If you have no linux experience, starting with a Pinebook may not be the right choice for you. If you already have a computer, I'd suggest you get you feet wet by downloading and writing Ubuntu to a USB drive that you can boot your PC from. That will give you a live Ubuntu environment where you can get a better feel for the OS.
We can't really answer for you whether you "can cope" with a PBP. Rather, you should be asking yourself, can you "cope" with a linux laptop that does not have 100% polished software yet? Software updates can still break things, and many features people often come to expect from their OS are not fully functioning, if at all. Will that work for your use case, or fully hinder your ability to use and appreciate the PBP for what it is?
If you're cool with all that, then order that PBP! It is also suggested to pick up at least a microSD card (don't get anything lower than a Class 10/U1). It is one of the easier ways to boot multiple OSes, as well as recover installs on your eMMC. Grabbing the emmc-to-USB adapter is also not a bad idea, if you want a pretty easy method to replace the stock Manjaro install, without booting an image from SD so you can download another image to then write to your eMMC.
Hope that helps answer at least some of your questions!
I too am brand new to linux. I learned about linux in college and now I'm hooked about the stuff you can do with it. I'm ok with the Distro being unstable, as learning along the way and figuring out how to fix things would only advance my knowledge.
A pinebook is a totally appropriate way to get used to linux if you're not expecting the machine to work as a daily driver all the time, but be aware that issues related to software support for hardware and the installation mechanism will be different from other BIOS/UEFI based amd64 machines.
First purchase
