I have had my Pinebook Pro for a few weeks now. I think it is brilliant. I have a chromebook and a low end Windows 10 laptop, both cost a similar price to the Pinebook Pro and the Pinebook Pro is much more capable than either. I run the standard debian install and will try others as my confidence with linux grows.
The Website mentioned the possibility of a few dead pixels, however I cant find any and think that the matte finish and the 1080p panel is great, no complaints about color or screen tear when watching videos.
I did have an issue with getting the correct time set (I am in New Zealand) and being remembered. I used the forum and was helped out.
I like the keyboard and after the update find the trackpad much improved, I like the texture on it.
I have been using Windows since 3.1 and always waste a little time playing solitaire card games, It was very nice being able to download and play without being asked to watch adverts or take a subscription.
To conclude I would like to say a big thanks to all at pine and to MrFixit for his work on the OS.
I have had my Pinebook Pro for a bit now. I agree with most that it is a nice quality laptop. The screen is easy on the eyes; the keyboard is nice for typing, and it seems sufficiently rugged to be a daily driver. The software side of the laptop is mostly a train wreak. I would probably have been better off getting a regular Pinebook since it appears to have a better selection of fleshed out working OSes.
It is clearly aimed more toward an experimental crowd that someone such as myself who is mostly just interested in getting my daily chores done. I am sure the software will reach a more mature state and I look forward to getting more use from the Pinebook Pro when that happens.
02-05-2020, 09:16 AM (This post was last modified: 02-05-2020, 09:20 AM by beniro.)
Well, I've had my Pinebook Pro for about a week. I have to say that I'm impressed. I ordered it because I wanted a little laptop that could do basic computing, and this one offered the openness and linux-friendliness that is not so common. I feel like I got more than that.
It's been a few years since I've purchased a new laptop, so I may be easily impressed, but I won't let that dampen my enthusiasm for this great machine!
Performance is adequate, which is what I hope for, but I really like the long battery life and lack of moving parts. Little to no heat, no buzz, and no whines that people here have mentioned. So I happily putter around the web, write articles, videos. I used the USB-c HDMI out as well, and ended up having some challenges, but it is one of a few wrinkles I'll mention later in the software.
The build quality is both far above what I expected, and very "user-friendly". The metal feels great and there are no little creaks or anything. It feels very solid, but light. It's user friendly in the sense that the bottom pops off with the removal of just 10 tiny screws, and then the (relative) lack of internals is then exposed. Wonderful!
I put an NVMe SSD in, and symlinked my home folders to it. Weee!
Anyway, I love the fact that I just removed 10 screws, didn't invalidate any warranties, break any rules or anything, and it just came off, I didn't need to pry it like I was breaking and entering.
I was planning on installing Manjaro, but the default software is very solid, so I haven't had much motivation to, yet.
Some challenges: I had to update the keyboard variant to US. Not too bad.
There have been some issues with audio devices. At first I had to go in to the GUI and choose the right output devices. Then I paired some bluetooth headphones, never got sound to come out of them, removed them...then I had to do some more toggling of devices for a few minutes to get the sound back on. Not a big issue.
Similarly, I had great results mirroring my display to a TV the first attempt. Then, I tried again, and it doesn't seem to detect the monitor. I'll keep you posted, because I will try again soon.
Finally, I want to enabled APSTe on my SSD, which I think is possible, but I've gotten a bunch of different results when I poke around about how to mess about with uboot in order to do this in Debian. Some Debian 9 instructions were referencing uboot files that do not exist on my computer. I think I'm supposed to directly edit this /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf file, but that doesn't seem clear to me, and the entire boot partition is mounted readonly. I think I'm going to do a more complete forum post on this.
And I got to figure out how to turn off the track pad while I'm typing. Haha!
Anyway, great job! Thanks to the devs and folks who designed the machine.
Edit: I feel like I should mention the screen, keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard and trackpad are perfectly adequate once I tweaked the trackpad settings. No real surprises there. The screen is quite nice for such a low-end device. Between the screen and the exterior metal finish, this laptop has no right to look as high-end as it does!
I bought myself the Pinebook Pro as a birthday gift, one of my better choices for sure.
Have been using it straight out of the box, the battery life is really impressive, and i am very well taken with the OS and the display. It is almost my daily driver just working on a few niggles.
Managed to get RedNoteBook installed and working, i do a lot of 3D Printing and thus use Cura a lot, currently have been unable to get that to run, a work in progress.
Other niggle is that the microsd card keeps being mounted as READ Only, which is driving me nuts, have trawled a lot of forums and tried many methods all to no avail currently.
I do not want to move away from the Debian installed at this time, i am more used to Ubuntu to be truthful and Yocto Linux, but do not intend to spin my own distro at this point.
Congrats to all the Team at Pine, this is a great laptop, build quality is really high and the components and ease of use is amazing.
(02-05-2020, 12:11 PM)richard007_1999 Wrote: I bought myself the Pinebook Pro as a birthday gift, one of my better choices for sure.
Have been using it straight out of the box, the battery life is really impressive, and i am very well taken with the OS and the display. It is almost my daily driver just working on a few niggles.
Managed to get RedNoteBook installed and working, i do a lot of 3D Printing and thus use Cura a lot, currently have been unable to get that to run, a work in progress.
Other niggle is that the microsd card keeps being mounted as READ Only, which is driving me nuts, have trawled a lot of forums and tried many methods all to no avail currently.
I do not want to move away from the Debian installed at this time, i am more used to Ubuntu to be truthful and Yocto Linux, but do not intend to spin my own distro at this point.
Congrats to all the Team at Pine, this is a great laptop, build quality is really high and the components and ease of use is amazing.
thanks all round.
Cura doesn't work? That's sad. Would have been one of the main programs I use on it haha...
02-07-2020, 01:57 PM (This post was last modified: 02-09-2020, 04:00 PM by fortran.)
This is a first impression of installing the NVME board.
I read the first impressions thread, and was under the impression that there was some kind of tutorial elsewhere about installing the NVME board. The wiki has a paragraph or two, the forum has a thread about this with respect to modifying things for an interference with the trackpad. But, if there is a tutorial or set of instructions on the installation outside of those 2; I missed them.
The NVME kit comes with a board, a non-straight ribbon cable, 3 small black screws, 1 small silver screw and a brass/bronze spacer.
I haven't tried to open either of the connectors that are meant to hold the ribbon cable in place, but I assume you need something vaguely sharp to "lift" it open.
I had no problems removing 9 of the screws holding the bottom on. The 10th (for me, the middle on the left side) one was more stubborn. I had to grip it with pliers to remove it. The instructions on replacing the back, say that screws should only be finger tight, the middle screw on the right side had significantly more resistance to unscrew it than the others.
There is a yellow "engineering change" note which is attached to the underside of the board, which "intrudes" on the area the ribbon cable has to travel through. There is also a black and a red wire to some connector which isn't attached to anything, which is taped to the top of the connector for the ribbon cable on the CPU board. It needs to be moved for access.
The NVME board is attached via 3 mount points to the right of the trackpad, with 2 screw holes closer to the hinge and 1 further away. On my machine, there is some tape partially obscuring the right hole closest to the hinge.
There is tape holding down another twinned black/red power connector. that is between the two screw sockets closest to the hinge on the NVME board.
The ribbon cable connecting the trackpad is of a type I hadn't seen before, metallic sheath I guess. It had 1 crisp fold, and one soft kink in it. There are places where this ribbon cable has a tape attached to it, which looks like the ribbon cable (metallic).
The thread where they were modifying the trackpad mounting, shows that they are shifting the metallic ribbon cable towards the hinge, so that the NVME doesn't either go over top or underneath the NVME board.
A problem, not of Pine's making, is that I will 60 in 7 weeks and my eyesight isn't quite as good as it used to be. A pair of tweezers with a bit of a point, was sufficient to open the two ribbon cable clamping mechanisms.
Inserting the ribbon cable one finds that things don't seem to be aligned well, the ribbon cable has a bit of a twist to it. I tried to bend he trackpad ribbon cable to be out of the way of the NVME. Installing the screws in the back, starting with the 2 short ones at right and left, and then the back hinge, finally the rest went okay. I started each screw, by turning screw diver in reverse to reduce chance of cross threading, and then inserted part way (to catch). When others in that set also done, I came back to tighten further. When all screws were inserted, I check them all.
Flipping over the laptop, and trying to start it, it doesn't want to start. I am going to guess this is a problem with the ribbon cable and that twist. But, I have other appointments to deal with now. Maybe someone will have advice on the ribbon cable by the time I return. I hope nothing bad happened when I turned the unit on.
The NVME is formmated into multiple partitions (to be booted from microSD):
/ ext4
/tmp ext2
/usr ext4
/var ext4
/usr/local ext4
/var/log ext4
/home btrfs
I took the bottom off again, disconnected the ribbon cable on both ends, reconnected the end at the NVME first and then reconnected the end near the CPU. Put bottom back on. Attempting to boot (on battery) doesn't work. Plugging in the power supply, achieves the same result.
Disconnecting one end of the ribbon cable, the laptop boots again. I'll pull the NVME SSD out, and see if it still works in an external enclosure later.
This twist and shear that the ribbon cable seems to need, in order to be plugged into both ends seems a little high to me. But, I have never manufactured electronics. But, if one of the ribbon cable connectors was "flipped" and the cable changed to a L shape (instead of a "stylize" L shape that it has now), I think a person could plug in the end into the NVME board and have the "upright of the "L" extend a bit to the right of where the socket near the CPU is for the other end. Bend the ribbon cable over and then insert it (flipped) into the CPU end connector. Wouldn't that stand up to small movements better?
Still haven't tested if the SSD still works. Later today.
Okay, pulled the SSD out, and tried it in an external USB carrier. It works fine, no damage that is obvious.
Having the NVME SSD board mounted, does change the feel of the trackpad, especially the left button function.
The SSD in question is a HP EX920 1TB. According to a review of this series of SSD, the power draw at idle is 0.73W and for this particular size when active is 6.23W. I believe some people have working drives which are drawing more than 7W.
Been loving the Pinebook Pro while working from home! Running KDE Manjaro. BTW...I replaced the screws on the bottom with black screws I got on Amazon. I really like the look. Thanks to everyone who does the development on this.
(04-02-2020, 08:45 AM)mamboman777 Wrote: Been loving the Pinebook Pro while working from home! Running KDE Manjaro. BTW...I replaced the screws on the bottom with black screws I got on Amazon. I really like the look. Thanks to everyone who does the development on this.
Interesting - have you got a link to the screws you used on Amazon or can give the screw size/lengths/thread you used?
(04-02-2020, 08:45 AM)mamboman777 Wrote: Been loving the Pinebook Pro while working from home! Running KDE Manjaro. BTW...I replaced the screws on the bottom with black screws I got on Amazon. I really like the look. Thanks to everyone who does the development on this.
Interesting - have you got a link to the screws you used on Amazon or can give the screw size/lengths/thread you used?
I origionally did this because the screw heads were getting a little stripped, but I like the aesthetic a lot more. There's way more screws than I need in here, but I just found one that looked like it fit and used it. Besides...$6.50.
