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Review of the PineBook Pro with Armbian

NicoD
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NicoD

NicoD

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Hi al.

I've finished my review of the PineBook Pro. I just love this thing. Runs great with Armbian.

Here my video.

Here all my gathered information:

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  • NicoD changed the title to Review of the PineBook Pro with Armbian
calinb

calinb

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Thank you for the review NicoD! I received my PBP about two or three months ago. Shortly after I received it, the LCD backlight failed so I booted Armbian Focal from an SD card and backed-up and wiped my eMMC before returning my PBP for repair. (They did have to replace the display.) Armbian and my Pinephone dock (with Ethernet) saved the day, because very few distros have SSH enabled by default. I did not know at the time that, unlike my Pinephone, I could have simply unplugged the eMMC memory before returning it for warranty repair. Duh!

 

I too prefer the XFCE4 desktop. I find it to be amusing that the Manjaro KDE Fusion that ships with the PBP and Pinephone has the slogan, "Enjoy the Simplicity."

 

I agree with most of your opinions about the PBP and I have similar opinions and experiences with my PBP. I purchased the NVME adapter and also the PBP dock form the Pine Store and I installed a 1TB WD Blue SN550 SSD--primarily for storage capacity rather than performance. It is unfortunately that, even with a larger USB3-PD power supply, the battery still discharges slowly while in use. However, my NVME/SSD battery runtime is better than I expected, based on other reports. The NVMe, APST (Autonomous Power State Transitions) feature seems to work well on my SN550 so I do not set static power states and I just rely on APST to know what's good for me. ;) When I make power inquiries using the NVME cli tool, it seems to make good decisions. I am booting Manjaro from eMMC but then it mounts /root from the NVME SSD. I have not yet risked soft-bricking my PBP by flashing my SIP to boot directly from the Manjaro boot partition on my NVME SSD, but I left the boot partition on my NVME SSD after installation to try SIP booting someday. I currently boot Armbian from SD card.

 

The one area where Manjaro is working better than Armbian for me is the touch pad. Unlike you, I am not happy with the touch pad dynamics and feel, in general. Using Manjaro, there are many settings accessible via synclient and, with tweaks, I can live with the touchpad on Manjaro. However, I have not been able to get synclient working on Armbian Focal and the available libinput settings are very limited. Some of them don't appear to function correctly either and I've found it necessary to use props ID numbers rather than the text strings for setting properties with the xinput utility too.

 

There is more information here, for anyone who is interested in tweaking touchpad settings:

https://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2017/04/how-to-configure-touchpad-in-ubuntu.html

 

https://linuxhint.com/change_mouse_touchpad_settings_xinput_linux/  (Without UBlock Origin, the ads will drive you nuts on this site! :().

 

 

My current settings (and the list of very limited settings available on Armbian Focal): 

sudo xinput list-props 11

Device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad':
    Device Enabled (129):    1
    Coordinate Transformation Matrix (130):    1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
    libinput Tapping Enabled (282):    0
    libinput Tapping Enabled Default (283):    0
    libinput Tapping Drag Enabled (284):    1
    libinput Tapping Drag Enabled Default (285):    1
    libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled (286):    0
    libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled Default (287):    0
    libinput Tapping Button Mapping Enabled (288):    1, 0
    libinput Tapping Button Mapping Default (289):    1, 0
    libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (264):    0
    libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled Default (265):    0
    libinput Disable While Typing Enabled (290):    1
    libinput Disable While Typing Enabled Default (291):    1
    libinput Scroll Methods Available (266):    1, 1, 0
    libinput Scroll Method Enabled (267):    1, 0, 0
    libinput Scroll Method Enabled Default (268):    1, 0, 0
    libinput Click Methods Available (292):    1, 1
    libinput Click Method Enabled (293):    1, 0
    libinput Click Method Enabled Default (294):    1, 0
    libinput Middle Emulation Enabled (271):    1
    libinput Middle Emulation Enabled Default (272):    0
    libinput Accel Speed (273):    0.200000
    libinput Accel Speed Default (274):    0.000000
    libinput Left Handed Enabled (278):    0
    libinput Left Handed Enabled Default (279):    0
    libinput Send Events Modes Available (249):    1, 1
    libinput Send Events Mode Enabled (250):    0, 0
    libinput Send Events Mode Enabled Default (251):    0, 0
    Device Node (252):    "/dev/input/event4"
    Device Product ID (253):    9610, 30
    libinput Drag Lock Buttons (280):    <no items>
    libinput Horizontal Scroll Enabled (281):    1
    Tapping Enabled (502):    "PRIMARY" (1)
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NicoD

NicoD

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  On 7/3/2021 at 6:06 PM, calinb said:

I have not been able to get synclient working on Armbian Focal and the available libinput settings are very limited. Some of them don't appear to function correctly either and I've found it necessary to use props ID numbers rather than the text strings for setting properties with the xinput utility too.

Expand  

Hi, nice read.

I could set my touchpad settings as I like it with Armbian Focal xfce4. In settings, mouse, then select touchpad.

I set the acceleration to 80%, and most important for me is the touch click. With some other desktops I wasn't able to do that.

I hope your PBP wil last you for a long time.

0
calinb

calinb

Posted
Posted
  On 7/3/2021 at 8:41 PM, NicoD said:

Hi, nice read.

I could set my touchpad settings as I like it with Armbian Focal xfce4. In settings, mouse, then select touchpad.

I set the acceleration to 80%, and most important for me is the touch click. With some other desktops I wasn't able to do that.

I hope your PBP wil last you for a long time.

Expand  

 

Thank you and also thank you for some of the performance data you presented in your review. It is very interesting information.

 

Application >> Settings >> Mouse and Touchpad was a good start, but the xinput cli command and creating an /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-libinput.conf allowed me to access features like "Middle Emulation Enabled" and "Disable While Typing Enabled." I'm getting closer to the settings I prefer.

0
mag

mag

Posted
Posted

Hello, I have just received my pinebookpro.

 

Is there any step by step tutorial to install armbian to the eMMC? I've tried the usual stuff (armbian-config) but it seems armbian cannot see the device /dev/mmcblk0

 

Thanks.

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