Re: Why not a cheaper, good ARM laptop?
On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 13:24:02 -0700
Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> wrote:
> On 2024-10-31, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> > There's also Pinebook and Pinebook Pro. It is Open Source hardware.
> > <https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/>.
>
> Having largely happily* used both the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro as
> primary computers running Debian for three or four years altogether... I
> do not believe they are Open Source hardware by any definition I am
> aware of.
I've had a Pinebook Pro for about 4 years now, with Debian on it, and I have mixed feelings about it. It's not my "daily driver" because I have a much older machine that is more straightforward to use (also Debian).
For the first 3 or so years, I was running the custom kernel that had been recommended on the Pinebook Pro forums. I recently tried to use a kernel downloaded directly from Debian, and had no luck. It seems like a lot of the discussion on the Pinebook Pro forums seems to suggest that the Pinebook-specific kernel version is still the way to go.
Does this match your experience? Have you had any luck running debian-provided kernels on your Pinebook Pro?
I did recently (earlier this year) update the u-boot to a Debian-provided version, and as a result, it now can display a boot menu on the built-in screen. It couldn't before.
Booting from a SD-card seems to be a bit of a black art, that depends in some unclear way on which u-boot version you have installed. Fortunately, this wasn't a problem when I was first getting it set up, but lately, I've run into problems.
I've been considering trying out Armbian, or
Armbian-kernel-with-Debian-userland, but SD-card-boot challenges have slowed that down.
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