I got the #Pine64 #PineBuds Pro today. They sound pretty good, paired easily to my iPhone, more comfortable than AirPods. I like that the firmware is #opensource. You can potentially create a custom audio profile or find a community made profile and flash it to the pinebuds. No wireless charging, but the community has already made a mod for that. The beauty of opensource.
Important update for US customers.
The PinePhone, PineTab, and Pinenote are still able to ship from Hong Kong. However, all shipments from China are already suspended due to our shipping service no longer accepting packages.
The effect of the US tariffs start on May 2nd when shipments reach US customs. So please be aware that even if you place an order before May 2nd that it is possible (and likely if ordered close to the date) to be charged the extra tariff fee on top.
Thank You.
Our bridge bots have been unbanned and whitelisted, it turns out this was due to spam coming through the matrix bridge.
We are going to make some changes to help mitigate spam.
Thank you to the Matrix team for helping us out.
Quick heads up, our bridge bots on the Matrix side are continuing to get banned for an unknown reason. Therefore some channels on Matrix are no longer bridging.
IRC, Discord and Telegram remain unaffected, we will continue looking into possible solutions for the time being.
Got my PineTime yesterday.
Gotta play with GopherWatch and make some fun stuff with it!
What's the latest thing you've done with it @ayke ?
Happy April (no fools this year)!
Another community update is here. This month we report on the return of the PineTab-V, the release of our micro soldering tip set, the imminent release of the StarPro64 SBC and software improvements to the PineTab 2 and PineNote.
And Charlie the Pinecorn returns for April too 
.
So here's how it went, A PineNote only 5-day weekend.
EL;DC: went well, I declare this experience a success for my needs.
made a small amount of progress 
managed to hack an existing image for the #Pine64 #SoQuartz blade for running #AlpineLinux and it works!
i felt that the #RK3566 chip was running a little hot so i decided to add a little heartsink as well
did a little test to see if the NVMe SATA adapter works by hooking up two spare harddrives i had, and they showed up on lsblk
now i just need to design the mounts for the blade and harddrives
Interesting, my soldering iron Pinecil has added BLE communication and companion app for mobile 
Sweet!
Also, props to my #PINE64 #PinePower power supply with its 5 USB ports keeping most of these going. Very handy for running a lot of devices at once.
PineNote Week Two mini-update. I'm just using the device now. It doesn't feel like a shiny new device anymore (post honeymoon) but I'm still enamored (to stretch the metaphor). I have been using it as a reading and writing device for the most part, single function at a time, and I'm quite happy with it.
I'm not really doing any application switching and using it as a full-Linux device (which it is)... BUT, I'm going away on a 5 day trip and considering just taking the PineNote (with a wireless keyboard) instead of a laptop. Maybe I should and report on that experience!? Bottom-line, that thought doesn't make me nervous (I'll get it on my Tailscale network and leave it without a lock-screen maybe? Taking suggestions!)
If you haven't seen the PineNote overview and rough edges videos, they still hold true after two weeks of usage. I don't generally worry about charging it day to day, aside from that still no other thoughts on battery yet.
If you want to run mainline Debian on the original PineBook, the onboard WIFI will hopefully be supported soon. A patch has been accepted. Now we wait for that oh-so valuable human curation, as it migrates through the versioning process!
"drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtw88: Enable RTW88_8723CS as a module"
https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/linux/-/commit/4acf7a7bb31b3bde01eb98bc02e6790bc46ee1d1
The Pine Phone Pro arrived earlier this week. After a few unfocused, false starts I finally got it booting into Gnome and currently installing Waydroid over ssh.
My wife uses a cheesey coupon clipping app (iOS/Android) for doing the groceries and such. I'll need to take a look at what traffic flows in-n-out of this app to see what is being farmed and segregate/container off if required.
We are heavy Signal users but I may use this as an excuse to set up a XMPP server. Twas on the 'roadmap'.
Initial impressions are good. Definitely not as shiny and smooth as an iOS or Android device but - it's a phone. We spent half our lives with dumb rotary dialing doohickeys - we'll survive. lol
Pretty impressed with Gnome on a touch device so far. This is my first real experience with it. No 'klunkiness' so far but just scratching the surface.
It will be interesting to see how a non-technical person takes to it. I'm going to monkey with it myself for the first week or so to find the hard edges to save her the frustration.
I want to experiment with Android Auto - see what (if anything) is possible.
I also obtained a Seeed Studio Sensecap T1000-E (meshtastic, lora, etc.) to connect to this device. We'll see how far I get with that.
I really need a staff... 
Ha!
Tested the latest #GNOME #Snapshot on #postmarketOS on my #PINE64 #PinePhonePro! It's been a while since I revisited the PinePhonePro but with cameras and camera utilities coming a long way on newer devices I wanted to revisit #libcamera on the PinePhones. I installed @NekoCWD's cameractrl and it successfully controls focus, but the PPP camera seems to have autoexposure that reduces the utility of cameractrl's exposure slider. Anyways, here's a picture of some other postmarketOS devices.
I made another PineNote video to address the "rough edges" I mentioned in my previous video: https://makertube.net/w/w3MicEqLiVrpE1FcAvKKae
TL;DW: minor inconveniences, overcome by config and awareness.
Using PineNote as a "laptop" with a Bluetooth keyboard is probably the next thing I cover. Let me know what kinds of questions you might have around that use case.
This week's Linux and FOSS news:
LINUX NEWS
GNOME 48 "Bengaluru" released with dynamic triple buffering to boost the performance on low-end GPUs, Wayland color management protocol support, new Adwaita fonts, HDR (High Dynamic Range) support, new Wellbeing feature with screen time tracking, new Display Control utility, new windows centered by default, OSD notifications for headphone connections, new Papers app as the default document viewer, notifications grouped by apps, improvements to Nautilus and Software, Loupe got image editing support etc.:
https://9to5linux.com/gnome-48-bengaluru-desktop-environment-officially-released-this-is-whats-new
(Finally there's an image viewer on Linux which can do simple editing without opening a separate program)
Serpent OS changes name to AerynOS, because of "serpent" having a negative association:
https://9to5linux.com/ikey-dohertys-serpent-os-changes-name-to-aerynos
(Instead of a "negative" name, now it has a name that's hard to spell correctly, judging from how many people spell Python incorrectly lol)
Fedora 42 Beta available with new KDE edition (not spin anymore!), COSMIC spin, refreshed Anaconda installer, DNF5 improvements etc.:
https://betanews.com/2025/03/18/fedora-linux-42-beta-asahi-kde-cosmic-new-features/
Kali Linux 2025.1 released with Xfce 4.20, KDE Plasma 6.2, refreshed theme, new keyboard shortcuts, kernel update, new partition layout etc.:
https://9to5linux.com/kali-linux-2025-1-ethical-hacking-distro-is-here-with-xfce-4-20-refreshed-theme
Lead developer of the Dash to Panel GNOME extension quits due to drama around the animated heart icon with a donation message:
https://news.itsfoss.com/dash-to-panel-drama/
(Linux isn't Linux without a drama each week...)
PINE64 RISC-V tablet (PineTab-V) gets new Debian-based distro, new accelerometer, a fix for a slow charging issue, an LED status indicator light, and a unique identifier for the PineTab-V in the EEPROM:
https://news.itsfoss.com/pinetab-v-upgrade/
(FOSS news in comment)
https://files.hrdl.eu/pn_2025-03-20_sway_hints.mp4
Reposting this video here from community member Hrdl.
This video demos the improved display controller driver for the #pine64 #PineNote, which means goodbye to artifacting and welcome to automatic redrawing on a per pixel basis. As seen in the video, the display runs at a higher (and stable) 84Hz refresh rate than the stock 80Hz thanks to some tuning.
You can find the work Hrdl has been doing here: https://git.sr.ht/~hrdl/linux
The PineTab2 I ordered from Pine64 arrived yesterday .
I am highly impressed and recommend!
Not bad at all for $242.99 delivered.
https://pine64.org/
#Pine64 #pinetab2
767 app updates in Arch BTW.
#ArchLinux
I've been trying out running the PineNote at 100% scaling but with 2.25x font size with Noto Sans Bold. I think this might generally be a better experience but some icons in apps (Xournal++) and window control are kinda small. Not sure if I'll stick with it. But good thing is that the settings persist after a restart.
