First Pinebook Pro Impressions

My Experience with the Pinebook Pro #

I obtained a Pinebook Pro with an ANSI Keyboard. My goal was to obtain a device that is not only an affordable, long lasting battery for conferences like Texas Linux Fest. But a laptop that I could use every day for editing, composing, and accessing remote environments.

Unboxing #

The device was shipped with all of its components and accessories in a large cargo envelope. simple and effective. No complaints.

Installing the SSD adapter #

The Pinebook’s motherboard has an exposed PCIx4 header that can be used. the header is exposed as a ribbon cable attachment. We can use an adapter from pine64 website to attach a M.2 style NVME SSD to it. Note that I did not say SATA SSD. I have installed it has was forced to do some odd folds to fix the ribbon cable into both the slot and the mounted Pinebook NVME Adapter to the PCI header.

Default Debian #

The default image leaves a bit to be desired. Unlike most Linux distributions you may be use to. A default user was already created named rock which can be adapted to your username, however there are many parts of the config that remain and break when you chance the username. It is using a XFCE desktop that has been minimally configured.

Usage #

After installing a few of my tools of the trade. The Pinebook Pro is able to do most tasks well, if it has a hardware transcoder for it. it will work well, however some beefier web applications will drag it to a crawl.

What’s next #

Fedora for the Pinebook to be tested. A OS that I am more familiar with. Or something along the lines of Manjaro I3 edition.