HCL:Pinebook-Pro-RK3399

The Pinebook Pro is a laptop based on Rockchip RK3399 SOC with Mali T860 MP4 GPU.

Technical data

Rockchip RK3399 SoC
- 2x ARM Cortex-A72
- 4x ARM Cortex-A53
- ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU
4GB LPDDR4 RAM
14" 1080p IPS Panel
Bootable Micro SD Slot
64GB of eMMC (Upgradable)
PCIe x4 to m.2 NVMe SSD Slot (requires optional adapter)
SPI Flash 128Mbit
HD Digital Video Out via USB-C
USB 2.0 Host
USB 3.0 Host
USB-C (Data, Power and Video out)
Lithium Polymer Battery (10000mAH)
Stereo Speakers
WiFi 802.11 AC + Bluetooth 5.0
Headphone Jack
Microphone
Front-Facing Camera (1080p)
Privacy Switches for Camera, Microphones and BT/WiFi
UART Access via Audio Jack
Barrel Power (5V 3A) Port

Installation: Writing a disk image to the SD card, eMMC or USB

This image is constantly updated and being tested by volunteers, but has still known issues. If you want to join the test effort, please join us

Tumbleweed

JeOS image E20 image XFCE image LXQT image GNOME image KDE image X11 image

If the direct links above do not work for you, please check the general download directory for the images.

Get serial connection

The Pinebook Pro has a serial port on the audio Jack, but you need to enable it by removing the bottom cover of the laptop and setting the UART switch towards the touchpad.

You can buy the debug cable from PINE64 Store: https://pine64.com/product/pinebook-pinephone-pinetab-serial-console/ or you can build your own cable by following https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5026

The pinout for the serial connector on the laptop side is:

Tip: RX
Ring: TX
Sleeve: GND

The serial connection is 3.3V and 115200n8.

Boot order

The rk3399 SoC will look for boot code (u-boot) from SPI, eMMC, SD card (in this order).

Once u-boot is booted, upstream u-boot has the following boot order: SD, eMMC, NVME, USB, network.

Note: If you use u-boot from Manjaro, the order is different: USB, SD, eMMC, NVME, network.

Installation guide

Pinebook Pro ships with Manjaro OS by default. In order to install openSUSE or any other OS, you will need to flash a BIOS first like the following:

U-boot
Tow-Boot: Detailed installation guideline is provided by the official Tow-Boot site in the link

openSUSE installation on eMMC

Upon boot of the system, navigate inside the media where your openSUSE image is located. Ensure which disk you want to flash your openSUSE image by running

lsblk

Extract and flash the image on the eMMC on the disk you found earlier (should look like /dev/mmcblkXX)

xzcat openSUSE-Tumbleweed-ARM-xxx-pinebookpro.aarch64-xxx.raw.xz | dd of=/dev/mmcblkXX bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync

Known issues

When booted from openSUSE Tumbleweed image, there are some issues Which need to be fixed (See boo#1194491):
- Sound does not work out of the box. See how to fix it here: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1194491#c63
- Power led is not lighted-up (not managed by upstream u-boot yet)
- ~~Screen is not working with upstream u-boot version 2021.10.~~ This is fixed in u-boot 2022.01 (Tumbleweed snapshot 20220123+).