Linux?

ml11ML

Senior Member
Mar 1, 2015
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Has anyone so far got any form of linux (vnc or framebuffer or any way it might work) on our tablet? A while ago i saw @Stevethegreat write about it in the androplus kernel thread and i'm wondering if anything came out of that. It would be really nice to get debian or ubuntu on here because my note 10.1 is getting quite slow for more demanding programs with its weedy 1.4 ghz exynos while the 810 would probably do amazingly well. By the way in case anyone was about to suggest it-- the linux deploy or complete linux installer apps don't seem to work on this tablet (stock rooted and androplus kernel), linux deploy fails at the beginning of the install and complete linux installer just plain force closes when trying to start the linux.... Any ideas?
 

DHGE

Senior Member
Jun 20, 2015
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coastal paradise
What do you want to run on the tablet?

Graphic-wise I do not miss anything.

With a terminal emulator and busybox or adb-shell the commandline takes me far...
I could even cross compile some arm-binaries if I had the itch.

For my server needs I have a Raspberry Pi2 (seafile, carddav, caldav) for < 50 EUR with nice case and power supply. Eats < 10 EUR electricity/year.
 

ml11ML

Senior Member
Mar 1, 2015
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What do you want to run on the tablet?

Graphic-wise I do not miss anything.

With a terminal emulator and busybox or adb-shell the commandline takes me far...
I could even cross compile some arm-binaries if I had the itch.

For my server needs I have a Raspberry Pi2 (seafile, carddav, caldav) for < 50 EUR with nice case and power supply. Eats < 10 EUR electricity/year.
I mostly need propper linux to run exagear desktop which enables x86 programs to run on arm so that these tablets can be used as a intel laptop replacement . While it runs fine on my pi2 that is really a bit too weak even at 1 or 1.2 ghz and while it is faster on the old note i bet the 810 would make it approach the speeds of a entry level or mid range intel laptop and increase usability by alot. It also seems to me a bit weird how the apps i wrote about in the first post simply do not work on the z4tab even with selinux on premissive and such.
 

Stevethegreat

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Nov 28, 2010
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I don't own the tablet so I can't be 100% sure. However if you compile a kernel with Virtual Terminal support and follow the linux guide I wrote for Note 10.1 2014 tablet , I'm mostly positive that you'd get a rather responsive linux implementation. You have to forget hardware acceleration though (as it is dependant to the particular architecture of each and every device), unless you found a way to implement it...
 

ml11ML

Senior Member
Mar 1, 2015
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I don't own the tablet so I can't be 100% sure. However if you compile a kernel with Virtual Terminal support and follow the linux guide I wrote for Note 10.1 2014 tablet , I'm mostly positive that you'd get a rather responsive linux implementation. You have to forget hardware acceleration though (as it is dependant to the particular architecture of each and every device), unless you found a way to implement it...
This guide? http://forum.xda-developers.com/gal...-to-install-gnu-linux-samsung-galaxy-t3239809

I will try it but first i need to figure out why the linuxdeploy itself wont work... But thank you anyway, no hardware acceleration is more than good enough for my needs
 

Stevethegreat

Senior Member
Nov 28, 2010
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This guide? http://forum.xda-developers.com/gal...-to-install-gnu-linux-samsung-galaxy-t3239809

I will try it but first i need to figure out why the linuxdeploy itself wont work... But thank you anyway, no hardware acceleration is more than good enough for my needs
Yeah, but you have to edit some of the files there. For example the kernel used there is obviously for Note tablet, *don't attempt to flash it to Xperia tablet* it will brick it. Also you'd have to edit the xorg.conf fille that you have to copy to the first step (follow the explanation part).


If you do the above two probably both the quick guide and the full guide would work. If not it would mean that I'd have to update my LinuxCanvas app, in which case someone should donate to me an Xperia tablet Z4 :p
 
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ml11ML

Senior Member
Mar 1, 2015
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Yeah, but you have to edit some of the files there. For example the kernel used there is obviously for Note tablet, *don't attempt to flash it to Xperia tablet* it will brick it. Also you'd have to edit the xorg.conf fille that you have to copy to the first step (follow the explanation part).


If you do the above two probably both the quick guide and the full guide would work. If not it would mean that I'd have to update my LinuxCanvas app, in which case someone should donate to me an Xperia tablet Z4 :p
One would have to be pretty mad to go trying to install Linux on a tablet and then flash a kernel from a samsung to a sony xD But yeah... i will try it IF this Linux Deploy will get about maybe working for a change...
 

Stevethegreat

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Nov 28, 2010
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One would have to be pretty mad to go trying to install Linux on a tablet and then flash a kernel from a samsung to a sony xD But yeah... i will try it IF this Linux Deploy will get about maybe working for a change...
Yeah I know, I just want to be clear so that nobody (of those reading here) would attmpt that and suddenly think that I was the one that bricked his device. I can do without such charges :p

As for linuxdeploy, I use version 1.5.3 in my guide as it is the one with less issues. I gave a link there to the apk. Try it and see how it goes.
 
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vartha

Member
Oct 15, 2015
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Has anyone so far got any form of linux (vnc or framebuffer or any way it might work) on our tablet?
Linux deploy 1.5.6, current from play store, works well for me on a rooted SGP771, of course with an Andro+ kernel. Using armhf gave the least problems to get a Ubuntu or Debian installed with graphics via a local or remote VNC viewer.
Since the Z4T is 64 bits, I however aimed to install an arm64 architecture. Here, the success rate is lower, which is mostly due to packages that cannot be installed and a bug in tightvncserver with arm64 and higher color depth'.

I however finally succeeded with arm64 too, by using Ubuntu wily, LXDE and an x11rdp installed via ssh instead of tightvncserver. Now I'm trying a framebuffer display for speed, power consumption and a higher DPI, but yet without success. Changing DPI for VNC is simple, as Linux Deploy has a setting for it, but using RDP this seems to be tricky.

Did you say which error you get with Linux Deploy? I found it useful to turn on debug and trace output in the settings. The very first issue I had with Linux Deploy, first on the SGP621, later again on the SGP771, was that I tried to use the file method on the external SD card without the necessary permissions. On the Z4T I now use the internal storage instead, it's much faster too.

Unfortunately I'm not a Linux or Android guy, so I need to google solutions for each and every problem I encounter and I don't even think of trying to resolve package installation problems.

My objective is mostly to see how far I can get using Linux on such a lightweight device as the Z4T.
I already had the Eclipse IDE with JDT and CDT running fast enough for productive work. GHC (Haskell) runs too, but not GHCI. Using Linux with a touchscreen only and at such a high DPI is still disappointing. To my surprise, mc works rather well with a tochscreen in a fullscreen terminal via ssh. My holy grail shall however be to see Windows 8.1 running in qemu. I wonder how that will perform. Not so well I suppose. Maybe a combination of Wine and qemu would work ok, where qemu only executes the x86 application code and leaves the OS code behind the Windows APIs up to be executed natively by Wine...
 
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DHGE

Senior Member
Jun 20, 2015
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coastal paradise
On my raspi2 I use armhf

@vartha

Interesting how far you've come.

On my Raspberry I have no problems (even used LibreOffice on LXDE) with armhf.
armhf (32 bit) gives no problems in package selections so far and should work on the Tablet Z4.
Some background:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/armhf/index.html.de
https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port

Problems with the tablet could setting up drivers for the qualcomm hardware in your version of Linux.
At least SONY provide the sources for the kernel and heading over to qualcomm there is tons of documentation. Here you look at specific (OEM-) boards. Our tablet is not that exotic.

I doubt you could run a huge operating system of INTEL-architecture due to memory constraints. Windows NT4 or XP might be possible in 3Gbytes host memory.
 
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ml11ML

Senior Member
Mar 1, 2015
154
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Linux deploy 1.5.6, current from play store, works well for me on a rooted SGP771, of course with an Andro+ kernel. Using armhf gave the least problems to get a Ubuntu or Debian installed with graphics via a local or remote VNC viewer.
Since the Z4T is 64 bits, I however aimed to install an arm64 architecture. Here, the success rate is lower, which is mostly due to packages that cannot be installed and a bug in tightvncserver with arm64 and higher color depth'.

I however finally succeeded with arm64 too, by using Ubuntu wily, LXDE and an x11rdp installed via ssh instead of tightvncserver. Now I'm trying a framebuffer display for speed, power consumption and a higher DPI, but yet without success. Changing DPI for VNC is simple, as Linux Deploy has a setting for it, but using RDP this seems to be tricky.

Did you say which error you get with Linux Deploy? I found it useful to turn on debug and trace output in the settings. The very first issue I had with Linux Deploy, first on the SGP621, later again on the SGP771, was that I tried to use the file method on the external SD card without the necessary permissions. On the Z4T I now use the internal storage instead, it's much faster too.

Unfortunately I'm not a Linux or Android guy, so I need to google solutions for each and every problem I encounter and I don't even think of trying to resolve package installation problems.

My objective is mostly to see how far I can get using Linux on such a lightweight device as the Z4T.
I already had the Eclipse IDE with JDT and CDT running fast enough for productive work. GHC (Haskell) runs too, but not GHCI. Using Linux with a touchscreen only and at such a high DPI is still disappointing. To my surprise, mc works rather well with a tochscreen in a fullscreen terminal via ssh. My holy grail shall however be to see Windows 8.1 running in qemu. I wonder how that will perform. Not so well I suppose. Maybe a combination of Wine and qemu would work ok, where qemu only executes the x86 application code and leaves the OS code behind the Windows APIs up to be executed natively by Wine...
I am now installing the v20 androplus and rooting.. will try again when this is done
 

ml11ML

Senior Member
Mar 1, 2015
154
48
0
Linux deploy 1.5.6, current from play store, works well for me on a rooted SGP771, of course with an Andro+ kernel. Using armhf gave the least problems to get a Ubuntu or Debian installed with graphics via a local or remote VNC viewer.
Since the Z4T is 64 bits, I however aimed to install an arm64 architecture. Here, the success rate is lower, which is mostly due to packages that cannot be installed and a bug in tightvncserver with arm64 and higher color depth'.

I however finally succeeded with arm64 too, by using Ubuntu wily, LXDE and an x11rdp installed via ssh instead of tightvncserver. Now I'm trying a framebuffer display for speed, power consumption and a higher DPI, but yet without success. Changing DPI for VNC is simple, as Linux Deploy has a setting for it, but using RDP this seems to be tricky.

Did you say which error you get with Linux Deploy? I found it useful to turn on debug and trace output in the settings. The very first issue I had with Linux Deploy, first on the SGP621, later again on the SGP771, was that I tried to use the file method on the external SD card without the necessary permissions. On the Z4T I now use the internal storage instead, it's much faster too.

Unfortunately I'm not a Linux or Android guy, so I need to google solutions for each and every problem I encounter and I don't even think of trying to resolve package installation problems.

My objective is mostly to see how far I can get using Linux on such a lightweight device as the Z4T.
I already had the Eclipse IDE with JDT and CDT running fast enough for productive work. GHC (Haskell) runs too, but not GHCI. Using Linux with a touchscreen only and at such a high DPI is still disappointing. To my surprise, mc works rather well with a tochscreen in a fullscreen terminal via ssh. My holy grail shall however be to see Windows 8.1 running in qemu. I wonder how that will perform. Not so well I suppose. Maybe a combination of Wine and qemu would work ok, where qemu only executes the x86 application code and leaves the OS code behind the Windows APIs up to be executed natively by Wine...
Well now on marshmallow it works!
 
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