Pine Pinebook

[Brian Beuken]

An odd thing to be sure, and with shipping and customs outside my $100 budget (total cost was around $160), but its related to a project I am working on for my university and I need to see if I can configure this to be a viable dev or target learning system for areas when computers are not so easy to find never mind learn to code on.
1st impressions are...well surprising, its slow of course and I'm not sure what OS they shipped with it, but it does work...apart from Firefox telling me that Google is an unsafe site and wont' got to it.. lol it may be right

Im doing a full update of its current OS now and will see if I can install some dev packages on it. Of course no visual studio, but I want to see which of the Linux IDE's can be made to work if that is possible it might be a viable option to use as a dev system targetting another machine or itself.

I'll also attempt to use it as a target, though previous Pine A64 attempts havn't gone well the software has had time to mature and does have a strong following. The Rock64 from  them isn't half bad but this is based on the older and more troublesome A64 

Build quality is surprisingly good, I had expected from reviews to find it really bad. The small keyboard isn't the greatest thing but nor is it the worst. If it can be married up to a decent OS it might actually be a cool little system.
The current default KDE based ubuntu (I think), installs GLmark2-es2 fine and recognises the mali 400mp2 but it isn't showing any sign of acceleration and the score is naturally very low at 27 on screen but a surprising..188 offscreen..hmmm.. I'll have to see if I can find an A64 OS that has drivers.

I will report back when I manage to get things up and running

[jomoengineer]

Were you able to get one of these? I have put in to be notified when they were available multiple times but have yet to see one.

The other more expensive option is the Pi-Top
https://accounts.pi-top.com/products/pi-top/

They also have a Monitor type called the Pi-topCEED
https://accounts.pi-top.com/products/ceed/

Or you could go with a Desktop type and just add a monitor
https://www.element14.com/community/docs...desktop-pc

[Brian Beuken]

Had to mail them direct, to get them to give me an order number and really wanted the 14" version but wasn't available. Its listed at the same price but thats an error apparently

I'm looking into a project to teach coding in Africa, so need a totally self contained and very low cost system, this fits the bill perfectly but I now need to be sure its actually capable of doing the work..so far...not too shabby but proper testing will come later.

[jomoengineer]

Ah, yeah. They also changed from a Built to Order model to a Pre order model. I believe the 14" model was from 2017 and they stopped making them and switched to the 11". They do have a Pinebook Pro coming out but I think the cost will be $199 US.

https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/

[Brian Beuken]

Ah, yeah.  They also changed from a Built to Order model to a Pre order model.  I believe the 14" model was from 2017 and they stopped making them and switched to the 11".  They do have a Pinebook Pro coming out but I think the cost will be $199 US.

https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/

yup the Pro look svery nice, using their Rock64 tech which will make it a nicer bit of kit, but outside the price range and maybe also for power usage. I need to aim to get a bulk order for 5K where users can jump right in with 0 other hardware needs.... Also at that price hard to see if it could compete with the low end chromebooks.

But this is a project in its very early discovery stages so am just looking for a system or systems that can be used in a no electricity environment and opportunistic charging, by solar or wind or (I kid you not), bicycle or wind up power.

The Pinebook seems to manage 6-8hours of moderate use for battery. Has a low ampage charge need, so a small solar panel could do it.
Runs Code::Blocks and other IDE's and is just fast enough to have a modestly effective web browser.. It could well work as a giveaway to schools in Central Africa,n Indian or S.American areas where potential coders live and have few chances to learn.

Anyway, we'll see, so far I am impressed with its out of the box performance, after a few updates and tweaks, its doing fine as long as I don't try an heavy flash/graphic website.
test gcc code compiles and GLmark2-es2 is functional so graphics are possible... Its very interesting indeed. But far slower than a raspberry doing the same thing..But that needs a monitor and keyboard/mouse to work, so its a case of judging how much of a compromise I need to have to make it useable for teaching.

[Brian Beuken]

Well Im happy to say it works, at least as a Dev platform, its quite possible to create code, and should be ok to send to a target system to run. Its actually quite a nice little laptop, though my old eyes are struggling with the high res 1920x1080 screen res. Its quite capable of browsing the web, even running youtube vids, albeit with some stutter. And the editor packages I tried al work fine.

But when it comes to actually running compile graphic progs in KDE Neon 5.15, which is the default OS, it simply does not have the drivers, and performance on the unit itself is painful, with single digit frame rates for the full screen 3D demo... Not actually unexpected, and its probably fairer to reduce the res and try for a much smaller screen. I am hoping some of the other available OS's have hardware graphic drivers....We'll see.
Right now I've had to put it on charge as I probably overdid it running the demo's and its refusing to reboot. But I can give it an overnight charge and try again.

[jomoengineer]

The lack of driver thing is the issue I had with the Pine64 I grabbed with their Kickstart awhile back. I see you have posted on their site so hopefully you get the answers you are looking for there.

Did you see the announcement for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx based Laptops which will run Windows 10 (IoT Core ??) ? I'm sure it will have a hefty price to go along with it.
https://www.windowscentral.com/snapdrago...benchmarks

[Brian Beuken]

yeah, the A64 never had proper drivers either, so I'm going to guess thats never going to be an option, shame really, its actually a nicely put together little hobby laptop, quite functional out of the box, I typed up a small report and made a simple presentation on it on the train, no issues at all.  And code does indeed build and run on it using Code::Blocks, but with only 6-10fps, for a full screen 3D demo its not going to work as a 3D system...but there may be ways to make use of it for teaching still.

Going to try a few other OS's and see, Armbian seems to have GPU support so will give that a go.

[jomoengineer]

I'm not sure if it would be worth contacting the Raspberry Foundation and see if they can give you some sort of discount on the PiTop for the effort you are working on. The other option would be a Crowd Funding campain to get the funds to get more viable LapTop for the students.

I'm not sure if you seen this on the armbian forum
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/4971-pin...on-please/

I seen this on a search so perhaps there is better GPU support in another OS. Or you would have to do the ugly work and pull down buildroot and spin your own kernel.
https://bootlin.com/blog/mali-opengl-sup...ine-linux/

Or on the Pine64 WiKi
https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Mali_Driver

[Brian Beuken]

At the moment I'm in an exploritory phase to gather all info on options and viability, I will get hold of a couple of other options but the price differences really is pretty high,.
I actually really like the Pinebook with NEON, its very solid, tried Armbian last night, but desptie having GPU support inso far as it does use the GPU, it does not seem to have GPU libs accessable, though that might be due to me downloading mesa and then hitting problems, which I tried to reset but had internet issues and it was getting late.