zlacker

As an outsider, it sounds to me like Pine64 has failed to explicitly state how much support they are willing to offer each of the popular distro projects. The Community Edition releases implied a pretty high level of support for each of those projects at the time, but now that support has been dropped and the project developers feel lead on.

I don't think it's too late for Pine64 to recover from this, though. IMO, they should define a few support tiers and make it very clear what will be supported at each tier. Then they should commit to a support tier for each of the popular distros for some period of time (eg 3 years). I think it's okay if some projects receive more support than others. But the PinePhone will live or die by the health of its development community. Those developers need to know they're working on solid ground.

I understand that Pine64 is trying to position themselves for greater mass market appeal. I'm part of that market. Maybe Manjaro is best suited for appealing to that market. But regardless, Pine64 shouldn't loose site of what make the PinePhone so appealing to begin with. I haven't bought a PinePhone yet but I've been optimistic about its future and I've hoped to eventually get one. It's primary appeal to me is being able to easily setup whatever distro I want. Without that, I will be much less forgiving of its shortcomings next time I'm considering buying one.

>>CivBas+(OP)
I own one ( community edition ), am currently using one, and still am somewhat optimistic. I should disclose those that I am running PostmarketOS though ( and it makes me glad author will still contribute to that project ).

I am not sure Pine was ever about mass appeal. It was supposed to be for people, who want control over the hardware they own. That seems a little different from mass appeal.

Maybe I misunderstood their value proposition.