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Contributing to the PineNote Ecosystem#

Introduction#

The software side of the PineNote is purely community driven. It follows that all aspects of this software ecosystem need help, to varying degrees.

In the following some long-standing themes are discussed. However, if you are willing to actively help, please drop into the PineNote chat on matrix/irc/telegram (see wiki.pine64.org ).

What open issues are there?#

This is mostly an documentation issue, and information is widely scattered between the chat, the wiki, and the repositories containing the various parts of the Debian image. While in the end all general issues for the PineNote should be collected and managed in the wiki, for now a first point of contact is the issue tracker of the Debian image: https://github.com/PNDeb/pinenote-debian-image/issues Here you will also find some meta issues that hopefully provide you with enough information to tackle your issues, or find a place to contribute.

Documentation#

This is always an issue. User-side documentation can always use help. Usually it's best if you try to contribute to this documentation by improving aspects that you found difficult to follow, or topics that you think are important, but are completely missing from the documentation.

Traditionally, technical, as well as user-focussed, information can be found in the Pine wiki. However, the PineNote comes with a separate user manual (this document you are reading right now), which resides in this GitHub repository.

Issues and pull-requests are very welcome!

If you want to improve the technical documentation, it's best to focus on the wiki (linked above).

Upstreaming#

There are ongoing efforts to get the missing pieces of the PineNote software in the mainline Linux kernel and the U-Boot boot loader. This is a process known as upstreaming. This includes the EBC kernel driver for the e-ink panel, various bugfixes and other small improvements. With everything upstreamed, the entire Device Tree data for the PineNote, all the required kernel drivers, complete boot loader support and the related configuration will become part of the mainline Linux kernel and U-Boot, ensuring that all Linux distributions can support the PineNote as a "first-class citizen". This ensures that the PineNote will always support the latest available version of the Linux kernel and U-Boot, preventing any kind of obsolescence in that regard.

If you want to help with these efforts or contribute in any way, please reach out in the #pinenote channel on one of the community chat platforms.

Custom Software#

Kernel#

The kernel currently used for the PineNote is maintained here:

https://github.com/m-weigand/linux

Look for branches beginning with "branch_pinenote_" to find ready-to-use branches. Other branches contain individual patches for certain subsystems.

Patched Debian Packages#

Not many Debian packages need patching to get the PineNote running:

  • mesa must be patched to allow 3D hardware acceleration in combination with the ebc driver.
  • we use a slightly patched gnome-shell package to allow for better integration of certain ebc-related tasks. These are fully optional modifications.