The settings in /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf need some work otherwise you end up in an insane auto login loop when adding a new user. In order to get a new user you need to comment out all the settings in the above file. You can then logout and back in and then use the normal Gnome settings to add new users and then auto login if you want.
The /etc/hosts file needs to have the hostname set, the first line should look like this 127.0.0.1 localhost debian-nova
The partition schema used in this release in not sufficient, in my experience you have to grow both the rootfs and the boot partition. This seems to be true with some of the ubuntu versions as well. You will need gparted to be able to resize everything, either use another linux box and an abapter for the emmc and/or your sd card Or you can boot off of one and without doing anything else, install gparted immediatly and work on resizing the other boot device. Only then will you be able to safely update via apt upgrade without running out of space. You need at least 350mb on boot for debian/ubuntu and resize the rootfs to take up everything except the last 200mb which you should leave empty (its a btrfs thing).
Neither bluetooth or wifi are working in the release. Actually I have yet to try any image yet that has them working to the point that I can log into my wifi or use bluetooth anything.
Suspend Shutdown and restart are pretty messed up, I am currently looking into how to mitigate the problems. Right now if I leave the machine for an hour or something I will come back and it will be dead, no proper shutdown just dead.
Those are my notes so far.
Otherwise a nice little piece of hardware which I am writing this from now.
I have been running Ubuntu Noble from Joshua Riek for at least 4 months. It runs pretty well with no lockups or shutdowns (It runs for days without issue).
To get the wifi working by compiling the Realtek firmware following the info from By LarryFinger. I don’t often use the wifi, so I can’t comment on how stable it is.
I haven’t gotten the bluetooth adapter to work.
If you look at the discussions on Joshua’s github page, you’ll see that people have gotten mainline kernels working (for other similar SBCs). I’m too scatterbrained to figure out how to do it myself for the Nova.
I may have to switch to Ubuntu thanks for the info but for now I finally got the wifi working on the debian image, hurray.
I am gonna do another post in case someone else wants to mess with it.
My understanding right now is that this will all be solve sometime when kernel 6.16 comes out.