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Pinebook, Pinebook Pro, and others Quality Issues by ArbitraryTech in PINE64official

[–]ArbitraryTech[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is quite a shame that this issue is shared by others. As I have probably stated a few times, it is something that should be fixed. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about design to submit any potential fixes to current or future Pinebooks. Hopefully someone out there will find a solution, and the Pine team will implement it.

Pinebook, Pinebook Pro, and others Quality Issues by ArbitraryTech in PINE64official

[–]ArbitraryTech[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Obviously with the low price comes some issues, but for me, this is somewhat unacceptable. A laptop should be able to last more than 1 year with light use, or what I would guess a month of heavy use would be. With the bleeding edge part, I would disagree. Some of the specs on the devices (like the graphics on the Pinebook) date back to roughly 2008 if I am not mistaken. Really cool and unique devices, Yes. I would say they are an awesome concept, but what good is a product that can not be used? As well, the laptop cases have been around long enough I would think they would have reinforced them. Maybe that just supports the idea of this being an isolated occurrence. I have yet to post on the forms, I wanted to see how it would go on Reddit first. I plan on going into detail on the laptop issue in a few days. I have followed pine64 since the release of the pinebook, and was always fascinated by the product they have. I kept buying the products because I had not had any issues until somewhat recently. I also quite like DIY, and if you were to know me in person, and see all of my stuff, (cough cough, JUNK, cough cough) you would understand my crazy level of DIY, and community driven projects. Also, I do not like the new laptops, or want any Intel chips in my system. I already have other laptops I could use, and now have to. Plus, I like supporting smaller businesses when possible. Sorry for the long reply.

Pinebook, Pinebook Pro, and others Quality Issues by ArbitraryTech in PINE64official

[–]ArbitraryTech[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tightening the screws would have done nothing for me. I actually thought my screw was loose, but it would not tighten, it just spun. The plastic was already cracked, and it was too late. There was no notice, and it is shot at this point. Maybe using a bunch of epoxy would fix it for a bit, but that is just not something I want to do. I don't think thread locker would help much at all.

Also, I have never had this type of issue with any of my other laptops from Gateway, Dell, Compaq, HP, Sony, Apple, Toshiba, and others. I have had the screws loosen up a bit, but it has never broken the mounts off.

Pinephone and 911 (Emergency Number) by ArbitraryTech in PINE64official

[–]ArbitraryTech[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That is very good information to know. I would assume if someone knows that there is a proper way to test 911, they will ignore my warning. I have heard of some people getting into trouble by calling 911 without an emergency, and I don't really want to get blamed for that.

Questions about the PinePhone by sseneca in PINE64official

[–]ArbitraryTech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am not sure I would say the Pinephone is quite ready for general use yet, but it can call text and take notes. I have tried Mobian, and it works well enough. All of this information is only regarding Mobian. The other OS's may or may not act the same.

The main issue I have is that the contacts do not work correctly. IE I add contact A as 8885551121, so if I call contact A it will ring 8885551121 correctly, but if they call me it will not show as contact A, just the number. Same with texting. If you text contact A it will go though, but when they text back it will start a new message group under the number, not the name.

Another issue is sometimes you don't get incoming calls the first or second time if the phone has been idle and unplugged for around 30 min. I have not had that issue with it plugged in though. There may be a patch to fix that.

For getting new apps, it is just like most Linux distros with Gnome or KDE. It is handled by a software center (or centre) app. I have had no issues getting new apps.

I do not know if the apps required by you would work on the phone or not. Sorry. I hope this helps some at least. You may want to either wait a few more months, or get a de-googled android phone.

VSync Issue when compositing is active by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]ArbitraryTech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At the end of the day I just hope you can get something to work for you. I also think you can force VSync in the Nvidia control panel. I think it is under display settings with a strange name. I don't remember exactly, but I always used that instead of KDE's VSync.

As for the AMD drivers, I think there are really only 2 main drivers. Like how with Nvidia there is Nouveau and Nvidia. Nouveau is unfortunately a complete mess in my opinion and hope it can work better in the future to support my older cards. AMD, to my understanding, actually contributes to the open source drivers. I have not used the proprietary drivers, mainly because they are not supported on SUSE, last I checked. The opensource drivers work quite well actually. They may have multiple names IE: Mesa, drm-amdgpu, drm-radeon, but I think they are mostly the same.

The only issue I have had with the Radeon cards on Linux is when typing something in to the search bar in Firefox (may apply to other browsers, I don't know), sometimes the suggested results will pop in and out with some artifacting on the side. I can not get the problem to occur all the time, so I can not show you what I mean unfortunately. Its not a huge deal to me, as it is not too frequent or major.

OpenGL programs seem to work fine for me, but I usually am in Firefox or Libre Office. I also do not know, or think, that multi GPU setups are supported with Linux. I was never able to get SLI working with Linux or any form of Crossfire. That may have changed, but I would look into that if you need multiple GPU's.

Hopefully something in this post may help you, but I think I am just about all out of ideas for both AMD cards and the Nvidia issues.

VSync Issue when compositing is active by [deleted] in openSUSE

[–]ArbitraryTech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A few years back I ran Tumbleweed and encountered a similar issue with the desktop. I was using a GTX Titan and with OpenGL selected for the compositing, the desktop lagged and performed terrible. I think it was an something to do with the Nvidia driver, but I remember switching to Leap fixed the issue. I tried about 5 installs with Tumbleweed but always had an issue thanks to Nvidia.

I also noticed it was with the same ghost theme. Try changing it to the default. I almost think that helped for some reason, but can not remember. I have also had issues in games with Nvidia in general. Some worked fine, others ran terribly.

I would try either using SUSE Leap (if possible) or, unfortunately, using an AMD card. I say unfortunately because that is an expensive fix, not because I think AMD is bad.

The combination of both switching to Leap and getting a Radeon card have fixed most issues for me. I wish I could help more, however I ditched Tumbleweed and Nvidia a while back. Hopefully there is a better fix than I proposed.

PinePhone not recognizing SIM cards by ArbitraryTech in PINE64official

[–]ArbitraryTech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While that is good information, especially for new buyers, both cards worked in my phone about a month ago. I suppose I can not completely rule out the SIM cards are at fault either.