Preferred distro in Feb 2020?

[svenh]

https://osdn.net/projects/manjaro-arm/st....04.img.xz

I guess it is no longer the latest version

Thanks you your help. I still have no screen output on my old 14 inch Pinebook. Until this is sorted out, I am running kde-neon, https://files.kde.org/neon/images/pinebo...m64.img.gz

[e-minguez]

https://osdn.net/projects/manjaro-arm/st....04.img.xz

I guess it is no longer the latest version

Thanks you your help. I still have no screen output on my old 14 inch Pinebook. Until this is sorted out, I am running kde-neon, https://files.kde.org/neon/images/pinebo...m64.img.gz

I forgot to mention my pinebook is the 1080p one :$

[igorp]

https://osdn.net/projects/manjaro-arm/st....04.img.xz

I guess it is no longer the latest version

Thanks you your help. I still have no screen output on my old 14 inch Pinebook. Until this is sorted out, I am running kde-neon, https://files.kde.org/neon/images/pinebo...m64.img.gz

Armbian is probably the fastest and it should work on all variants: https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-a64/ It has LTS kernel with most if not all functions ported from more recent kernels.

[aog]

https://osdn.net/projects/manjaro-arm/st....04.img.xz

I guess it is no longer the latest version

Thanks you your help. I still have no screen output on my old 14 inch Pinebook. Until this is sorted out, I am running kde-neon, https://files.kde.org/neon/images/pinebo...m64.img.gz

I had no luck either with the Manjaro-ARM-i3-pinebook-20.04 images, SD or emmc. Just got a black screen when it started loading the kernel.

Armbian has worked for me and is very fast. I had trouble with the ubuntu armbian variants. Armbian_20.02.1_Pinebook-a64_buster_current_5.4.20_desktop is what i'm currently running and works well.

Although.... the screen has the same flicker as the initial 1080p ayufan build before the "pinebook_lcd_mode=1080p" option was added. I might start a separate thread about this.

[svenh]

Today, I managed to install Manjaro (Manjaro-ARM-i3-pinebook-20.06.img) on my old Pinebook (1366x768)! Very nice. The trick that was missing before was setting the resolution in a config file before booting. For details, see https://forum.manjaro.org/t/black-screen.../136269/14

[pagesix1536]

This entire thread answered nothing concrete. There is no best distro is what I got out of it.
Everyone has their preferences and say theirs is the best. Seems that all distros have something (or many things) wrong with them. Flicker, no suspend, doesn't boot, no video drivers, etc.

I don't even care about being the latest. I'll use a 4-year old distro if it means all the hardware works, there's no screen tearing, suspend works, and maybe even some video hardware acceleration functionality is usable. Is that basically the OG distro (Xenial Mate from Ayufan)?

[tophneal]

This entire thread answered nothing concrete. There is no best distro is what I got out of it.
Everyone has their preferences and say theirs is the best. Seems that all distros have something (or many things) wrong with them. Flicker, no suspend, doesn't boot, no video drivers, etc.

I don't even care about being the latest. I'll use a 4-year old distro if it means all the hardware works, there's no screen tearing, suspend works, and maybe even some video hardware acceleration functionality is usable.  Is that basically the OG distro (Xenial Mate from Ayufan)?

 You're not wrong. "Best" is inherently subjective. Everyone will have their own opinion on what is best.

If you want the most maintained/responsive, go for Manjaro. The same guts as your PB720 (minus the screen) are being used for the PinePhone and PineTab, too, which Manjaro actively develops for so you should see some benefits from that development. A good bit of it is already in mainline, too. They also have a pretty responsive dev team/forum to submit and  help with reproducible issues.

The Arch Arm option might also be a good option to try if you're not into Manjaro.

[pagesix1536]

I tried three different Manjaro images.
Manjaro-ARM-kde-plasma-pinebook-20.10.img - super heavy. Seemed to work off SD. I walked away for a bit after setting it up to take a phone call. When I came back it was locked up and unusable. Had to reboot. Seems too much of a memory hog honestly anyway.

Manjaro-ARM-xfce-pinebook-20.06.img
Manjaro-ARM-xfce-pinebook-20.10.img
Neither of these two would even boot. I get the initial messages from the initrd process and then the screen goes black and nothing happens. I did notice that on the black screen I can see the Manjaro logo in the middle, but the backlighting is turned off completely. I had to hold a flashlight up to the screen to even notice that it was there. I left it to do whatever it was doing for over 5 minutes and nothing came up on the screen. These images both seem DOA and unusable on the OG Pinebook 720p edition.

I'm not bothering with anymore of these Manjaro images. Seems like it's more hassle than it's worth at this point for Manjaro. I'm guessing the latest isn't really tested and is being autogenerated as part of a build process, and the Pinebook Pro is the real focus now.

[leperotero]

There aren't any good distro for PB, but for me, the less bad is Armbian.

Enviado desde mi Mi A1 mediante Tapatalk

[pagesix1536]

The original Ayufan Ubuntu 16.04 image was the absolute best distro available for the OG Pinebook. Everything except for the webcam worked on it. Even suspend! It was damn solid. It just old now.

I've been running Armbian for a week now. It's sorta ok. Still not to the level of the Ayufan Ubuntu. Suspend doesn't work. Volume keys don't work out of the box (had to hunt down, and install a package for that), power management seems wacky (it has a hard time telling when I have the Pinebook plugged in. Says discharging when its plugged in). I have weird graphical artifacts on the right side of the display (looks like pixel distortion or screen stretching honestly), and now wireless is flaky. If I run a continuous ping to my router, it'll drop 50% of the packets even being 6 feet away from the wireless access point. So I'm not convinced of Armbian yet... at least not on the original Pinebook.