14 DAY TRIAL // Ex-Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell announced today that his KDE neon Linux-based operating system is now available for the Pinebook 64-bit ARM laptop.
Available on the market for about two years now, the Pinebook laptop offers a lightweight and low-cost alternative to Chromebooks. It was created by the Chinese company Pine64 behind the PINE A64 single-board computer that aims to be an alternative to the well-known Raspberry Pi.
Just like the PINE A64 single-board computer, the Pinebook notebook is powered by a 64-bit ARM processor, which makes it affordable to those who don't want to spend a lot of money on a new Intel-powered laptop, and it runs Linux just well, especially the KDE neon operating system with the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
"Blue Systems has worked together with the manufacturer of the Pinebook to create a showcase test image that runs well on these devices. The team has adapted KDE neon and created a bootable and installable remixed live image that works on the Pinebook," said KDE neon developer Jonathan Riddell.
Meet the KDE neon Pinebook Remix
According to Jonathan Riddell, the KDE Plasma desktop environment is an excellent candidate for the Pinebook, which comes with 2 GB of RAM, 16GB of eMMC 5.0 flash storage, as well as either a 14-inch TN LCD with a 1366 x 768 pixels resolution or an 11.6-inch IPS LCD. Both models are using a 1.2GHz 64-bit Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 chip.
So if you own the Pinebook ARM laptop or you plan on buying a new 64-bit ARM notebook that's cheap and runs Linux, you can download the KDE neon Pinebook Remix images right now from here. Detailed installation instructions are provided by the KDE neon developers on the official forums.
The KDE neon Pinebook Remix operating system is still in development as some things need to be further polished for an out-of-the-box experience, but it's usable for everyday use. It is based on the KDE neon User Edition release, which, in turn, is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver).
Under the hood, KDE neon Pinebook Remix runs Linux kernel 3.10.105-bsp-1.2, as well as the latest KDE Plasma 5.13.4 desktop environment and KDE Frameworks 5.49.0 software suite compiled against the Qt 5.11.1 open-source application framework. Don't hesitate to join the forum discussion if you want to give feedback to the developers.
