I am not well-versed enough in the intricacies of software-hardware compatibility to know this, so I was wondering if someone out there could comment on the possibility of putting PureOS on the upcoming PineTab2, which is released this week? It ships with a Arch-based Linux that is running a KDE-based environment, but I know postmarketOS (Pine64’s in-house OS) can use Purism’s Gnome-based Phosh, so should there be any reason it couldn’t work?
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The PineTab2 wiki indicates that the device still lacks quite a few things for mainline Linux support:
Notable features currently missing are the display panel driver (needs submitting), Wi-Fi driver (needs porting/major cleanup) and camera driver (needs writing).
If you check the wiki of the Quartz64, which uses the same RK3566 processor, you will see that the bootloader, WiFi and video output don’t yet have mainline Linux support. What this means is that it would take quite a bit of hacking on the kernel to add those things to a PureOS port. I assume that there will eventually be a Mobian port, which is very close to PluriOS, so I recommend using that when it is released.
Unlike with x86, it takes a while for mainline Linux to support new ARM chips, even with Rockchip, which is one of the best ARM manufacturers in terms of its Linux support.
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It looks like Mobian is working on the PineTab2 port:
But there’s nothing about the PineTab2 on Mobian’s installation page so far.
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