As a future MNT Pocket Reform owner and user I would like to express what I hope to see in the Debian release shipped with the most excellent device.
PRINTING. Being able to connect to a printer with a cable or wirelessly is at the crux of what I do and hope for from the computer. To me this implies some on-board configuration/set-up routine. Barring that I hope that if I keyboard “sudo apt-get install hplip” a repository with that software is eagerly awaiting my request.
For those with prototype devices — please connect to a common printer and share your experiences expectant buyers. I may not be alone in wanting to know.
GENERAL WISH LIST. Gnupg, wipe, Abiword, Aisleriot (playing Solitaire with a trackball will build a valuable motor skillset — like my ancient IBM Thinkpad with a trackpoint did), XED text editor with libraries for a spell checker. May they be available in repositories shipped with Debian.
I am very interested what other future users consider as essential apps.
As far as printing is concerned my experience with the regular (big) reform is that it works like any other Debian installation. I installed cups and hplip and I can print to by (old) hp laser jet via the network or usb cable. I’m sure the same will work with the pocket reform.
As far as other software … in my experience anything that is available as part of the Debian distribution works out of the box.
However some non free software (Dropbox comes to mind, zoom as well) don’t have arm binaries available. Some of these have free alternatives that work. I use maestral for Dropbox and I have used the web interface for zoom.
The Xed editor (if you are talking about the pluma fork which is itself a gedit fork) is currently not packaged for Debian. If Xed is important for you, maybe you want to work on that?
For general Debian problems (like your printer issues) I think the Debian user help channels care the best ways to get help: Debian -- User Support
