Pinebook

[philo]

Laptop but Android.

A friend gave me a Pinebook with a lost password.

I've never worked on one before, so thought it a nice challenge. It did
not take me too long to run Kali Linux on it from an SD card. I could
have left it at that but still wanted to see if I could run the original OS.

After poking around a bit, I found a password.key file in the system
folder that I renamed and I'll be darned, I booted to the desktop where
I did a factory reset.

Though I can install apps from the Google store, I prefer not to sign
in...so have been looking for APK's to install.

Thus far I have Firefox installed but not all APK's designed for a phone
will work.

Oh well, something to do.

[Heron]

On 11/5/2022 1:11 AM, philo wrote:
> Though I can install apps from the Google store, I prefer not to sign
> in...so have been looking for APK's to install.

What Android version?
I never heard of Pinebook but it looks like Android 7 is the latest.
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinebook_Software_Release

[philo]

It's version 6.0.1

using kernel 3.10.65 from 2018


The person who gave this to me wanted it back but I think I'm going to
keep it to fool with and give her a low-end Win10 laptop I have no use for.

In addition to the sd card with Kali Linux on it, I have one with
Manjero so I can run three different OS's on this machine

[Heron]

On 11/5/2022 1:33 PM, philo wrote:
>> What Android version?
>> I never heard of Pinebook but it looks like Android 7 is the latest.
>> https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinebook_Software_Release
>
> It's version 6.0.1
>
> using kernel 3.10.65 from 2018
>
> The person who gave this to me wanted it back but I think I'm going to
> keep it to fool with and give her a low-end Win10 laptop I have no use for.
>
> In addition to the sd card with Kali Linux on it, I have one with
> Manjero so I can run three different OS's on this machine

I'm curious about app compatibility with that Android 6 version.

Do you have an archive of old Android 6 APKs from your own Android 6 days?
If not, do you have an old donor phone you can extract the old APKs off of?

Or are you populating the old Pinebook with current Google Play Store apps?

[Andy Burnelli]

philo wrote:

> Though I can install apps from the Google store, I prefer not to sign
> in...so have been looking for APK's to install.

Hi Philo,

Welcome back.

In trying to help everyone who asks for advice on this Android newsgroup
I've showed many times you don't need to sign into a Google Account to
anonymously obtain all the Google content that anyone would need to get.

To obtain all the exact Google Play Store APKs, all you need is the Aurora
FOSS Google Play Store client (which is far better in every way anyway).
<https://auroraoss.com/>

Whether or not the latest Aurora Google Play Store client works on your
version of Android, you should be able to find an older version that might.

As for making use of that big Android laptop screen, perhaps the next app
I'd run would be a FOSS Google YouTube replacement client (again, better).
<https://newpipe.net/>

While the same caveats apply about the latest app version running on an
older Android, if that FOSS YouTube client works on the laptop, you'll get
to see full-screen youtube (and other platform) videos, sans any ads.

To make better use of that laptop keyboard, perhaps the next app I'd
install is the FOSS Google Chrome replacement client (more private).
<https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-android>

Maybe even a FOSS system wide firewall and a FOSS non-Google MUA?
<https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard>
<https://email.faircode.eu/>

Please do report back to let us know how they work out for you
as the whole point is each of us helpfully educates everyone else.
--
Posted out of the goodness of my heart to disseminate useful information
which in this case is how to anonymously obtain Google APK/YT content.

[philo]

Since I'm going to be keeping it, I can sign in to Google Play . I
already used that to upgrade the version of Firefox that I saved an APK
from.

I have a few APK's that I've saved as backups for my Android phone that
I will try to install on the Pinebook.

This is all strictly for experimental use but who knows?

[Heron]

On 11/5/2022 11:07 PM, philo wrote:
> I have a few APK's that I've saved as backups for my Android phone that
> I will try to install on the Pinebook.

Each time you are on any Android device and contemplating an OS upgrade,
it's a good idea to extract all the APKs and store them on a hard drive.

What I do is I store the APKs in folders labeled by the Android OS version.

That way if I were to repopulate an old Android 6 device, I'd first use the
app archival folder that I had saved years prior from an Android 6 device.

As Google tries to move developers off the APK standard to AAB (starting
last year), that approach may no longer work in about five or ten years.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/30/22557390/google-apk-app-bundles-package-format-play-store

Even today, given that rule went into effect more than a year ago for new
apps, I'm not sure how we can even tell if we're getting a cross-device APK
anymore anyway when we install apps from the Google Play Store.

I'm not sure how it works but I think anything downloaded off of Google
Play since August of 2021 is a device specific APK that won't work on other
devices anymore like APKs used to prior to that Google August 2021 ruling.
https://www.makeuseof.com/aab-to-replace-apk/

[Honomy]

6 Kasım 2022 Pazar tarihinde saat 08:01:22 UTC+3 itibarıyla Heron şunları yazdı:

Adana kent kart bakiye sorgulamak için https://prie.shop/adana-kentkart-bakiye-sorgulama-2022-guncel/

[philo]

Going to fool with the Pinbook shortly.
Also decided it's time to retire my LG Phone.

Still planning on staying with Android...probably get a Galaxy

[Andy Burnelli]

philo wrote:

> Still planning on staying with Android...probably get a Galaxy

When you say planning on staying with Android, do you mean phone or
laptop/tablet?

[philo]

On 11/6/22 2:22 PM, philo wrote:
> On 11/6/22 12:01 AM, Heron wrote:
>> On 11/5/2022 11:07 PM, philo wrote:
>>> I have a few APK's that I've saved as backups for my Android phone
>>> that I will try to install on the Pinebook.
>>
>> Each time you are on any Android device and contemplating an OS upgrade,
>> it's a good idea to extract all the APKs and store them on a hard drive.
>>
>>

<snip>

aab-to-replace-apk/
>
>
>
> Going to fool with the Pinbook shortly.
> Also decided it's time to retire my LG Phone.
>
> Still planning on staying with Android...probably get a Galaxy
>

I have now put that Pinebook away.

Firefox installed just fine from an APK

I next tried the Photo editor Pixlr. It installed OK but does not work
terribly well. It performs flawlessly on my phone.

I recall once running Android in a virtual machine and Pixlr there was
even worse.

Seems like Android is best on phones.

If I do decide to use that Pinebook for anything, I'll probably stick to
Linux