 For a few years, I have been saying one of the biggest things that holds Linux back as far as being adopted by the masses Is the fact that you can't go and buy a three or four hundred dollar laptop at Best Buy or some of your big box stores You can't go and get one of those cheap laptops pre-installed with Linux You if you wanted a laptop pre-installed with Linux They're typically specialty devices from these specialty stores and they're typically high-end machines Think of the devices from system 76 for example those laptops. They are not cheap. They are high-end devices. They're really Desktop replacement laptops the same thing the offerings from Dell are very expensive the offerings from Lenovo Their recent thinkpads that are now being shipped with Fedora and soon to come with a boon to those laptops are not cheap They're really again desktop replacements or even workstation replacements and I wanted something that was more of a budget offering I wanted something for the kids all these kids that are going out and buying Google's Chromebooks right we need something in that range and that price range and One of the things that's been interesting me is the pine book so a few weeks ago I ordered a pine book pro and it was delivered last week and it was actually Delivered during the aftermath of hurricane Laura and I was out of power and my area was completely devastated As stated and the delivery driver actually delivered my pine book last week He actually couldn't get to my house because of the storm damage There was trees in the road and all of this so he actually called me and I went and met him where he was at and I got My pine book last week, but I was out of power So it just stayed in the box and it stayed in the box since I got power back on a few days ago Because I wanted to keep it in the box mainly for this video in this video I'm gonna unbox my pine book pro for the first time and I'm gonna power it up And we're gonna give it a first impression and a first look kind of video So the packaging it came in two packages I've got the laptop of course in the brown box here, and then I've got this white box Which I'm assuming has the the charger. Yeah as the Adapter here, and it has got two Plugs here. I don't know if you guys can see that We will get to those here in a second when we power it up. Let's unbox the machine here Get into the packaging here, and of course I have a letter from the pine book guys basically saying Congratulations on my new purchase that's nice and May get through the packing material here and I'm actually rather surprised at how thin this this pine book is Packaging here me get rid of the static wrap here and Now this is I don't know if you guys can see that this is a very very thin device and I love that as a cheap device, you know, it doesn't have a Dedicated graphics card in it and yeah, it is just super super thin But you know what it feels sturdy like it feels like it's well built and it's 200 dollars I don't know if I mentioned that this was $199 and 99 cents, you know place whatever I paid for shipping and You know the keyboard just playing with the keys. It's very similar to like my Toshiba satellite keyboard, you know, same kind of keys same kind of a press as far as you know How much force it takes to activate the keys? There is no numpad. Of course, this is a smaller keyboard, right? It's I think it's only a 13 inch screen. Let me check the specs on that Actually, it looks like it's a 14 inch screen, but you know, it's a very small device, right? It's really nice and compact and that's kind of what I wanted with this machine I wasn't needing like a desktop replacement. I didn't need, you know, something that would replace my Production desktop tower, right? I just needed something that I could connect to the internet to You know, I could put in a laptop bag and take with me when I travel and this machine here I think is perfect. Let me see if I can get this powered up and Let me find some kind of adapter so I can capture the screen once I power it up Give me just a second guys and I won't be able to use any kind of capture card to capture the screen here because I don't have any capture devices that aren't HDMI and The Pinebook Pro does not have a HDMI port on it So just looking at it for those wondering about the ports. There is the power plug. There is a USB 3 port There is a type-c port on the other end. I have a USB 2 port and I have a headphone jack I'm just going to have to do the best I can to record the screen with the camera I will try to angle this but let's go ahead and hit the power button and see if this thing powers up All right, and it's booting up now and This does ship with manjaro. I haven't mentioned the operating system But the manjaro team has been teaming up With the pine book guys to create this manjaro arm edition specifically for the pine book pro You guys are not going to be able to see this initial boot screen But it's asking me what kind of pine book I have do I have the ISO keyboard the ISO keyboard Which is a UK keyboard or do I have the NZ or the US layout? And I really didn't care which layout I bought because it was hard to get a pine book These things would come in stock sometimes and I was lucky. I was able to get the NC US layout But if the UK layout would have been available, I would have bought that as well but I do have the NC so let me arrow down here and Choose the ANSI layout now. It's going to ask me about my username for this Let me go ahead and choose a username. So I'm going to be DT on this computer All right, enter additional groups for DT. So it looks like by default He's going to be a member of the wheel group the sys group audio input video storage LP network users and power Do I need to add him to anything else? No, that'll be all right Enter the full name for DT. I'm just going to enter DT again enter a password for DT Let me enter a strong and complicated password for the DT user now. We need to enter our root password So this is for the root user of the system All right, and now it's asking me about time zone. So this is the locale information, which for me I'm going to choose America slash Chicago Somewhere in this list. I know yep So I'm not actually in Chicago But Chicago is in the central time zone in the US and I do live in the central US time zone All right, choose Locale here. This should be English us. So if I hit e on the keyboard It'll get me to the ease and then I need to find English underscore us dot utf and there it is Enter the desired host name for the system. I'm just going to call this pine book makes sense All right is the below information correct and it's showing me my username the groups It's showing me time zone locale keyboard layout and host name. All of that looks good I'm just going to hit enter and it should set up this Manjaro installation for us. I'm not sure what desktop environment this comes with. I think it's Manjaro KDE It's again, it's a special edition of Manjaro just for the pine book All right, and it took a couple of minutes to reboot and wow It's definitely KDE and we have this beautiful login manager screen. I can turn it so you guys can see the camera there and Let me log in with my password here and Let's see how long it takes to boot up Again, this is a $200 laptop. So and you know the specs on it, you know, this is not a workstation Laptop, right? So I'm not expecting it to be blazing fast But I do expect it to be usable All right, and that took oh probably about 30 seconds to boot up there From the login screen to actually getting us into the KDE Plasma desktop Now, I don't know if that was just a first-time logging in thing or if that's the speed of Logging in that I can normally expect but I will say the desktop environment looks gorgeous I love the Manjaro arm wallpaper and Let's see. I haven't done anything with the mouse pad, but you know, just the feel and function of it is Okay, I will say the fonts Are a little small on the screen. I'm not sure what resolution they have this set to but I may have to change it But you know everything let me just launch some stuff Everything looks like it does have some pep in its step Firefox Of course being a web browser It's going to take the longest time to load probably of any application on this and It did not want to load Firefox for some reason. Let me Click on Firefox a second time It looked like it was complaining about the avahi server I don't know. There was an error when avahi started, but there's Firefox All right, and it did take you know a few seconds for Firefox to launch there But that's not anything unusual on a underpowered laptop again your web browsers Firefox Chrome Vivaldi Brave, you know your standard big heavy bloated web browsers. They just you know our Resource hogs, you know, they require a lot of RAM especially and there's nothing you can do about that That's just life with the modern web But yeah, I mean just my initial unboxing and first look of this I think I'm gonna be happy with this laptop. I can't stress to you enough for a $200 laptop This thing feels sturdy. I mean, let's it doesn't feel cheap or plasticky or anything I mean it feels like a backing is metal. I don't know if it's actually metal or you know, I think it's aluminum But you know, it's it's well built for a $200 laptop. I'm actually really surprised I thought when I got this thing that it may end up looking like just a cheap toy But I think I could do real work on this one other thing I want to do just for this initial Taking a look at something I will launch console the terminal here You guys are not going to see this but I want to do a you name Dash are and we are running kernel 5.7.2 Dash 1 dash manjaro arm. So pretty recent kernel 5.7.2.1 I probably do need to try to run an update. Did it actually connect to any kind of Wi-Fi? I don't know if it detected my network automatically No, I've got to log in of course because my Wi-Fi is password protected I will take care of that off-camera and I will will run through the update off-camera as well So that's it for this quick unboxing a video for the Pinebook Pro as I play with it in the coming weeks and the coming months I may give you guys updates on how the Pinebook is holding up but again for a $200 laptop it seems to be very well built and I love the fact that they ship with manjaro Because you know it's a arm processor in this thing and I wasn't sure what Linux distribution was going to be shipped When I got it on the Pinebook, but I was already thinking I would probably put arch arm on it But because it comes with manjaro arm, which is an arch based Linux distribution and I've run manjaro many times in the past And I love manjaro as a distribution. That's perfect. I don't know about the KDE plasma desktop I may throw some of my window managers on it. We'll see but I'm very happy with that purchase And I think from now on when you guys see see matrix running on a laptop behind me It's going to be my Pinebook Pro Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and retire the Toshiba satellite and the Lenovo think pad They're getting a little old and what I probably will do I've got family members especially kids in school not my personal kids But I've got nieces and nephews that are in high school and in college some of them need laptops And of course I now that I have the Pinebook Pro I'll probably give the Toshiba satellite and that Lenovo think pad away to those family members that need those devices Now before I go I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of the show I need to thank Michael, Gabe, Corbinian, Mitchell, Devon, Fran, Archive2530, Akami Channel, Chuck, Claudio, Donnie, Dylan, George, Kelliff, Devils, Lewis, Paul, Scott, and Willie these guys They are my highest tier patrons over on patreon without these guys this Unboxing and first look of the Pinebook Pro wouldn't have been possible The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen this list of names These are all my supporters over on patreon because there are no corporate sponsors here at distro tube Pinebook did not send me that Pinebook. I bought that Pinebook This channel is supported by you guys the community if you'd like to support my work Subscribe to DT over on patreon. All right guys. Peace