¶ Introduction
Pinebook Pro is an ARM-based laptop product for work, school, or fun, designed to offer an alternative to traditional computing.
Endless OS is available for installation on Pinebook Pro. Once installed, it includes all the usual Endless OS features and functionality, along with a large selection of applications. However, it is released as a preview version, due to some limitations detailed below.
As a preview release, we especially welcome community feedback regarding interest in using Endless OS on this hardware, particularly in which contexts these devices are used, what works well, and what needs to be improved.
¶ Requirements
You will need a Pinebook Pro.
You will also need an SD card that can hold the uncompressed image you choose to install (16GB for the base image, 32GB for the English variant). For a better experience, we recommend using a fast SD card (Class 10 or faster). All data on this SD card will be erased during installation.
¶ Limitations
- Headset audio is not working at the moment
- WiFi does not work out-of-the-box because we cannot redistribute the required firmware. See below how to manually install it.
- The eMMC boot is not supported but might be coming later.
¶ Download
The image for this platform is available for download from our website.
¶ Installation
After downloading the image as above, you must now use another computer in order to flash it to a SD card. If you are not familiar with the process of image flashing, please refer to our instructions for flashing with GNOME Disks or balenaEtcher.
¶ Booting into Endless OS
After setting up the SD card as explained above, you can now use Endless OS as follows:
- Power off or unplug your Pinebook Pro
- Force Pinebook Pro to boot from the SD card: With the computer off and unplugged from power, open the back case and disable eMMC by turning off switch #24 mentioned in Pinebook Pro's Mainboard Switches and Buttons
- Close the back case
- Insert the flashed SD card into the SD card slot
- Power on
¶ Technical notes
¶ Download and install proprietary WiFi & BT firmware (Optional)
- Get the firmware files
BCM4345C5.hcd,nvram_ap6256.txt,fw_bcm43456c5_ag.binandbrcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blobfrom Manjaro ARM's ap6256-firmware package. - Install the downloaded files into
/var/lib/firmware/brcm/. You may need root privilege for this action.
install -Dm644 "BCM4345C5.hcd" -t /var/lib/firmware/brcm/
install -Dm644 "nvram_ap6256.txt" /var/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.pine64,pinebook-pro.txt
install -Dm644 "fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin" /var/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.bin
install -Dm644 "brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob" /var/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob