstream Debian for a long, long time (if they ever catch up).  I have been using it for years on a number of SBC and it runs flawless.  I already stated it's early days on desktop but I may have over-stated it.  All these OSes are in early days, it's because of the SoC based hardware...

Choice of GNU/Linux distro (between something like Debian and Arch based distros, and others) have more to do with philosophy around Free Software and release timing. whether user should be on bleeding edge (Arch) or wait until things get a little more stable (Debian).  Arch users would say Debian is "behind" well I  would call it "stable."  I don't have time to fix my OS every day.  Ask some of these Arch based distro people how often they update / tweak their system. 

Then there are the BSDs, which are a whole another thing.  Basically the other half of the Unix family tree.  But you should do a little research about the history and differences between all these projects.  At first I thought all these different distros, DEs, etc. was confusing but I have grown to appreciate it, because it means we have a lot of choices.  But you need to take a little more time to understand the differences.