Pinebook pro arrived!

very cool;

yet another linux variant, Manjero…

how distant the old redhat seems now.. may put debian on here after kicking the tires a bit.

initial impressions:
impressive; neat and clean; keyboard is very nice, screen crisp and readable.

performance? ok; still a bit slower than I’d hoped.

My benchmark is an old AMD 2 core machine with integrated graphics, from ~ 2011, 1.6 GHz, the E-350. It is in an old box, 8G ram, with fanless heatsink and fanless powersupply… just keeps on working, currently on Ubuntu 18.04

so my recent arm machines, this PinebookPro, and Raspberry Pi 4 are close, but still a bit less responsive.

one initial fault, is the WiFi; out of the box, total fail? Update 1 day later: wifi working! !

• found a link
  • from the link: reset hardware kill switch
  • To do this press PINE + F11, so the LED blinks twice. Then reboot. This should bring back the WiFi.
  • part of the privacy switches

seems not to be detected at all. Now I am not a Manjaro expert, so still poking around to see if some sort of missing driver; Typing this now with a usb/ethernet dongle;

that works fine, without any setup, just plugged in.

also dug up an old 2.6GHz wifi usb dongle (also circa 2010) and it worked with that setting on my router.

googled a bit, and see some may have had similar issues;

also looking at the online specs, and the pine site seems to say the wifi/bluetooth are on a “module”, so hope it is easy to replace, if it is a hardware fault; perhaps get a wifi 6 upgrade if that comes out in the future?

have not opened the case yet.

That is something I am looking forward to; also have some old thinkpads about, and like how their complete repair manuals, parts lists and such are on the web, and that you can order almost the whole thing in bits and pieces; Replaced a keyboard and touchpad on one, memory on another.
so hope that pine will do similar, offer up all the bits, themselves, or to third parties to make repairs and upgrades “easy” for the technically inclined.