Q4OS for PinebookPro

[cefre00]

Updated Q4OS image "q4os-3.14-pinebookpro.r4-testing1.zip" is available for download https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/testing/
A testing and feedback would be appreciated.

I post my reply here too, maybe someone has the answer for it. So I flashed it to an SD card and the PBP boots from it, but the screen is black. Anyone any ideas pls?

[jiyong]

Updated Q4OS image "q4os-3.14-pinebookpro.r4-testing1.zip" is available for download https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/testing/
A testing and feedback would be appreciated.

I post my reply here too, maybe someone has the answer for it. So I flashed it to an SD card and the PBP boots from it, but the screen is black. Anyone any ideas pls?

Same here (unfortunately), with Manjaro on the eMMC.
I also updated U-Boot, as described on the following website, but still only a black screen.
https://www.jwillikers.com/update-u-boot...nebook-pro

[Radiogram]

Updated Q4OS image "q4os-3.14-pinebookpro.r4-testing1.zip" is available for download https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/testing/
A testing and feedback would be appreciated.

@Page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 115%; background: transparent }
Currently I am looking for a replacement image for my Pinebook Pro which was supplied with Mr Fixits default Debian 9.5 (Stretch) image (kernel 4.4) from the factory. This has been a great little distro but EOL for Debian 9 and kernel 4.4 appears to be Jan/Feb 2022 at the moment and looking for a Debian based replacement when I stumbled across this thread.
Q4OS
I tried the q4os 3-14. r4.testing1.img and ended up with the same back-lit black screen as others in the thread are reporting. The install process works flawlessly through the install. At the end you are asked if you want to re-login, when you do the screen turns black.
By re-flashing the image again and cancelling on the option to re-scale and the wifi which stops the desktop profiler from working, I am taken to a basic desktop. I can the get the wifi to work but no elevated privileges (su) in the terminal, will not recognise any password and Synaptic will not install anything. Running the Desktop Profiler, no matter which option, used basic desktop for convenience, this completed 100%. Again option to re-login, same result. If you re-flash the image and run again but say no to relogin, it gives a desktop, on restart same issue.
I did notice when the Desktop installer was running, besides the basic desktop it did do the updates.
AMBIAN
As requested (in the thread) by the Q4OS Team , I downloaded and tried the Ambian Buster 21.02.2 legacy 4.4 kernel image. This installed no problem and when re-booted all appeared to work fine. To keep this as close to Q4OS as possible decided to update it using the same command as used in Q4OS documentation.
‘sudo apt update’
‘sudo apt dist-upgrade’
All completed normally, working fine. On restart saw Ambian running through the start up routine then when expected to see desktop appear, the same issue with the blank screen.
On my current Debian install when I update, I use ‘sudo apt upgrade’ and have had no issues at all, so re-flashed the Ambian image to micro-sd and tried again. Complete success, installed, updated and rebooted and works normally.
To complete this I also downloaded Ambian Buster 21.02.2 current 5.10 kernel. Flashed, installed, updated and rebooted under both update options and was complete success.
RESOURCES
4/Sandisk Ultra A1 Micro SD cards , 2/Sandisk Nano USB3 sticks. Laptop used to download and flash images on Etcher, Dell Latitude E6230 running Linux Mint 20.1. Q4OS images were downloaded twice. Scenarios were run multiple times to confirm results.
CONCLUSION
Issue appears to be in that delta between ‘upgrade’ and ‘dist-upgrade’. Suspect a needed package is being removed, replaced or altered. When doing this there were 71 updates, 1 removal and 2 installs for dist-upgrade including some related to the kernel.
Ambian provides no ‘Official Support’ for the Pinebook Pro, my hope here is that by scoping this the Q4OS devs can approach the Ambian team to have this looked at or some other skilled linux user can take this further forward than me.
My preferred option, if the Q4OS team produce an image based on Ambian current kernel 5.10, I would be more than happy to give it a run.
Many thanks to you all for your work.

[Radiogram]

Correction
The Ambian documentation states their method of upgrade is 'apt upgrade' the same as I have been doing on my Debian. The conclusion asking the Q4OS devs to talk to Ambian devs is plain wrong. Knew this, got lost in the text and in my mind when I wrote the conclusion. Sorry.

[moonwalkers]

Why not simply upgrade to the latest Debian Unstable/Testing? It's soon to become the new Stable, and it already works fine on PBP. Except for deep sleep - that part still has some issues. But if deep sleep is critical - you can just use xmixahx's kernel, I've used 5.8.5 and deep sleep was working great there.

[cefre00]

So thanks to one of the users on the Q4OS forum and the Q4OS team I managed to boot to Q4OS with the image here from an SD card:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/testing/

So flashed the image to the card. I had Manjaro KDE installed on the eMMC, so by the advice I changed the u-boot as well, but I had to switch it off and finally Q4OS booted:
https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php...051#p20051

It is using an Armbian system from what I saw as basis, but once up it is a full Q4OS experience. I even did an apt-get upgrade and ran the desktop profiler without any issues. From what I can tell Trinity desktop has good performance, little more responsive then Manjaro KDE and much more responsive then Armbian Xfce. I think on the same level as Armbian Gnome.

Another interesting thing: from time to time there is a complete freeze, like in every 10 minutes for couple of seconds. I would not install it on the eMMC just yet but definitely worth a try.

EDIT:
Bad news: it no longer boots, though I did not do any change to it since the last time I used.
So again: testing image, I'll check the next version, this one seems not be on the level that a low knowledge user like myself could fix or test out properly.

[cefre00]

Anyone a little bit of an img testing for the Q4OS guys?
https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3570

By testing I mean really testing basic stuff, like successful boot and so on. But this helps the team to improve Q4OS for the PBP.

[q4osteam]

A brand new major testing release of Q4OS for Pinebook Pro has been released and made available for download. It's based on the latest stable Armbian Buster image featuring Linux kernel 5.10.x line. The recent issues with booting on certain machines with other operating systems preinstalled should be resolved, as well as sound issues and more. We consider this release as a stable release candidate.

Any testing and feedback is highly appreciated.

Download repository:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/testing/

File:
q4os-3.14-pinebookpro.r4-testing(revision).zip

Initial login credentials:
username: adminq
password: adminq

[jiyong]

Thanks! I had to fix the partition with GParted (after writing the micro SD), but now Q4OS is booting from SD with Manjaro Uboot.
Can you tell us the fix for the Manjaro Uboot?
Perhaps you can post it on your website, It might help other distros.

[q4osteam]

@jiyong
Unfortunately we cannot talk about the fix. We didn't apply a specific fix for booting, we have just inherit the latest Armbian Buster upstream image and based Q4OS on that. So Armbian guys would talk about that fix. We would assume, they changed u-boot code, so the Manjaro booting sequence somehow detects it, in case a SD card is present in the slot, and passes code execution to the u-boot on SD card.

By the way, why did you need to fix SD card partition after writing Q4OS on it ?