Pinebook Pro Arch Linux Alternative

In a previous post I talked a bit about setting up Arch Linux on the Pinebook Pro. That process relied on using a third-party pacman repo for the Pinebook Pro specific build and driver stuff which has disappeared and seems to be no longer maintained. As there’s still no official Arch Linux ARM Pinebook Pro support, I’ve decided that the next best thing is to use official Manjaro images to get as close to my familiar Arch Linux setup as I can. It’s not perfect (because it’s not Arch), but Manjaro is based on top of Arch Linux and it’s easier than the hoops you have to jump through to actually get Arch on the Pinebook Pro. Here’s my guide in which I detail the steps I went through to achieve the following goals:

I take no responsibility for anything good or bad that happens as a result of following this guide. If you manage to brick your Pinebook Pro and think I’m somehow to blame, you can shoot me a nasty email. It’s OK, I won’t hold it against you. But I probably won’t reply. Make sure you’re plugged into a power outlet before starting this, because it takes a while, and running out of juice midway may leave your Pinebook Pro in an… interesting state.

I downloaded the Pinebook Pro Minimal Manjaro image. This is a base install that doesn’t include any window managers or even xorg. You could pick one of the other images too if you wanted, but we’re only using it to perform the installation so it makes sense to optimize for the smallest possible size.

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