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Re: Why not a cheaper, good ARM laptop?



On 2024-11-01, Brian Sammon wrote:
> 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 only really used self-built kernels based on Debian packaging, and
once that was working, added support to the kernels in Debian. I have
not used them as much recently, but last I checked (a few weeks/months
ago), both Pinebook and Pinebook Pro with linux kernels from Debian
Bookworm (6.1.x). I have not checked newer kernels.

I never successfully used things like suspend or internal wifi, though.


> 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.

If you install u-boot to eMMC, that is the first device in the boot
order for the RK3399 SoC, so will make it somewhat difficult to load
u-boot from microSD. sunxi systems make that a little easier, defaulting
to microSD over eMMC.

The boot order of your u-boot will depend, upstream u-boot fixed bugs
that hid various problems with extlinux style boot, and also u-boot
versions in recent years switched away from distro boot to bootstd,
which behaves a little differently.

I (and a few others) logged the versions of u-boot tested at:

  https://wiki.debian.org/U-boot/Status

I've kind of been lagging with updating u-boot in Debian recently...

live well,
  vagrant

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