Apps

This page is dedicated to the instructions for getting/configuring various apps to work nicely on the PineNote.

GIMP

Installing

Unfortunately, it appears the Debian repos for arm don't have GIMP in them. Luckily for us, flatpak does have it.

We can install flatpak using sudo apt install flatpak gnome-software-plugin-flatpak (the second package lets you use flatpak from the software center).

Once installed we can add flathub using sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Then we can install gimp, sudo flatpak install org.gimp.GIMP. You may need to restart to get it to show up in the app launcher.

For more info on flatpak, see the Debian wiki article on it.

Configuring

Once installed, there are some setting you'll want to tweak on it. First lets get the pen working properly.

From GIMP's top bar, go to Edit > Input Devices. Then click xwayland-tablet stylus and change the mode to screen. Repeat this process for xwayland-tablet eraser then hit save and then close. More info regarding using the pen in gimp can be found in GIMP's documentation.

Next we'll tell GIMP to use our system theme, which works a bit nicer on the e ink screen. On the top bar, click Edit > Preferences, then under Interface click theme and then system. You may also want to switch the icon theme while you have this menu open. I find Symbolic-Inverted-High-Contrast seems to work well for me. Then click ok to save and exit the menu.

Finally, if you want the pen button to move the canvas around, you need to change what the button does system wide. You can do this by launching the Settings app going to Wacom Tablet in the sidebar, scrolling down to General Pen, and changing button 1 to middle mousebutton Click.

Xournal++

The PineNote Debian image comes with a custom build of Xournal++ preinstalled. However, there are some settings you need to tweak for the pen's eraser to work. From the top bar go to Edit > Preference. I found clicking the Edit button with the touch screen is finicky, but if I hover the pen over it for half a second then press it, it seems to open consistently.

From the preferences menu go to Input System. Then from there make sure the device labeled Stylus (Pen) is set to Pen and the one labeled Stylus (Eraser) (eraser) is set to Eraser.

Then go to Stylus on the side bar and scroll down to Stylus Buttons. Here you can change what the different pen functions do. Button 1 is the button on the side. I personally changed the eraser to behave as an eraser. You'll also want to change Stylus-based eraser is visible to Never, to prevent artifacts from the eraser.

FireFox

Firefox is preinstalled on the Debian image. Generally it should work fine out of the box. However, you can get some better performance out of it by enabling hardware acceleration on it, as described in 0ccam's notes.

You can add MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to your environment my making a new file at /etc/profile.d/firefox-wayland.sh as root and putting export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 in it. Then after restarting, you can go to about:config in firefox and set gfx.webrender.all to true. about:support should now show WebRender under Compositing, instead of WebRender (Software).