Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions

[bcnaz]

Thanks for the feedback. Stickied as I am very keen to hear from more of you.

Finally got Mine  !
I looked it over,  then charged it a few hours.
Then opened it up for inspection...  seemed the eMMC may have popped in a little...?
The left speaker wire was pulled a little tight, corrected that.
  It was a little hard getting the bottom to seat properly when I put it back together.
 Finally turned it on,  everything appears ok so far,  occasionally the keys do seem to not register but that seems to be improving.
I Did want to do updates first,  But there is no update icon.... ?
Next I guess I will look around the site for help on doing the initial updates and perhaps how to install the update icon.
  I am using Firefox with no problems,    ... so far.....

***  Thank You Pine64  and crew  ***

****
NO SOUND,

UPDATE :
Fixed Sound with a little tweaking / Found HELP in another Thread.

I had not tried the sound, when I did try it, NOTHING
tried both root/root and rock/rock
****
FOUND :
Discovered the 'Update" Icon was there in the lower right panel, it kind of blends in.

**UPDATE**
Running the original OS + the current updates :
On every start-up my PBP is reset to European time, my Arizona time + 7 hours... ?

[User 6582]

---

So I fixed the firefox crashing problem by flashing Ubuntu+Mate img to MMC with Wizzard's great instructions. However page loading in Firefox and chromium is very slow. I waited for 11 minutes to load www.pine64.org in firefox and gave up. Reading the "connection information" in the wifi icon on the top menu I get values between 0 and 26 Mb/s on the PBP and 60+ Mb/s on my Asus laptop running Ubuntu+Mate  in the same location in my house and even more in my Mint netbook. Since I bout the PBP mainly to surf the inte4rnet, read email, etc online, this makes the PBP virtually unusable. Thunderbird times out while downloading 4 emails! Does anyone else have this problem?I'm guessing it's either a problem either with the wifi hardware, firmware, the or kernel. I like the PBP other features and look but this is a deal breaker for me. What can I do about this?

I noticed putting processor speed to performance helps a lot...

That worked, Rick! I turned up the processor speed to 2.02 GHz. Thanks you so much. I was on the point of of turning my PBP into a trivet! Internet speed is  better.I thought the processor speed was dynamically set to save power? I had it on "interactive" whatever that means.

Care to share where to find the setting for processor speed?

Just look at the top or bottom edge of the screen for a number. Click on it and select "Performance". Please let me know if that works for you. :-)

[bcnaz]

The readout is a nice feature, I see mine rests at about 408MHz, but jumps up as soon as I do anything.
**
What core or cores is that reading from ?

[Arglebargle]

The readout is a nice feature, I see mine rests at about 408MHz,  but jumps up as soon as I do anything.
**
What core or cores is that reading from  ?

It looks like it's sampling the big cluster. Try `armbianmonitor -m` in a terminal window and run something like `stress -c 2` to generate some work and you'll see it for yourself.

[tgrauss]

I had problems with the default Debian shipped with the Pinebook Pro, even after the latest update. No sound on some Youtube videos, USB3 not working, my hdmi/ethernet USB-C dock not working, occasional crash, firefox crashing when loosing wifi connectivity...
I have upgraded to Ubuntu/Mate using the emmc/USB adapter and it is working very well now. No firefox crash anymore, all youtube videos are working well, no problem with USB3, my usb-c dock is working... no problem at all.

The only small problems which are present with debian and ubuntu is a slight noise while playing a sound (system, video or music, muted or not muted). I hope there will be a way to fix this in the near future. The other problem is of course ssd adapter problem which should be fixed soon.

[MC68060]

First impression: WOW, looks great for a $200 Laptop.
But I have troubles to power it on.

[Watercourse]

---

So I fixed the firefox crashing problem by flashing Ubuntu+Mate img to MMC with Wizzard's great instructions. However page loading in Firefox and chromium is very slow. I waited for 11 minutes to load www.pine64.org in firefox and gave up. Reading the "connection information" in the wifi icon on the top menu I get values between 0 and 26 Mb/s on the PBP and 60+ Mb/s on my Asus laptop running Ubuntu+Mate  in the same location in my house and even more in my Mint netbook. Since I bout the PBP mainly to surf the inte4rnet, read email, etc online, this makes the PBP virtually unusable. Thunderbird times out while downloading 4 emails! Does anyone else have this problem?I'm guessing it's either a problem either with the wifi hardware, firmware, the or kernel. I like the PBP other features and look but this is a deal breaker for me. What can I do about this?

I noticed putting processor speed to performance helps a lot...

That worked, Rick! I turned up the processor speed to 2.02 GHz. Thanks you so much. I was on the point of of turning my PBP into a trivet! Internet speed is  better.I thought the processor speed was dynamically set to save power? I had it on "interactive" whatever that means.

Care to share where to find the setting for processor speed?

Just look at the top or bottom edge of the screen for a number. Click on it and select "Performance". Please let me know if that works for you. :-)

I don't seem to have that on my screen. Is there a command or script to start that?

[Arglebargle]

---

So I fixed the firefox crashing problem by flashing Ubuntu+Mate img to MMC with Wizzard's great instructions. However page loading in Firefox and chromium is very slow. I waited for 11 minutes to load www.pine64.org in firefox and gave up. Reading the "connection information" in the wifi icon on the top menu I get values between 0 and 26 Mb/s on the PBP and 60+ Mb/s on my Asus laptop running Ubuntu+Mate  in the same location in my house and even more in my Mint netbook. Since I bout the PBP mainly to surf the inte4rnet, read email, etc online, this makes the PBP virtually unusable. Thunderbird times out while downloading 4 emails! Does anyone else have this problem?I'm guessing it's either a problem either with the wifi hardware, firmware, the or kernel. I like the PBP other features and look but this is a deal breaker for me. What can I do about this?

I noticed putting processor speed to performance helps a lot...

That worked, Rick! I turned up the processor speed to 2.02 GHz. Thanks you so much. I was on the point of of turning my PBP into a trivet! Internet speed is  better.I thought the processor speed was dynamically set to save power? I had it on "interactive" whatever that means.

Care to share where to find the setting for processor speed?

Just look at the top or bottom edge of the screen for a number. Click on it and select "Performance". Please let me know if that works for you. :-)

The Performance clock frequency governor locks clock frequencies at their maximum, system performance will be great but you'll probably want to use Ondemand to avoid excessive heat and power draw while still maintaining decent performance. Ondemand sets in-use cores/clusters to their max clock while they're running a task and then clocks them back down after.

Interactive should provide better battery life than Ondemand but may feel a bit sluggish due to the built-in ramp-up time the frequency governor uses before a core/cluster will go full speed. With some manual tuning this should perform as well as Ondemand, it's the standard cpu frequency governor for modern Android devices that don't have EAS support.

When we have a fully functional mainline kernel EAS is worth looking at too, it's a combination of task scheduler and clock frequency governor that intelligently places tasks on the best cpu for their performance need, so you should see significantly higher little cluster usage until a task actually needs a slot on the big cluster.

TL;DR - Don't just set the Performance governor and walk away, you'll generate more heat than the PBP can dissipate and wreck battery life. You probably want to use Ondemand instead.

[User 6582]

I noticed putting processor speed to performance helps a lot...

That worked, Rick! I turned up the processor speed to 2.02 GHz. Thanks you so much. I was on the point of of turning my PBP into a trivet! Internet speed is  better.I thought the processor speed was dynamically set to save power? I had it on "interactive" whatever that means.

Care to share where to find the setting for processor speed?

Just look at the top or bottom edge of the screen for a number. Click on it and select "Performance". Please let me know if that works for you. :-)

The Performance clock frequency governor locks clock frequencies at their maximum, system performance will be great but you'll probably want to use Ondemand to avoid excessive heat and power draw while still maintaining decent performance. Ondemand sets in-use cores/clusters to their max clock while they're running a task and then clocks them back down after.

Interactive should provide better battery life than Ondemand but may feel a bit sluggish due to the built-in ramp-up time the frequency governor uses before a core/cluster will go full speed. With some manual tuning this should perform as well as Ondemand, it's the standard cpu frequency governor for modern Android devices that don't have EAS support.

When we have a fully functional mainline kernel EAS is worth looking at too, it's a combination of task scheduler and clock frequency governor that intelligently places tasks on the best cpu for their performance need, so you should see significantly higher little cluster usage until a task actually needs a slot on the big cluster.

TL;DR - Don't just set the Performance governor and walk away, you'll generate more heat than the PBP can dissipate and wreck battery life. You probably want to use Ondemand instead.

Thanks for the great explanation!!
Helps me to get a better perspective on the power control! :-)

[bcnaz]

Thanks for the feedback. Stickied as I am very keen to hear from more of you.

Finally got Mine  !
I looked it over,  then charged it a few hours.
Then opened it up for inspection...  seemed the eMMC may have popped in a little...?
The left speaker wire was pulled a little tight, corrected that.
  It was a little hard getting the bottom to seat properly when I put it back together.
 Finally turned it on,  everything appears ok so far,  occasionally the keys do seem to not register but that seems to be improving.
I Did want to do updates first,  But there is no update icon.... ?
Next I guess I will look around the site for help on doing the initial updates and perhaps how to install the update icon.
  I am using Firefox with no problems,    ... so far.....

***  Thank You Pine64  and crew  ***

****
NO SOUND,
I had not tried the sound,  when I did try it,  NOTHING
tried both root/root  and  rock/rock
****
Discovered the 'Update" Icon was there in the lower right panel,  it kind of blends in.

*
*
Continued :


Got some help from zeebeez on another related thread :
Using terminal to change alsamixer from default to es8316-spk-sound...
See thread :  'No Sound, Non Root User'