I backed the GPD Pocket project on Indiegogo immediately after its launch announcement. I had to wait for a few extra months from their estimated release date (it seems they had some technical issues with Linux driver development) then finally got a device last week. The production quality is still not perfect but significantly improved from the previous product (GPD Win) -- I can admit that I'm almost satisfied with it.
Now I'm playing around with it in my spare time.
It's not recommended to keep using the pre-istalled Ubuntu system for some reasons. There are a few ways to replace it with other distros. Personally, I prefer cawilliamson's Ansible playbooks because it's actively updated and quite easy to apply latest updates to an installed system.
To install Ubuntu with these playbooks, you have to download the Ubuntu Desktop ISO and create a bootstrap ISO from them. Follow the instruction described in "Bootstrap ISO".
I don't know why but I couldn't make a bootable USB stick from it on a Linux system. I used Rufus on Windows instead. It's convenient and quite easy to use.
I had to change permissions/owners of some files/directries in the home directory. This issue might be fixed in the latest package.
I tweaked /etc/gpd/fan.conf because the fan keeps blowing loudly with the
default configuration. I wonder if the room temperature is much different
between NA and here.
# Time between temperature checks (in seconds)
TIME=1
# Maximum temperature before turbo boost is disabled
TURBO=70
# Temperature to set fans to minimum speed
MIN=50
# Temperature to set fans to medium speed
MED=60
# Temperature to set fans to maximum speed
MAX=70