Archlinux

[regpine]

Did someone managed to install archlinux on the Pinebook Pro?

[DrYak]

Manjaro is based on Arch and there's a thread about it - in my experience it works more or less, using a mainline kernel + panfrost GPU driver, but the USB-C currently only charges the battery and nothing else.

You should be able to reuse the kernel and u-boot from the latest manjaro preview, and put your own user space instead.

[Eggmonkey]

@DrYak My question is: How does the wifi performance work on the Manjaro version?

I'm using the stock Debian wifi is unusable, weak and drops constantly. I've tried lots of troubleshooting, basically I may as well try installing Manjaro.

I use Manjaro on all my other x86-64 machines, so makes a lot of sense.

I'm sure there are bugs on all OS's though so might just be worth waiting.

[Arglebargle]

@DrYak My question is: How does the wifi performance work on the Manjaro version?

I'm using the stock Debian wifi is unusable, weak and drops constantly. I've tried lots of troubleshooting, basically I may as well try installing Manjaro.

I use Manjaro on all my other x86-64 machines, so makes a lot of sense.

I'm sure there are bugs on all OS's though  so might just be worth waiting.

Try `iwconfig wlan0 power off` to disable powersaving on the wifi adapter, that improved stability for me. You'll need to do that every time the machine comes out of suspend or boots (or write a systemd service to do it for you.)

[Eggmonkey]

@DrYak My question is: How does the wifi performance work on the Manjaro version?

I'm using the stock Debian wifi is unusable, weak and drops constantly. I've tried lots of troubleshooting, basically I may as well try installing Manjaro.

I use Manjaro on all my other x86-64 machines, so makes a lot of sense.

I'm sure there are bugs on all OS's though  so might just be worth waiting.

Try `iwconfig wlan0 power off` to disable powersaving on the wifi adapter, that improved stability for me. You'll need to do that every time the machine comes out of suspend or boots (or write a systemd service to do it for you.)

Thanks a lot for the suggestion @Arglebargle  but no luck unfortunately - same issue - connects on boot, then either drops continually or the connection itself disappears from the taskbar after a few minutes.
I've tried a lot of fixes but believe it is overheating and/or the driver needs improvement.
I am about 2.5m from the AP for reference.

[DrYak]

To me it seems that 5Ghz is a bit more problematic than 2.4Ghz.
Since updating preview 2 of manjaro it seems a bit more stable.
Still, the Broadcom wifi adapter crashed... ironically exactly at the moment where I was writing the unbind/re-bind trick to restart the driver (e.g. after using the privacy switch) could help reinitializing badly behaving chips.

[regpine]

Manjaro is based on Arch and there's a thread about it - in my experience it works more or less, using a mainline kernel + panfrost GPU driver, but the USB-C currently only charges the battery and nothing else.

You should be able to reuse the kernel and u-boot from the latest manjaro preview, and put your own user space instead.

Thank you. I will try it with this kernel.