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Early adopters of PINE64’s PineTab will be happy to learn that there’s now a build of the Arch Linux ARM distribution that works on the Linux-powered tablet.
I just told you earlier that the Debian-based Mobian Linux distribution announced support for the PineTab Linux tablet, which recently started shipping to those backers who were brave enough to get their hands on PinePhone’s bigger brother.
And now, I’ve learned that the Arch Linux ARM distribution for mobile devices has an early build for the PineTab Linux tablet, and you can try it right now from the project’s GitHub page.
Two builds are available, a barebone one that probably provides only some basic tools and USB connection, and a normal version that should offer you everything Arch Linux is known for.
Just like Mobian Linux, it would appear that Arch Linux ARM has adopted Purism’s Phosh (Phone Shell) mobile UI to provide users with a modern, GNOME-based graphical interface on the PineTab.
A few months ago, there was also an Arch Linux ARM build with the lightweight LXQt desktop environment, but I haven’t seen any recent progress on it.
Of course, being the first build for the PineTab Linux tablet, you should expect some things not work properly or at all. For example, sound doesn’t work. Also, SSH is disabled in this build for security reasons.
If you need SSH, you can enable it manually by running the sudo systemctl enable sshd command in a terminal emulator.
The source code is available for download as well, so happy hacking!
Besides the PineTab, the Arch Linux ARM distribution runs on a wide range of ARM-powered devices, including the Raspberry Pi, Asus Chromebook Flip, BeagleBoard, and PINE64’s ROCK64 SBC. A complete list with all supported devices is available on the official website.
Last updated 4 years ago
