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Manual Install (like desktop Arch)
This is not officially supported, but if you are crazy or just want a learning experience, it is possible to install Arch on the PinePhone akin to how it is done for Desktop Arch.
If you have never installed Arch on an x86 desktop computer, then I would not recommend trying this. The guide expects you to know somewhat of what you are doing, it may quickly gloss over steps. Not all of these steps have been tested. It is unlikely for this process to brick your device, but it is quite possible to completely wipe the wrong drive accidentally, proceed at your own risk!
This process is very similar to desktop Arch found at wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide: a few steps are not applicable, some are different, and a few additional steps are needed.
These instructions are missing a manual U-Boot setup, the instructions just have you copy the boot partition from the boot media.
Wifi is not working for some reason, still figuring out why.
Just like desktop Arch, you must create a boot media (on an SD card) to insert into the device to install Arch with. Follow the standard Arch ARM install process onto an SD card, and boot to it on your PinePhone.
(I recommend SSHing or plugging in a keyboard, there will be a lot of typing.)
After you are running the boot media on your PinePhone. Install arch-install-scripts with pacman -S arch-install-scripts.
Your will need two partitions on the drive, a 128M U-Boot partition, and the root partition.
The U-Boot should be formatted with FAT32, the root can be EXT4.
See Arch Wiki for how to partition the drive.
I have not figured out how to create the U-Boot partition, I just copied the one from the prebuilt boot media.
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0p1 of=/dev/mmcblk2p1
Disk names may vary!
Thanks to "DrRac27", these steps are extracted from his work here.
Mount the root partition to /mnt or where ever you want to put it...
Just like desktop arch, we will pacstrap to do the install.
pacstrap /mnt base sudo networkmanager pinephone
For PineTab replace pinephone with pinetab.
For Phosh include danctnix-phosh-ui-meta dialog kgx.
For Plasma include danctnix-pm-ui-meta.
For Barebone include danctnix-usb-tethering openssh.
Additional packages can be included now or after chrooting into it.
Setup sudoers with visudo (which edits the /etc/sudoers file).
Install the appropriate pacman config install -Dm 644 "/etc/pacman.conf" "/mnt/etc/pacman.conf" should do the trick.
Create your hostname (echo $HOSTNAME > /mnt/etc/hostname).
arch-chroot /mnt
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl enable ModemManager
# Phosh
systemctl enable phosh
# Plasma Mobile
systemctl enable lightdm
# Barebone
systemctl enable sshd
systemctl enable usb-tethering
# In arch-chroot
useradd -m -G games,network,scanner,rfkill,video,storage,optical,lp,input,audio,wheel $USERNAME
password $USERNAME
Reboot to the internal storage and cross you fingers!
These steps where created by Jonathan Levi after I figured out how to do it with help from "DrRac27". If you have questions you can contact me with my email JonathanILevi at GMail.