lukasz

Awesome image! I've encountered a really strange issue however - I am unable to change the background or theme in settings. Perhaps other settings are affected too - haven't checked.
edit: Ah, perhaps I also ought to specify this is on the GNOME version of the image

Cinnamon is more on the conservative side. For elderly people  (that DE is my daily driver). Budgie for visually impaired since there are large icons OOB. Best looking is DDE, which is sadly not in a good enough state to be shipped ...
 
 
Looked better is subjective. I can agree their UI is well polished. After all this is all what most of the distros do - polish their appearance to sell. But I don't like Saint Patrick's day 356 days in a year  Also whenever I tried how is Manjaro doing, it doesn't boot or doesn't survive first run. Ofc I don't try it on mainstream devices which might even work to some degree with a kernel from the trunk.

After several months of development, we finally bring desktop development to the daily driver state. Our desktop builds follow KISS philosophy. They are build around proven technology, we are not touching things that are done well. Just fixing things here and there and removing most / hopefully all bloatware that is added upstream. We are preparing a wide selection of desktop variants
 
 
while we will officially only support a few of them but anyone is welcome to join and tweak / support its desktop of choice. We will support you in best possible manner! And this way things starts the voyage to become officially supported one day. Only if you join. We can't take more load.
 
        

We support XFCE since early days and that will remain primary desktop since it represent a best combination between functionality, speed and beauty. Second desktop, which we are adding now is Gnome because its clean and most stable among advanced / bulky desktops. It can ran fairly smooth as low as on Allwinner H5 / 1Gb memory, while it runs very well on some RK3399 hardware. In both cases it uses open source 3D acceleration - Lima and Panfrost. New desktop option will be added gradually, but for now:

Orange pi 4: Budgie, Gnome, Cinnamon, Gnome, Mate
https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-4/
 
Pinebook PRO: Gnome
https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/
 
Nanopi T4: Budgie, Gnome, Cinnamon, Gnome, Mate
https://www.armbian.com/nanopc-t4/
 
Nanopi M4V2: Budgie, Gnome, Cinnamon, Gnome, Mate
https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-m4-v2/
 
What about others?

- ASAP. Those are semi manual builds, some are manually tested and it takes a lot of time. On top of that we are having some infrastructure troubles ATM ...
- we still need to fix few minor bugs, before we put on stamp as "supported" even those builds are IMO generally in a better shape then other images on the market
- you can help by testing and enabling specific builds by sending a PR to this file. https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/config/targets.conf It will help to get things up faster.

Great progress!!!
 

We need to keep one kernel for many hw and that's why patches are a must. Current situation is still messy and I only find out that some of my additional patches are causing Pinebook to hang at boot.  I also plan to merge a dozent of patches, some sent upstream to make it easier to maintain.
 
I was working whole day yesterday and the day before and the day before ...  I can add new updated test image, but it is much better for me to do nothing for a few days. When things are merged in, images can be produced automatically. No need to rush anywhere. Production ready images shell go out when DEV branch is tested very well and is moved to NEXT. We still miss suspend / resume, right? This is a must function for notebooks. I haven't saw if there is a solution developed for that?

Hi!
 
I already successfully get mainline Armbian working on Pinebook (no sound - working on fix, and also suspend took much time to wake up), but, I don't like the way how I made it.

 
Github repo: https://github.com/gamelaster/build/tree/pinebook-build
I set the branch to "next", I set kernel repository to anarsoul's kernel (contains latest patches for A64 and also for Pinebook & Sopine devices) and deleted all patches from sunxi-next (all that patches has been for 4.14), I just kept and add some of patches.
But this is probably terrible idea. @Igor or anyone, can you please me suggest better way to support "next" kernel (The task is to support latest anarsoul's kernel)? I was thinking about changing KERNELFAMILY variable, but really dunno, I'm using Armbian build environment for first time.
 
P.S. the beta automatical build for Pinebook boots u-boot, then kernel, but in kernel is something messed up (the LCD shutdowns after few second of kernel booted), but I will try to fix it, to have "dev" support too
 
Thanks for advices!
- gamiee
 

Earlier today I pushed a fairy large patchset containing various functional improvements of many boards.  If you have Allwinner board and some spare time:
 
1. Build DEV image/kernel with https://github.com/armbian/build (you need to add EXPERT="yes" to the config to unlock)
2. Install DEV kernel from beta repository
 
Optional Defreeze kernel updates Switch to nightly kernel (armbian-config -> system -> Nightly) Reboot Switch to other kernel (armbian-config -> system -> Other -> DEV)  
When board came up, do some exploration. Most important information is to find out if there is a regression toward kernel 4.14.y! Then make a test report https://github.com/armbian/testings#how-to-create-a-test-report. 
 
If you know how to fix certain problems, you are more than welcome! Our resources are tiny and we can't possible fix all problems  
 
This topic is a place to discuss how certain problems/bugs can be solved. 
 
When reporting a bug, provide logs with: armbianmonitor -u
 
Bugs:
- serial gadget console is not working (anywhere?)
- Pinebook doesn't boot properly
- Mesa (OS Mali drivers are enabled by default) / WebGL works on Debian based Chromium, fails on Ubuntu
 
I checked those:
 
Orangepi PC2 http://ix.io/1s2c (hdmi, dvfs) @tkaiser SBCBENCH: http://ix.io/1s5d
( @hojnikb available frequency steps: 120 MHz, 240 MHz, 480 MHz, 648 MHz, 816 MHz, 960 MHz, 1.01 GHz, 1.06 GHz, 1.10 GHz, 1.15 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 1.22 GHz, 1.25 GHz, 1.30 GHz, 1.34 GHz, 1.37 GHz)  Olinuxino A64 http://ix.io/1s2d (hdmi, dvfs, wireless, usb, battery) SBCBENCH: http://ix.io/1s5e tested battery charging/discharging 
Olimex Teres 1 A64 (hdmi, dvfs, wireless, usb, battery) http://ix.io/1tJg
Orangepi Prime SBCBENCH: http://ix.io/1s5R (once "powered off" during benchmarking at 92C) 
Orangepi +2e SBCBENCH: http://ix.io/1s5T
Orangepi Win SBCBENCH: http://ix.io/1s8c
Cubietruck SBCBENCH: http://ix.io/1u3W
OrangepiZero +2 H3 SBCBENCH: http://ix.io/1pqd
Orangepi One H3 SBCBeNCH: http://ix.io/1psZ
Orangepi Lite H3 http://ix.io/1u6R
Nanopi Neo2 http://ix.io/1u4A (with NAS http://ix.io/1uUM)
Orangepiplus http://ix.io/1u5H
Orangepi Zero H2+ http://ix.io/1u9b
Nanopi Air http://ix.io/1u9d
 
With problems:
 
Pinebook   
Confirmed working:
 
Neo2 v1.1 512MB Neo2 v1.1 1GB Pine64 Orange Pi Zero Plus2 H5 Nanopi Duo http://ix.io/1uVC Orangepi R1 http://ix.io/1uaP
Nanopi Neo Core 2 LTS Nano Pi Neo Plus2 Tritium H3 and H5 Orange Pi Zero Plus Bananapi M1  
For now.

 
BTW.
Do you want to become a (Allwinner) board maintainer? Duties:
- responsible for content at the download page,
- running latests updates and managing bug list there.

OK, I will see what I can do about. Thanks.