First impressions of Pinebook, the $99 Linux laptop Introduction



When I first heard about the Pinebook back in April 2017, I became very excited. I am always on the lookout for a good travel laptop, something that is small (less than 12 inches in screen size), light (not much more than 1 kg), thin and inexpensive. Although there are many nice notebooks that would meet most of the above criteria, they all have one big flaw on the software side of things - they come with Windows pre-installed. The last time I used Windows was in early 2001 and I have no desire to return to that estranged companion with which I'd never had a very good relationship anyway. As such, I don't see a point in paying a hefty license fee for a product I will not use. This disqualifies all computers built by the established manufacturers as they are extremely careful not to irritate the software giant by shipping Linux (quelle horreur!) on their machines.



So what about the specialist Linux laptops assembled by the likes of System76 or Slimbook, you might ask. Well, these have certainly been on my radar for some time, but unfortunately neither of them offers a sub-12" laptop configuration at present. One reasonable compromise would be a Chromebook which is light and cheap and which doesn't come with Windows. However, I've always found Google's implementation of Linux on these machines severely limiting, even in developer's mode (although I hear the more recent Chromebooks with the ability to add Android apps are much more versatile). Installing Linux alongside Google Chrome OS or booting a full-featured Linux distribution from an SD card would be a decent option, but still not ideal. So once the news about Pine64 developing a low-cost, 11.6-inch Linux laptop started circulating on popular tech websites, I became very interested.



Ordering and shipping



Back in April last year, the Pinebook was still just a concept. One could leave an email address on the project's website to show interest and then wait for further news. As months went past with no further news, I almost forgot about the whole thing. Then all of a sudden, on September 6th, 2018, an email from the company announced that the 11.6-inch Pinebook was about to start shipping and if I were still interested, I was welcome to place an order. I did that straight away, expecting to have a shiny new Linux notebook in my possession within a week or so. Unfortunately, that was too optimistic. Further six weeks passed before I heard from Pine64 again - the laptops would start shipping at the end of October, the message said. This once again proved inaccurate as there were further delays, but the Chinese-made product was eventually dispatched to my address from Hong Kong on November 16th via FedEx and, following another delay at the customs, I finally received my much awaited Pinebook on November 24th.



The box contained the laptop packed in a plastic casing, a power adapter, a set of Pine64 stickers and a letter addressed to "Dear Piner", informing me about an interesting change in my Pinebook's hardware configuration - a screen upgrade from the original 1366x768 pixel resolution to an IPS monitor supporting a 1920x1080 pixel resolution. This came at no extra cost to me, but the Pinebook's website already reflected the change with a slight price increase - from US$89 to US$99. Otherwise the laptop came in its default configuration. In any case, the ordering process did not provide any customisation options other than giving a choice between a US or European AC power plug. I imagine it would be possible, for example, to replace the standard 16GB eMMC module with a higher capacity one, but any such request would have to be made via email. As I was eager to lay my hands on the Pinebook as soon as possible, I didn't want to enter into any such communication and potentially delay the shipment.



First boot



I had not read any Pinebook reviews prior to receiving the laptop, so I did not know what to expect from this ultra-cheap computer. All I remembered from the day when I ordered the product was that it would come with a "Linux distro" or Android, but once again, no specific choice was given during the ordering process. So my new Pinebook was a little like a box of chocolates - I had no idea what I'd find inside. After plugging it in and pressing the power button, I found my eyes eagerly glued to the black screen with curiosity and anticipation, wondering what distribution and desktop I was about to see in a moment or two. After all that waiting, the first hint of what was to come finally appeared on the screen and, to my great surprise, it was the logo of KDE Plasma!



This I found rather unexpected. After all, I was booting an extremely low-cost and underpowered computer and yet it came with the heaviest of all Linux desktop environments? On the other hand, I was also pleased. KDE has been my preferred desktop since I started playing with Linux nearly 20 years ago and it has powered all of my workstations over the years. It also gave me hope that this machine was no laggard after all, despite the ultra-low price tag. As it turned out, the distribution that shipped on the Pinebook's eMMC module was KDE neon, in its live format. As many of our readers will know, KDE neon is developed by prominent KDE developer Johnathan Riddell; it is based on Ubuntu's current LTS release, but it is frequently updated to include the very latest Plasma desktop, KDE Applications and associated libraries. In other words, KDE neon has a rock-solid, well-tested base with a cutting-edge desktop.



A surprising choice - KDE neon is the distribution shipping on the Pinebook

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I didn't even know KDE neon produced a build for the ARM architecture and there is certainly no mention of it on the project's download page. You have to do some digging through the distribution's repository to find a directory called pinebook-remix-nonfree. Although the current build is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and it includes the latest KDE Plasma, it booted into a severely outdated and unsupported Linux kernel, version 3.10.105. This is apparently due to several binary blobs that are needed to support some of the laptop's hardware (hence the reason for the "nonfree" word in the above-mentioned directory name), but the good news is that starting with version 4.19, the mainline Linux kernel should have built-in support for the Pinebook. I proceeded with the installation which went without a hitch, then rebooted the computer. The update utility in the system tray informed me that there were over 400 new updates available and I installed those too.



Hardware



Detailed hardware specifications are listed on the manufacturer's website, so I won't repeat them here, but it's worth mentioning the processor which is a 1.2 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53. This architecture is often referred to as AArch64 or ARM64. The laptop has 2GB of RAM which is not upgradeable. By contrast, the 16GB internal eMMC module is user replaceable and the company's online store sells 32GB and 64GB modules for US$25 and US$35 respectively. The laptop can boot either from the eMMC module or from the microSD card inserted into the microSD card slot. It goes without saying that the performance of any operating system installed on the eMMC module should be superior to the one booted from the SD card (provided all other variables are equal), but the latter is great for testing operating systems without having to flash the eMMC drive. As far as I know, it is not possible to install more than one distribution on the eMMC and then dual or triple boot them.



I've already mentioned the upgraded IPS screen which was a pleasant surprise, but using a 1920x1080 pixel resolution on a 11.6-inch monitor is bound to give lots of strain to those of us who no longer have young eyes and perfect eyesight. Fortunately, KDE provides an easy way to scale the desktop (in the "Display" dialog) and to increase the size of the bottom panel. The Pinebook comes with a mini-HDMI port, so theoretically it should be possible to connect the laptop to an external monitor. Unfortunately, I can confirm the many user reports on the product's forums - the mini-HDMI port simply does not work in KDE neon (although it worked in some other distributions I tried later). So there it is, a first major bug. The WiFi worked well though and I was able to connect to my router without any issues. To test the video acceleration, I fired up Firefox and went to YouTube - only to be disappointed by the video playback that kept skipping frames. Don't expect much from the built-in speaker either, but the laptop does have an audio port for connecting external speakers or headphones. So the Pinebook is definitely not a multimedia or gaming machine, as one would suspect.



I found the keyboard on the Pinebook disappointing. Some useful characters often used on the command line are accessible via a rather cumbersome key combination; as an example, the "pipe" (|) character is evoked by holding down both the Fn and Shift keys, plus the pipe key. Ditto for the "quotation mark" (") character. There is another key with the pipe character on it, but it is placed on the right of left Shift key, which is an unusual position and worse, it maps by default to the "greater than" (>) character (the fix is to change the keyboard layout to "US, international AltGr Unicode combining, alternative" to make it work as expected). The design of the two Shift keys is bad as well, especially the right one which is a very narrow button at the extreme right of the keyboard. I am not sure I'll ever be able to get used to this. I compared the Pinebook's keyboard with the one on the Acer One 10.1-inch netbook, but despite the latter computer's smaller size, it comes with more keys and also normal wide Shift keys. Of course, the keys on the Acer netbook are smaller and the spacing between them is narrower, but I am quite sure my fingers would be much more productive there than they will ever be on the Pinebook.



The keyboard layout on the 11.6-inch Pinebook

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If the keyboard was less than ideal, I thought the touchpad was even worse, at least initially. It actually identifies itself as a "USB mouse" so the usual touchpad configuration options are not available. It emulates the mouse depending on the location of the click - you need to click on the relevant side of the touchpad to invoke a left/right click, but if you click somewhere in the middle, the click won't always register. Tapping works fine though and I found that emulating the left mouse click is easier with a single tap, anywhere on the touchpad. Emulating the right mouse click with a two-finger tap is a hit and miss and the same goes for a two-finger click. Scrolling with two fingers on the Pinebook is not always easy either - if you don't hold your two fingers in a perfect horizontal position then you might accidentally invoke the zoom function instead of a scroll. Perhaps this is why the Firefox browser in KDE neon came with the zoom function disabled by default. Reversing the scroll by selecting that option in KDE's mouse configuration dialog did not work (although there is a workaround using xinput set-prop 8 "Evdev Scrolling Distance" -1 1 1). Still, I could probably get used to the trackpad's anomalies easier than to the quirky keyboard layout. I also tried a USB mouse which worked out of the box.



Another major bug on the Pinebook is related to screen locking after which the laptop is (sometimes, but not always) unable to resume, presenting an unresponsive black screen instead. The simplest workaround is to disable the screen lock, both when resuming from sleep and after a pre-set period of time. This is a known issue that will likely be resolved by a software update in the future. On the positive side, the presence of an ARM processor means impressive battery life. To test it, I unplugged the computer and let it idle without allowing it to go to sleep, only doing occasional web browsing, and it took nearly 20 hours to completely drain the battery! Even with heavy continuous work the battery can easily last 8 hours or more. Recharging it back to 100% took around five hours. The laptop is powered with a 5V DC charger.



Software



As I've mentioned already, the Pinebook ships with KDE neon, which means the latest stable version of KDE Plasma as the default desktop (and regular 100+ package updates every time a new version of Plasma is released). The default installation comes with the latest Firefox browser, LibreOffice 6.0.6, VLC media player 3.0.3, Gwenview, Okular, Kamoso (for using the built-in camera) and a handful of other useful utilities. The distribution's APT software management tool points to ports.ubuntu.com (besides KDE neon's own repository) which provides a substantial range of additional software available for installation, including the likes of Chromium or GIMP. Needless to say, non-free and proprietary software (e.g. the Vivaldi browser) won't work on the Pinebook as most companies developing these applications don't usually provide binary packages for the ARM architecture.



KDE neon is not the only distribution that works on the Pinebook, however. A number of other projects have also started building specialist images for this laptop and the choices are bound to increase significantly in the coming months. The easiest way to try another distribution is to install it on a microSD card, then boot it up after inserting it to the microSD port. The laptop's boot order is "microSD, eMMC" and there is no way to change this, so it will only boot from the eMMC module if there is no microSD card present. Probably the simplest way to create a bootable SD card is by using the Pine64 Installer (a fork of Etcher) which is a user-friendly graphical utility available for Linux (AppImage format), macOS and Windows. After launching it, you'll need to select your Pine64 board, then decide which of the presented operating systems you wish to transfer onto the SD card. The tool will then proceed with downloading the image, transferring it to the card and verifying the integrity of the transferred image. You can also work with an image downloaded separately and stored on the hard disk. Of course, you can always use the good old dd command for this purpose as well.



Pine64 Installer - a user-friendly tool for flashing SD cards with bootable images

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If you wish to install a distribution onto the eMMC module, the process is a little more involved. Once again, the Pine64 Installer comes handy, as it offers several special images that can be transferred to a microSD card, booted up and installed to the internal storage (after answering "yes" to a dialog that asks whether you'd like to install the distribution to the eMMC module). At the time of writing the Pine64 Installer provided three images that could be installed to the eMMC module in this way - the one built by the KDE neon team, a stock Android 6.0 image and an image created by the AOSC Linux community (which uses the MATE desktop). Alternatively, it is also possible to dd an image directly to the eMMC. The Pine64 documentation talks about a preferred way of doing this which involves taking out the controller and using an eMMC-to-USB adapter available from the Pine64 Store.



That document was probably written for users of one the Pine64 development boards where removing the eMMC module is a simple process. With the Pinebook, this is much less practical as it requires unscrewing ten tiny screws at the bottom of the laptop, removing the bottom cover, detaching the stencil that covers the eMMC module and taking out the controller itself - I did it once (to replace the 16GB module with a 64GB one) and while it's not as hard as it sounds, it's not something I want to do too often. It seemed to me that an easier way of getting an image onto the eMMC module would be booting up a distribution installed on a microSD card, downloading a Pinebook image, then using the dd command to transfer that image to the eMMC module. After all, eMMC is just another Flash drive, so it should work. I proceeded to try this method by using "dd if=image-for-pinebook.img of=/dev/mmcblk2" to transfer the image to the eMMC module. This worked great and, after rebooting, I found myself in a brand new distribution (which replaced the original KDE neon on the eMMC).



Manjaro Linux with LXQt is one of the distributions built specifically for the Pinebook

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In the course of my testing, I tried all of the distributions available through the Pine64 Installer. I started with Arch Linux which provides a standard (if somewhat spartan) Xfce desktop, plus the Firefox browser, then continued with Manjaro's LXQt variant. Both distributions have switched to the 4.19 Linux kernel which, at the time of writing, seemed to work reasonably well, except for one known issue - no sound support on the Pinebook. On the positive side, the Pinebook's mini HDMI port worked with these distributions. I also tried the Debian-based Q4OS which uses the Trinity desktop (a fork of KDE 3) and which should therefore provide a much lighter alternative to Plasma 5 while still retaining KDE's power and ability to customise the user interface. However, Q4OS has decided to stay with the unsupported 3.10 kernel for now. Overall I found Q4OS excellent on the Pinebook; it is noticeably lighter and faster than KDE neon, but it's still very versatile and customisable.



Q4OS 2.6 and its Trinity desktop running on the Pinebook's eMMC module

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A somewhat unusual choice among the available operating systems for the Pinebook is Android 6.0. I spent some time investigating this option, but I came to an obvious conclusion - it's very hard to justify running a system designed for handheld devices on a laptop, especially if the laptop in question does not have a touchscreen. That said, there is perhaps one scenario where Android on the Pinebook could be useful - if you need to run an Android application, but don't have any other Android device at hand. As an example, I was able to add Skype to my Android installation and it worked out of the box, including voice and video. So even though Android may not be a particularly suitable operating system for the Pinebook, it might be worth keeping a microSD card with Android on it in case the need arises.



Stock Android 6.0 boots up from the Pinebook's microSD card

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For those users who prefer BSD instead of Linux, here is some good news: NetBSD has developed an early image for the Pinebook. As most of you will know, NetBSD is an operating system that specialises in supporting a vast range of processor architectures and computing devices, so it's hardly surprising that they've been quick to provide an image for the Pinebook. The NetBSD image uses the project's current tree and it is highly experimental. After the first boot, the installer will expand the file system on the microSD card before rebooting. The initial system is command-line only, with the BSD kernel at version 8.99.25. Unfortunately, there is no Pinebook-specific manual about configuring the operating system so one would have to rely on NetBSD's generic documentation to get started. Worse, NetBSD did not recognise the wireless network card present in the laptop (the Pinebook does not have a port for wired networking). As such, this early NetBSD Pinebook image is really only suitable for developers and contributors who want to help with filing bug reports.



The last distribution I tested was AOSC OS. AOSC is a community project that develops a surprisingly large number of rolling-release Linux distributions for various architectures and with several different desktop environments. Their Pinebook edition is built around the MATE desktop and it uses the 4.19 Linux kernel (which means no sound). The desktop itself is light and pleasant to use. The menus are sparsely populated, with the only heavy-duty application present by default being Firefox. The APT sources.list file points to the project's own repository which contains additional software, but it is not as extensive as Debian or Ubuntu repositories. Those users who prefer the GNOME way over KDE will likely find this an excellent option. Additionally, the AOSC OS image supports installation to the Pinebook's eMMC module in the Pine64 Installer.



The AOSC OS community provides a Pinebook image which features the MATE desktop

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Conclusions



The Pinebook is an exceptional project created by a bunch of enthusiasts whose mission is to build a full-featured laptop while keeping the price tag to an absolute minimum. Clearly, up until this point in time, nobody has ever achieved anything even remotely similar (ignoring the One Laptop Per Child project which builds simple, low-cost laptops for children). At the same time, this is a very young project and, even though the Pinebook is indeed very usable, it is far from perfect. It has several bugs and some will find a few of its design decisions a little odd. The software issues will certainly be eliminated through updates in the future. The hardware bugs will hopefully be gone by the time the next generation ships to eagerly awaiting customers. In any case, if you decide to order a Pinebook after reading this review, chances are you won't receive it for many long months by which time the product will have no doubt undergone various changes.



It is obvious that the Pinebook is a product built "by the geeks, for the geeks". If you are thinking about buying this laptop for your young child or elderly parent, then please don't. It is not designed for them (unless your young son exhibits signs of turning into a Linux hacker or the grandmother in your family spends a great deal of her waking hours on DistroWatch downloading and installing free operating systems). The Pinebook is clearly not a product for people who use computers mostly for entertainment. (On the Pinebook forums you'll already find users trying to sell the thing.) Plus, you'll prevent somebody more suitable from receiving it. But if you are a Linux enthusiast or an open-source software developer and if you feel comfortable on the command line, I'd find it hard to imagine that you won't be totally enamoured with this exceptional product. It's an engineering marvel, even in this early iteration. That it's even possible to build a full-featured laptop costing less than US$100 is nothing short of a miracle.



As far as software is concerned, the laptop ships with KDE neon which some might find a little too heavy, although certainly not unusable. I can see why the company made the decision to choose it as the default distribution - it's developed by a well-known developer who has put a lot of effort into building a system that is functional, if not completely bug-free. (Which is just as well; after all, what self-respecting geek would enjoy a computer system where there is nothing to tinker with because everything "just works"?) However, some users might prefer a lighter and snappier alternative and after trying out several, I had very favourable impressions of both Q4OS (with Trinity) and AOSC (with MATE). The two distributions that use the Pacman package manager, Arch Linux (with Xfce) and Manjaro Linux (with LXQt) were still in the "preview" stages of their respective developments during my testing and they lacked polish. The NetBSD image was not suitable for the end user when I tested it as it failed to detect the wireless network card while Android seemed like an odd choice for a laptop without a touchscreen.



So will the Pinebook be a good travel laptop? I can't answer the question just yet as I haven't hit the road with it, but the truth is that I am not entirely sure. Some of the design choices will, I feel, affect my productivity negatively (especially the keyboard layout) and browsing JavaScript-heavy websites with Firefox can be frustratingly slow. The durability of the product made from low-cost components is also a concern. Then again, I don't need all that much from my travel computer - being able to ssh into a remote server, replying to emails, editing some text files, plus occasionally generating an invoice or doing some light graphics work is all I require. The Pinebook is certainly capable of doing all that, albeit not at the speed of light. But I'll know more after my first trip with the Pinebook when I'll report back. So next time you notice a strange guy sitting in the corner of an airport lounge and using a small white laptop with a Pine64 sticker on it, that will be me. Feel free to come over for a little chat and a demonstration of this remarkable $99 Linux laptop.



