This repository attempts to provide support for running NixOS on the Pinebook Pro laptop from Pine64. It is implemented as a "nixpkgs overlay", so that it's easy to update your system and switch between different channels without losing your Pinebook Pro-specific tweaks.
The repository also contains an sd-image definition. This is not strictly part of the overlay, but it can be used to build a bootable SD card image including the changes from the overlay.
The overlay includes:
- Linux kernel 5.4.0 + changes by @tsys of manjaro
- ~Mainline u-boot, courtesy of @samueldr
- Mesa 19.2.0 if the version in nixpkgs is too old
- No graphical output from u-boot
- No SPI/NVMe support in u-boot
- Suspend does not work
- Hardware accelerated video support is incomplete: The hantro driver in staging is enabled and appears to work (e.g.
ffmpeg -loglevel debug -hwaccel drm -hwaccel_device /dev/dri/card0 -i $some_file.avi -pix_fmt bgra -f fbdev /dev/fb0works), but frontend support is lacking and some codecs aren't supported yet.
Following these instructions, clone the repository somewhere (such as /etc/nixos/overlays) and apply the overlay in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. For example:
nixPath = [
# You can add nixpkgs-overlays to the nix path allows users to use the overlay
"nixpkgs-overlays=/etc/nixos/overlays"
];
# Import the overlays which you wish to use
nixpkgs.overlays = let
kernel = import ./overlays/kernel.nix;
firmware = import ./overlays/firmware.nix;
panfrost = import ./overlays/panfrost.nix;
in [
kernel
firmware
panfrost
];
# Use the kernel from the overlay instead of kernels in nixpkgs which do not yet support all pinebook pro features
boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_rk3399_5_4;
# Include additional firmware packages to support the wifi module
hardware.firmware = [ pkgs.ap6256-firmware ];
Requirements
- A linux machine with Nix installed (doesn't have to be NixOS Linux), capable of compiling or cross-compiling for aarch64.
To build the image, run the following command. Note that this will use whatever channel or path is configured as <nixpkgs> on the build host, with the overlay applied.
nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -I nixos-config=./sd-image-pinebook-pro.nix -A config.system.build.sdImage
This will produce a symlink called result in the working directory, pointing to a path in the nix store containing an SD image. Depending which branch/version of nixpkgs you used, it may or may not be compressed (more recent nixpkgs use bzip2 to compress the finished image).
WARNING: Some hardware batches for the Pinebook Pro ship with the wrong chip for the keyboard controller. While it will work with the firmware it ships with, it may brick while flashing the updated firmware. See this comment on the firmware repository.
It is unclear how to identify said hardware from a running system.
To determine which keyboard controller you have, you will need to disassemble the Pinebook Pro as per the Pine64 wiki, and make sure that the IC next to the U23 marking on the main board is an SH68F83.
The procedure is exactly as described in the original instructions. However, instead of running
sudo apt-get install build-essential libusb-1.0-0-dev xxd
to get the required dependencies, we need the equivalent nix packages. Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater
Inside the repository, create a file called shell.nix, with the following contents:
{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
pkgs.mkShell {
baseInputs = [ pkgs.gnumake pkgs.xxd ];
buildInputs = [ pkgs.libusb ];
}
Now, running nix-shell inside the directory will drop you into a shell containing the build tools and dependencies required. You can then proceed to run make and continue with the original instructions.