Recently I posted regarding my external monitor no longer working.
The solution was to go back by doing sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/linux-pinebook-5.7...
There seem to so many improvements in kernel 5.8 that I didn’t stay with the “solution”.
Currently, therefore, I have to use an Intel machine to make presentations.
Will some announcement be made through mntray, so that I will know when I can go back to using my Pinebook Pro with an external monitor?
Thanks.
Yes. As DP Alt mode is a very sought after feature for the Pinebook Pro, we will surely mention it in the Update threads when it works again. 
Yes … I am looking for this as well … but my external monitor isn’t working, even though I ran a pacman linux-pinebook command, as well.
The package you are seeking is pacman -S linux-pinebookpro not linux-pinebook 
If it still doesn’t work, which USB-C hub/ display are you using? Might have something to do with it. That’s in case you’ve already tried flipping the USB-C cable → oddly the PBP doesn’t get the external monitor in both directions.
The patch on the kernel in unstable is looking good so far.
Hello, Pak0st …
Yes … I did try linux-pinebookpro, as well … but I did NOT try flipping the USB-C cable! duh! LOL … I am using the J5create JCA374, which, I believe, is one of the models other have used with success. Now, I have to go try flipping the silly thing over!
Worth a shot! Thanks!
Ohh … and I was on battery power, when tried, as well. I’ll try it while the laptop is plugged in, as well. Ya never know with these things!
Thanks again …
Dennis
Hope it works!
If it still doesn’t work, see if you can check on some other display too.
For power… Not sure, maybe use the hub’s power delivery (instead of the barrel) in case it wants more juice than the PBP can provide.
Nope … no go … on the J5, anyway. It did work ONCE … but then never came back. it would only clone the screen, however, and couldn’t use it as an ‘extended’ screen. I DID get a generic USB-C to VGA adapter to work, by flopping the USB-C connector over, but it only clones the screen, as well. It doesn’t show up as an additional screen/monitor in Settings/Display, nor does the + P Display switching shortcut (That I JUST found), change how it works.
The J5’s Ethernet port works, at least. It doesn’t help the monitor issue, if the Ethernet is connected, or not, however.
Adding a power adapter to the Powerbook Pro doesn’t help, nor does adding power to the USB-C ‘Power In’ port on the J5.
No happies …
This suspiciously sounds like issues you would expect to find with fbturbo (where jumping through hoops is required to set some Xorg magic).
If you happen to have that package without needing it (some specific program for example), I would remove it. Maybe enable the experimental Panfrost gl3 flag to reclaim something like OBS
I did find fbturbo installed. I don’t know as I specifically needed it for anything … it was just ‘there’. Well … was. I did remove it. The last sentence … is French to me. Unfortunately, if anything … I’m mostly German. I did a search in my software for panfrost and didn’t get a hit.
I am afraid I am only marginally effective at making positive changes to my Linux systems. PBPro is probably a little too cutting edge for me … but I have plenty of bandages.
I did just install mesa-git … no change yet, but haven’t restarted, either.
You won’t find any Panfrost package 
The driver is bundled with mesa.
If you have removed fbturbo, then try again with the usb-c hubs after restarting the machine. The displays will show as expected for mirroring/ extending.
Unlike some earlier post you may find (most likely from November-December last year), now you want mesa and not mesa-git. We are past the point of the essentials living in the quickly changing world of the git version.
As for the last sentence - don’t worry about it
Well … you were very correct! Things are working mostly correctly now! I just have to fiddle with getting screen resolution and percentages set so the larger 2ndary screen doesn’t allow things to be pushed off into oblivion!
So, I take it I should remove mesa-git, and just install mesa?
Thank you sir! I believe I am on a roll!
Is it safer to stay on the 5.7 based kernel? … or has this all been (mostly) resolved with the latest, as long as mesa is installed?
Stick with mesa and wait for the new kernel to hit the stable release before you switch from linux-pinebookpro. I’m sure there will be an announcement about it 
Well … I should have left well enough alone. I uninstalled mesa-git. Looked like it was a dependency of quite a few items, but I figured mesa would replace. So, I went ahead and uninstalled mesa-git. I didn’t reboot. I went straight to installing mesa. It was ‘preparing’ for quite a long time … and appeared to be hung, as most everything else on the screens. I could choose ‘Leave’, but not shutdown, or restart, so I power cycled.
Once it came up … no GUI. Came up to a shell, with no WiFi enabled, nor the Ethernet. I can log in and do su… but suspect I need to get to networking, so I can ‘up’ the Eth0 (if it even sees it), or the WLAN, and see if I can get to the repositories, and maybe then try a pacman install of mesa?
I might be doing a clean flash of an SD card … !
Replying to this on my ol’ Dell Lattitude Win10 box (as much as I hate to admit it…)
You could try:
nmtui to bring up the wifiWhen you remove packages, be careful with pamac. I would use pacman instead for removal.
For switching between mesa and mesa-git you don’t have to remove one of the packages first. You can directly tell it to install one of them and it automatically replaces it.
If you don’t have much time or you find it too difficult to repair the install, feel free to wipe and start clean.
You can put manjaro on the sd card and from there use the manjaro-arm-installer to do the emmc installation
Thanks for the nmtui … It would have taken me a while to find THAT !
Wifi is up, connected to my normal wifi … I did a:
pacman -Syyu
then, did the pacman -S linux-pinebookpro … (perhaps to fix some of the apps that may have broken when I tried to uninstall mesa-git).
then, finally a pacman -S mesa , let it do it’s then, then rebooted.
Still booted to CLI.
Well, I bagged getting the install repaired, and flashed an SD card, booted from it, ran the manjaro-arm-installer, and installed the latest version for PBP (Manjaro ARM 20.10) , then did an update, to see if the 2nd screen worked. Nope … not yet. KDE Plasma version shows 5.19.5, kernel 5.8.14-1-MANJARO-ARM.
So … went back to the linux-pinebookpro flavor and rebooted.
Still no 2nd screen … shows mesa 20.2.0-2 installed. This version shows a mesa-git 20.3.0_devel.129018.ef918f0e335-1 available … but did not install it.
At least my laptop is back!