My Debian journey on the Pinebook Pro

[schwarzwieweiss]

I've been using Debian on my Pinebook Pro for quite a while now, going through some iterations:

1. A few days after receiving my Pinebook Pro in early 2020, I installed Debian on a microSD card using the script from https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pineb...installer/, disabled eMMC, and used only the microSD card
   
2. A few weeks later I installed an NVMe SSD in my Pinebook Pro and copied over the installation from the microSD card, but kept u-boot and /boot on the microSD card
   
3. Again some time later I finally flashed u-boot to the SPI flash and could boot directly from the NVMe SSD, so I got rid of the microSD card. Time for a fresh installation I thought and tried the very latest (daily) SD card image for the Debian Installer, leading to
   
4. installing Debian using the serial console as the Pinebook Pro's display did not turn on when booting the Debian Installer. However, I could install Debian on the NVMe SSD (/boot plus encrypted /), remove the microSD card with the installer and boot the fresh installation. Serial console only, so I grabbed https://github.com/xmixahlx/pbp-tools and compiled kernel 5.7, booted it and finally the display turned on.
   

The installation from 4. has been in use for several months now. Whenever there is a new kernel package coming in from Debian, I try to boot that, which always work and always gives serial console output only. So I always return to kernel 5.7 built with the script from xmixahlx. I also tried kernel 5.8 when xmixahlx updated the script but that kernel fails to decrypt my encrypted /. As my main hope is that Debian will "simply work" at some point in the future, I never investigated this issue properly and just stayed with kernel 5.7.

Given this month's blog post, I thought I'd give the most recent (Alpha 3) Debian Installer for Bullseye another shot. Still no output on the display, serial console only, so I didn't bother going through the actual installation but decided to stick with the one I have.

While above might sound somewhat negative, I am quite happy with the Pinebook Pro and Debian on it. It's working great and I can live with sticking to an older kernel for a while. Everything else "just works" (well, everything is obviously only what I use/tested, e.g. I don't put my devices in sleep mode, I turn them off, so I never tested sleep/hibernation/...). And it's fantastic that you can install from the official repositories using the official installer.

However, if someone managed to have the Debian Installer/kernel turn on the display and output to it, I'd be happy to hear it and give it another try. This is essentially the only thing missing for me at the moment.


(I did test other distributions over the months, installing them to a microSD card, booting and testing the distribution without touching the Debian installation. Some worked really well, but none of them made me reconsider my choice to use Debian (which I use on my other devices as well).)