I'm on a pinebook pro right now. I've had mine since January of this year.
I find myself using more often than my iPads for a secondary device. It's worth dough if you're looking for a device to tinker with, because there's a considerable amount of tinkering. But, it's the fun kind of tinkering.

Cheers,

PavelcP

?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/32)
* Origin: 1984 BBS [1984bbs.net:23] Washington, DC (1337:3/128)

On 20 Jun 2020, pavelc said the following...

I'm on a pinebook pro right now. I've had mine since January of this year. I find myself using more often than my iPads for a secondary
device. It's worth dough if you're looking for a device to tinker with, because there's a considerable amount of tinkering. But, it's the fun kind of tinkering.

Hi PavelcP

That sounds really interesting. What have you done so far with it?

I have been asked before about converting Chromebooks to a Linux laptop, and never done it yet so have been unable to really comment with any authority on the matter. It would be great to get your thoughts and any howto's / gotcha's you found along the way with the Pinebook Pro.

---
|14Best regards,
|11Ch|03rist|11ia|15n |11a|03ka |11Me|03aTLoT|11io|15N

|07── |08[|10eml|08] |15ml@erb.pw |07── |08[|10web|08] |15www.erb.pw |07───┐ |07── |08[|09fsx|08] |1521:1/158 |07── |08[|11tqw|08] |151337:1/101 |07┬──┘ |07── |08[|12rtn|08] |1580:774/81 |07─┬ |08[|14fdn|08] |152:250/5 |07───┘
|07── |08[|10ark|08] |1510:104/2 |07─┘

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Quantum Wormhole, Ramsgate, UK. bbs.erb.pw (1337:1/101)

Hi MeaTLoTioN,

Over the last month or so, I've tried to stay away from traditional
consumption devices like my iPads for daily use. Instead, I've been using
my pinebook pro for my morning routine or when I simply want to watch a
video or browse the web. It's been a liberating experience.

Instead of getting stuck in a never ending rabbit-hole of one youtube video after the other, I find myself learning more about linux and slowly
customizing the pinebook pro to my liking. I've enjoyed it so much that
I've actually started using linux as my daily driver.

With as much as I love the pinebook pro, there are still a few limitations
to it's capabilities. It's very much a work-in-progress. While the debian
and manjaro distributions are getting better everyday, tweaking is required
for certain things to work. For instance, I upgraded manjaro from 20.03 to 20.06 and suddently couldn't boot the device. To fix this, I had to edit
boot files. Which required using a different install of the same distro on
a bootable SD card. After that, I had to downgrade drivers to get the 5ghz wifi to work. So, if you're okay with those type of problems or you find fixing that type of stuff enjoyable, then the PBPro could work for you.

LIke I mentioned, I have Manjaro installed as my distro and I use the PBPro
for routine web browsing and video watching. I also use it for remote connections to other machines, writing, and the ocassional hobby like
Amateur Radio or Software Defined Radio. It seems to work well for most of these. Video watching is slowly getting better as the community unlocks the hardware video decoding of the chipset.

Anyway, I hope this gives you an idea of the PBPros capabilities and shortcomings. All-in-all, I think it's fully worth the cheap price of admissions, if you have the right expectations.

Cheers,

PavelcH

?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/32)
* Origin: 1984 BBS [1984bbs.net:23] Washington, DC (1337:3/128)

On 22 Jun 2020, pavelc said the following...

Hi MeaTLoTioN,

Hi pavelc =)

Over the last month or so, I've tried to stay away from traditional consumption devices like my iPads for daily use. Instead, I've been
using my pinebook pro for my morning routine or when I simply want to watch a video or browse the web. It's been a liberating experience.

Instead of getting stuck in a never ending rabbit-hole of one youtube video after the other, I find myself learning more about linux and slowly customizing the pinebook pro to my liking. I've enjoyed it so much that I've actually started using linux as my daily driver.

This is good to hear, I use Linux as my only OS for all my computers, it
makes life so much easier for me.

With as much as I love the pinebook pro, there are still a few
limitations to it's capabilities. It's very much a work-in-progress. While the debian and manjaro distributions are getting better everyday, tweaking is required for certain things to work. For instance, I
upgraded manjaro from 20.03 to 20.06 and suddently couldn't boot the device. To fix this, I had to edit boot files. Which required using a different install of the same distro on a bootable SD card. After that,
I had to downgrade drivers to get the 5ghz wifi to work. So, if you're okay with those type of problems or you find fixing that type of stuff enjoyable, then the PBPro could work for you.

Ah that is some good troubleshooting and resolution there... yeah the
Pinebook Pro is ARM based right? I'm glad to know that it's getting some good attention in that respect.

LIke I mentioned, I have Manjaro installed as my distro and I use the PBPro for routine web browsing and video watching. I also use it for remote connections to other machines, writing, and the ocassional hobby like Amateur Radio or Software Defined Radio. It seems to work well for most of these. Video watching is slowly getting better as the community unlocks the hardware video decoding of the chipset.

Ohh that's interesting, what sort of amateur radio things to you use it for?
Do you use it as a radio using the SDR? or is the SDR an extra?

I used to be quite big into amateur radio many years back, and I'm slowing getting back into it, I purchased a hand held 2m/70cm radio from Amazon, only one of the cheap Baofeng UV-5R's, hoping to use it locally but I think it's a dying hobby at least where I am. Our local repeater is still up, but there's no more echolink / allstar node now, it's just a straight repeater.

Anyway, I hope this gives you an idea of the PBPros capabilities and shortcomings. All-in-all, I think it's fully worth the cheap price of admissions, if you have the right expectations.

Yes it certainly does give an idea, it sounds like it is a very viable option for the most part.

Thank you for your explanation, looking forward to any updates on this topic. Keep up the good work, sir.

---
|14Best regards,
|11Ch|03rist|11ia|15n |11a|03ka |11Me|03aTLoT|11io|15N

|07── |08[|10eml|08] |15ml@erb.pw |07── |08[|10web|08] |15www.erb.pw |07───┐ |07── |08[|09fsx|08] |1521:1/158 |07── |08[|11tqw|08] |151337:1/101 |07┬──┘ |07── |08[|12rtn|08] |1580:774/81 |07─┬ |08[|14fdn|08] |152:250/5 |07───┘
|07── |08[|10ark|08] |1510:104/2 |07─┘

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Quantum Wormhole, Ramsgate, UK. bbs.erb.pw (1337:1/101)

You're welcome. The pinebook pro is arm based which increases the battery
life, but also can be challenging when trying to find FOSS software.

I mainly use the PBPro in ham radio for logging, but I'm also getting into
HF js8call. I haven't set the software up yet, but it is often done with a raspberry pi, so can't be that difficult.

For SDR, I use a RTL-SDR dongle an GQRX for decoding. It works like a
charm.

Cheers,

Pavelc

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/32)
* Origin: 1984 BBS [1984bbs.net:23] Washington, DC (1337:3/128)