I own the 14" Pinebook. I don't recommend it. Almost all of the distribution images with support for the device is done by a single guy[1], and the keyboard is terrible at registering key presses. This is a known issue[2], but there's no support or warranty on the device so if you buy it before it's fixed, you're out of luck.
Besides that, the quality and the feel of the device is pretty nice.
I bought it because I figured it'd be a decent netbook to break out when there's a network issue or that I could use it for IRC or programming while traveling. Instead it's just collecting dust.
11.6" Pinebook owner here. This version doesn't have the keyboard issue, but they've had trouble sourcing the screens, so it can take ages before the 11.6'' is produced and shipped. I was lucky to order it not long after it was announced.
And yeah, it's mainly Ayufan busting his butt with all of the pinebook distros, with a little help from two or three others. But he's pretty much hammered out all the issues that Ubuntu had upon the pinebook's initial release, and he's active on the Pine64 IRC if you ever run into any issues.
I run xenial ubuntu with i3wm, and it's fine for on-the-go programming. I've been using it to learn Common Lisp at coffee shops. Don't bother if you're a React/Angular/Vue etc developer; the build tools will take too long for it to be productive. I'm not even sure if it can handle ruby sass, for scss scripts.
So yeah, it's great if you want to tinker with a cheap ARM notebook. But not great as a daily driver, or any complicated dev work.
