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A comment on Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook. Parent comment

Re:Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Note... by newscracker on Thursday April 19, 2018 @07:40AM (#16874998)
That's good news. Could you please point me to where these updated images are? I had been looking at the official site [1] once every few months last year, but didn't find the Ubuntu (or Debian) images updated. The dates are still from end of 2016.

[1]: http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release

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Re:Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Note... by prophesi on Thursday April 19, 2018 @08:16AM (#16875188)
https://github.com/ayufan-pine64/linux-build/releases/

I'd recommend the Xenial images. There are Mate/i3wm versions for the pinebook, but all the others (Pine64 & Sopine) are headless and require the installation of a GUI.

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Re:Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Note... by newscracker on Friday April 20, 2018 @06:24AM (#16883611)
Thanks for that link. I'm looking for updated images for Pine64 (not Pinebook), and all of them on this repository seem to be minimal images (without a desktop environment). Is my understanding correct? I'm looking for one with a desktop environment.
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Re:Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Note... by prophesi on Friday April 20, 2018 @10:23AM (#16884973)
Yeah, I'm afraid that's the case :/ So you'd have to SSH into your pine64 and install a GUI yourself.

Then to enable Mali support (which basically lets the device actually use the GPU to render the screen), you have to add an additional repository:

  - apt-add-repository ppa:ayufan/pine64-ppa -y
  - apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-armsoc-sunxi libmali-sunxi-utgard0-r6p0
then you'd run the script to enable it. Probably need root to run it.

  - exec /usr/local/sbin/pine64_enable_sunxidrm.sh
Then in your GUI's settings, you'd disable software compositing (force it to use the Mali GPU instead of the pine's CPU)

  -  System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Windows and disable Enable software compositing.
If things go awry, or you have more questions, there's a community IRC that's usually pretty active with people willing to help. http://pine64.xyz/
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