Hi everyone,

So I saw PineBook Pro orders were being taken and they'd be shipping in the next few weeks, and FOMO kicked in and I immediately ordered one. (I had been dreaming of owning one for a while now...)

Now it hasn't arrived (yet) but my questions are for anyone that owns one. I plan on using Slackware on it, so how does it perform? What should I expect out of this device? Is the on-board storage good enough, or should I add another option?

EDIT: well it seems I've answered one question on my own: https://docs.slackware.com/slackware...99_pinebookpro details info on the eMMC storage on the device, so looks like I'll need to purchase an NVME module, any suggestions?

I've run slackwareaarch64 on a rpi3 and on a M1 Mac, one extreme to the other I'd think. I'm hoping this is better than the rpi3, I know it won't match the Mac. How does video perform? Should I go x11 or wayland? (does it matter?)

I'd appreciate any thoughts/advice on the machine, and running Slackware on it. I assume I'll be building many packages myself to use, is there any gotchas between x86 and aarch64 building I should think about or changes to optimizations?

Thanks in advance for any comments!

I used my Pinebook Pro extensibly for development while working on the Aarch64 port. You can use the generic SLKCFLAGS="-O2 -fPIC" optimizations that are used for Slackware x86_64 when compiling SlackBuilds. I have a Kingston A2000 SSD as the root disk, with the f2fs file system. It has a 250GB capacity.

All the hardware used in the "Requirements" section of the documentation should do well. You may also wish to purchase a USB to RJ45 Ethernet adapter. I do not recommend the Pine64 docking station. I ran into a lot of trouble trying to get it to work with a second HDMI display.

I recommend X11 over Wayland but both work the last time I checked.

Currently I do not use the eMMC and have removed the module from my unit. The Slackware installer will boot off the SD Card and write u-boot to the SPI flash during installation. You could relocate the kernel and other bits to the eMMC and free up the SD Card slot. However I have not tested that configuration.

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I'm using the Pinebook Pro now as my daily driver and it's great - just follow the installation guide and it'll work for you.
The only downsides are that whilst the sound works it isn't the best quality, but I don't mind it.
The hibernation doesn't work yet either but that's because it's missing upstream. When I finish using it I close the lid, plug in the power; and to resume I open the lid and press the power button and it's ready to use again instantly.

You might want to speed up the boot process by about 3 seconds - follow the instructions in the documentation. 3 seconds doesn't sound like much but it can feel like a life time when you're staring at the screen ;-)

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Thank you both for the comments! I appreciate not only them, but the work you’ve done for the distro.

I think it’s fine without the suspend feature, I’ve noticed my x86 machine takes just as long to boot as it does to come out of sleep so I likely will continue my usual shutdown flow regardless.

Looks like I’ve got a bit of fun ahead of me!