Frustrating - Is there any 'good' OS?
#1
I've been toying around with my Pinebook now for a few weeks, off and on.

What I'm concerned about is the low level of activity on this forum. Unless I am missing something, this is the obvious hub for Pinebook news and discussion, yet it is not very popular.

I've tried most of the OS images available for Pinebook, including Android, Q4OS as well as the Ubuntu Mate and Armbian distros - various versions of each.

None have yet worked well enough to provide a reasonable desktop experience  - i.e. no GPU accelerated compositor... unless the very slow performance I was seeing when I did enable GPU composition was just how slow the Mali GPU really is?? Sad

I expected at or near RPi 3 performance - perhaps that was optimistic of me.

Maybe Pinebook is not for me. I'm not a hardcore Linux user, but I think I'm a step or two ahead of an average Ubuntu newbie. I've used Linux, if infrequently, for around 20 years. I don't get down an dirty with core OS development though.

I thought having an expectation of a well performing desktop environment would be easily met. Rough edges I'm used to - there's not been a Linux distro I've used that hasn't had a lot of rough edges, but 3D acceleration and fast 2D desktop composition have been reliable keystones for many years.

Am I really missing something that I should be doing? I must have read through 80% of all the forum posts.
#2
Quote: thought having an expectation of a well performing desktop environment would be easily met.

On a low-end ARM SOC ? Quite the opposite. I am somewhat confused about your comparison against the RPI however, as the desktop experience on both devices is practically on par.
edit: do give the i3 wm a go, by all accounts it performs better than mate
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#3
(09-13-2017, 04:44 PM)Luke Wrote:
Quote: thought having an expectation of a well performing desktop environment would be easily met.

On a low-end ARM SOC ? Quite the opposite. I am somewhat confused about your comparison against the RPI however, as the desktop experience on both devices is practically on par.
edit: do give the i3 wm a go, by all accounts it performs better than mate

Thanks. I guess my frustration got the better of me. Not my best forum post  Confused


I have tried i3 on Pinebook and I will revisit it. It's an environment I was wanting to spend some time with before I'd heard of Pinebook / Pine64. First time I tried it on Pinebook was before there was a nice guide on controlling screen brightness. Now that appears solved, things should be better.

All these rough edges are grating on the nerves though. Having to manually config WiFi is strange. Any other device, when fresh, will assume a user probably does want to set up WiFi and will at least ask if they want to or not.

Genuinely wish I did know more of the in-depth stuff, because the setup and first-use experience is something I would change to be far better, if I had the knowledge and tools. I have so many other things I need to spend time on though, that even though this interests the hell out of me, I can't dedicate the time to learn it yet.
#4
(09-15-2017, 10:41 AM)DigitalStefan Wrote:
(09-13-2017, 04:44 PM)Luke Wrote:
Quote: thought having an expectation of a well performing desktop environment would be easily met.

On a low-end ARM SOC ? Quite the opposite. I am somewhat confused about your comparison against the RPI however, as the desktop experience on both devices is practically on par.
edit: do give the i3 wm a go, by all accounts it performs better than mate

Thanks. I guess my frustration got the better of me. Not my best forum post  Confused


I have tried i3 on Pinebook and I will revisit it. It's an environment I was wanting to spend some time with before I'd heard of Pinebook / Pine64. First time I tried it on Pinebook was before there was a nice guide on controlling screen brightness. Now that appears solved, things should be better.

All these rough edges are grating on the nerves though. Having to manually config WiFi is strange. Any other device, when fresh, will assume a user probably does want to set up WiFi and will at least ask if they want to or not.

Genuinely wish I did know more of the in-depth stuff, because the setup and first-use experience is something I would change to be far better, if I had the knowledge and tools. I have so many other things I need to spend time on though, that even though this interests the hell out of me, I can't dedicate the time to learn it yet.
Have you tried Q4OS? It's much faster than the Ubuntu Mate, and I have been using it for a couple of weeks and it's been stable and performed OK. I like the Trinity desktop and if you come from using Windows, then it will all seem very familiar, in a nostalgic sort of way. The team behind it seem serious in their intent, and there appears to be a reasonable community, too.  Unfortunately it doesn't appear to have hardware accelerated graphics on the ARM distro yet.
#5
you would probably do better with searching the chat logs. most , if not all, of the people who know the most about specifically the pinebook and generally all the pine64 products spend most of their time on chat so the greatest amount of recorded unspecified information lies in the chat logs and not in the forum. better yet, spend more of your time in live chat than reading the forum and i have no doubt you will end up with a wider spectrum of knowledge especially if you engage the members in live chat on what interests you.
#6
this thread is getting old, and the request is clearly subjective, but here's my 2ct anyway:
try armbian's pinebook edition - it's what ive been using almost from day 0 (so for about a month now), no regrets, not looking back.
snappier than pinebook's own ubuntu mate.
nicer packages than Q4OS (a decent, recent version of mpv!)
#7
After spendings days on testing all OS-es, unfortunately I must agree with the autor of this topic. I just cannot decide which OS is performing solid enough so that I can stick with it. Currently I have no idea which one to chose.
#8
I think it's important not to lose sight of the purpose of the Pinebook. It's not a direct replacement for a 'workhorse' laptop for school or office, but something for hobyists to get their hands on to try things out. That's why I didn't buy one for my 8 year old grand daughter just yet - although she has her eyes on this one and will probably want one within a couple of years!

Trying things out includes having a go with a range of OS. It's fairly easy to install a few different OS on a few SD cards keeping your current favourite on the eMMC. But the Pinebook is designed to be lightweight, low power and inexpensive so will never perform like a laptop by HP, Dell, Apple etc. You could try buying a used laptop, maybe replace the old HD if necessary and install Ubuntu or simillar. That way you would get a reasonably performing laptop, adequate for everyday use, for not much money, and keep your Pinbook for experimenting.
#9
(02-17-2018, 04:38 AM)Paul Wrote: I think it's important not to lose sight of the purpose of the Pinebook.  It's not a direct replacement for a 'workhorse' laptop for school or office, but something for hobyists to get their hands on to try things out.  That's why I didn't buy one for my 8 year old grand daughter just yet - although she has her eyes on this one and will probably want one within a couple of years!  

Trying things out includes having a go with a range of OS.  It's fairly easy to install a few different OS on a few SD cards keeping your current favourite on the eMMC.  But the Pinebook is designed to be lightweight, low power and inexpensive so will never perform like a laptop by HP, Dell, Apple etc.  You could try buying a used laptop, maybe replace the old HD if necessary and install Ubuntu or simillar.  That way you would get a reasonably performing laptop, adequate for everyday use, for not much money, and keep your Pinbook for experimenting.

Absolutely correct. People clearly missed my initial post outlining the nature of the PB.
Let me quote myself:
Quote:I don’t wish to discourage anyone from getting a Pinebook, as it is a good piece of hardware,  but if you are looking for a device to replace for your current work or school laptop then perhaps it’s wise to look elsewhere.

As a side note, those who understand the nature of the device as quite happy (especially now that we have [mostly] functional mainline).
[url=https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4414][/url]
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#10
One more thing. There is a really awesome OS image incoming very soon - for those who read our FOSDEM news, it should be clear which image that will be.
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