Pinebook Pro

⚠️ Disclaimer ⚠️

elementary OS images for Pinebook Pro are considered highly experimental. We have not committed to providing stable releases of these images at this time or in the future; for now, they will remain experimental and only officially offered via Early Access builds. Please read the known limitations for these images for more information.

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The experimental elementary OS images for the Pinebook Pro support running from the SD Card or the internal eMMC. Some users have reported success running it from an NVMe drive too, but this hasn't been tested/verified by the elementary team, so no instructions are provided for this.

N.B: It is highly recommended to flash your image to an SD card and test it before flashing to the eMMC. There is no testing that occurs on these images before they are uploaded, so they may be completely broken.

Downloading and verifying the image

1. Download one of the .img.xz files and the corresponding md5 or sha256 checksum file.
2. Using a terminal in the same directory as the files, verify the downloaded image with one of the following commands depending on which checksum file you downloaded:
   • sha256sum -c <sha256.txt filename> (recommended)
   • md5sum -c <md5.txt filename>
3. This should result in some output like elementaryos-6.0-daily-pinebookpro-20200801.img.xz: OK. If the verification fails, do not continue and instead re-download the .img.xz file and try the verification step again.

Installing on SD Card

These steps can be performed on any computer with the image file downloaded and verified; even the PINEBOOK Pro itself if it has a working operating system running from the eMMC.

Note: These steps will overwrite the whole SD card. Choose a card that is either blank or without important data.

1. Identify the device path of the SD card (this is usually in the format /dev/mmcblkX). The easiest way to do this is often to run lsblk without the SD card inserted, and then run it again with the card inserted. The new device that appears will more than likely be your SD card.
   • Warning: If you identify the wrong device at this point, you can potentially lose data and/or render your device unbootable during the next stage. Please ensure the device is correct before continuing.
   • Hint #1: lsblk also lists partitions on storage device, so you may have entries like /dev/mmcblk1p1 and /dev/mmcblk1p2. We want to write the image to the whole SD card instead of a partition on it, so ignore any of these partition devices, and just use the toplevel device.
   • Hint #2: On the Manjaro ARM build installed by default on the Pinebook Pro, the SD card device path is usually /dev/mmcblk1. Though this can vary between different distributions, so be sure to check.
2. Once you are sure you have the right device for the SD card, flash the image to it with the following command:
   • xzcat <path to .img.xz file> | sudo dd of=<device path> bs=4M status=progress (ensure you replace the bracket sections with the correct path to the image file and the correct device path as discovered in step 1)
3. Once the command completes, the SD card is ready. Boot the Pinebook Pro with the SD card inserted to test the image. The first boot will take a little longer as it automatically resizes itself to fill the free space left on the SD card.

Installing on internal eMMC

These steps should be performed on the Pinebook Pro itself, running an OS from the SD Card. You should first test the elementary OS image you intend to use on the SD card before flashing it to the eMMC.

Note: You cannot perform this process using an OS running from the eMMC.

1. Get the desired .img.xz file downloaded or otherwise copied into the running OS. You should re-verify the image at this stage if you have performed another download/copy.
2. Identify the device path of the eMMC (this is usually in the format /dev/mmcblkX). The easiest way to do this is often to run lsblk and identify the device which doesn't have any mountpoints. One of the SD card partitions will be mounted on /. So you know this is not the device you need.
   • Warning: If you identify the wrong device at this point, you can potentially lose data and/or render your device unbootable during the next stage. Please ensure the device is correct before continuing.
   • Hint #1: lsblk also lists partitions on storage device, so you may have entries like /dev/mmcblk1p1 and /dev/mmcblk1p2. We want to write the image to the whole eMMC instead of a partition on it, so ignore any of these partition devices, and just use the toplevel device.
   • Hint #2: On the Manjaro ARM build installed by default on the Pinebook Pro, the eMMC device path is usually /dev/mmcblk2. Though this can vary between different distributions, so be sure to check.
3. Once you are sure you have the right device for the eMMC, flash the image to it with the following command:
   • xzcat <path to .img.xz file> | sudo dd of=<device path> bs=4M status=progress (ensure you replace the bracket sections with the correct path to the image and the correct device path as discovered in step 2 respectively)
4. Once the command completes, reboot the Pinebook Pro with the SD card removed to test the image. The first boot will take a little longer as it automatically resizes itself to fill the free space left on the eMMC card.

Known limitations

Kernel and bootloader upgrades

The kernels and bootloader (u-boot) in the elementary OS images for Pinebook Pro are not compiled and released by Ubuntu as they would be in a standard installation of elementary OS. They're also built into the image at build-time rather than installed as an upgradable .deb package.

This means:

• The specific kernel (and its patches) has not been validated/tested for stability by Canonical
• You will not receive updates to the kernel or bootloader through apt updates or any other means. This means any current or future known security vulnerabilities in either of these components will not be patched.

Current known Pinebook Pro specific issues

• The webcam does not work with the pre-installed camera app. It works with other applications however, so this is an app issue, rather than a driver issue.
• The speakers do not turn off when headphones are plugged in and sound plays out of both.
• Night light does not work.
• There is no splash screen on boot up. You just see a blinking cursor.

elementary OS 6.0 known issues

Due to the fact the Pinebook Pro images are based on the upcoming release of elementary OS 6.0. The same known issues will apply. See here for a current (but not complete) list: https://builds.elementary.io/