Hacking and stripping Armbian for Pinebook (Ubuntu 16.04 based)

Get Rid of Login Manager, Back to Startx-up-

systemctl disable graphical.target didn't cut it.
Armbian uses nodm, which has its own sysvinit service, but it can be disabled with: systemctl disable nodm. This brings me to a familiar console login after a reboot.

startx is possible, ~/.xinitrc is parsed. so far so good.
But now mpv cannot play video, only audio. Hmm. Compare output of env for X started via nodm, and via startx: VDPAU_DRIVER needs to be =sunxi (exported in ~/.xinitrc).

Ditch XFCE, back to openbox - What is xfce4-power-manager doing?-up-

It is quite useful on a laptop. Except for one thing: It does not suspend on lid close. It is something I want automated. After a long search I installed mate-power-manager instead. Its footprint is equally small, and for some reason it recognizes the lid switch better. Next problem: it suspends alright, but doesn't lock. Short of installing mate-screensaver, I created a systemd service:

/etc/systemd/system/slock@.service

cfg
[Unit]
Description=User suspend actions
After=sleep.target
# notice here Ater= instead of Before=

[Service]
User=%I
Type=forking
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
ExecStart=/usr/bin/slock
#ExecStartPost=/bin/sleep 1 # not sure this is needed

[Install]
WantedBy=sleep.target

and enabled it with systemctl enable slock@ondoho.

Problems remain: it does not want to go to 'sleep' after some time of inactivity, just blanks the screen. Hmm.

Screen Brightness-up-

There is no Fn-keys to increase or decrease screen brightness. mate-power-manager can control it, but only by going into the preferences dialog. Not very convenient. My efforts to create a custom script, bound to a hotkey, have failed because key repeat triggers the script hundreds of times...

Make Use of Dotfiles from Other Machine-up-

As outlined here.
Caveat: I do not know (yet) how to incorporate changes made on the cloned repository, back into the source repository.
For now, I think I will rewrite some scripts to make use of the HOSTNAME environment variable: pinebook vs arch.

Make Boot Process Verbose, No Splash Image-up-

edit /boot/armbianEnv.txt:

#console=both
console=ttyS0,115200

PS: this breaks something else, I had to undo it again.