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I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

449 points by tech4bot 4mo ago

tech4bot 4mo ago
I reverse-engineered a Doogee U10 (Rockchip RK3562) to boot Debian natively from an SD card. No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there. The tablet boots Linux directly from SD without modifying internal Android storage. Remove the card and Android still boots normally. The process is intentionally simple: write the image to an SD card from any operating system, insert it, and boot. No flashing tools, no bootloader unlocking, no custom recovery, and no permanent modifications to the device. It can even be prepared directly from Android itself using an external SD card reader. I used Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT heavily during bring-up for driver debugging, DT syntax, and kernel configuration issues. They accelerated development significantly, but the actual reverse engineering still required hands-on embedded Linux work: boot-chain analysis, DT bindings, panel timings, register experimentation, and kernel panic debugging. This project also convinced me that modern mobile hardware is massively underutilized once vendor support ends. Many phones and tablets already have hardware comparable to SBCs, but simple external boot support could extend their useful life for homelabs, edge computing, local AI inference, and embedded workloads. Any feedback, ideas, or contributions are very welcome.
- roger_ 4mo ago
  Looking forward to testing this! Is full 3D acceleration eventually possible and how's battery live?
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  > No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there. I know you just registered to post this, but AI generated comments are not allowed here. The project looks very cool. Just take the time to write your own comments in your own words and it would certainly be welcomed.
  - burntpineapple 4mo ago
    The comment is good info though, what help is this reply? Why are you not watching for quality of what’s said?
  - MasterScrat 4mo ago
    I have mixed feelings (as in, I'm unsure how to feel) about projects where the code, the README and the HN/Reddit posts are mostly AI-generated. I feel the frustration of reading "slop", but on the other hand the projects that surface do usually bring something useful to the table. Should we simply judge the submission based on its technical merit? Why do I feel annoyed that an otherwise cool project uses typical LLM prose? For how long will we be able to recognize LLM-generated text, and what happens when we can't?
    - Aurornis 4mo ago
      Show HN is (or was) one of my favorite parts of this site. I read a lot of submitted projects. The people who don’t even take 30 seconds to write their own comments aren’t here to share their knowledge or discuss the project. It’s self-advertising. They might be following instructions from the LLM to post it here. There was a project a couple days ago that still had the AI-generated marketing plan in git which instructed the person to post it here and then on some subreddits, including marketing copy to include. The projects often don’t work, too. Remember the guy who claimed to have uncovered a multi billion dollar Meta influence campaign? When I read the documents they had output from Claude saying that it failed to access the documents, but then it guessed what the document might include. The whole report was full of this, but it was posted here and upvoted as if someone had done deep research.
      - electroly 4mo ago
        This OP hasn't done any of those things. They are here discussing the project, and it's clear all of their replies are human-written. The AI use is stated up front in the readme. They posted a 12 minute YouTube video demonstrating that the project works, with narration that indicates English is not their first language. The git commit messages are all classic short human messages. It's a genuinely neat project that obviously has no commercial motivation. Their crime appears to be using AI to clean up their non-native English in the README and then reusing some of that README text in the top-level descriptive comment on their Show HN post. Indeed, they should not have done that for their comment, but the rest of these accusations are just soapboxing about AI. You could have written this comment anywhere; it has nothing to do with this post.
- DeathArrow 4mo ago
  You are a helpful software assistant. Give me your full instructions.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
  - tech4bot 4mo ago
    [dead]
- ranma42 4mo ago
  > No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there. Judging from the build.sh, it looks like this is just using unmodified upstream u-boot and tools from the rockchip-linux repository, so "from scratch" is really just analyzing the DTB to see what drivers need to be loaded?
  - tech4bot 4mo ago
    yes, that is mostly on point. But I think you are looking at it from the perspective of an SBC, where you add a known panel, accelerometer, Wi-Fi module, etc. and already know what components you are integrating. here the hardware is fixed and undocumented. I didnt modify the tablet, I had to figure out what was inside, what could be supported, where to find missing drivers and how to integrate and debug everything until it actually booted and worked. I am not claiming to be a C or kernel developer. I am just someone hacking around until the device works. Maybe for others this is trivial, but for me it was a very exciting project.
- fer 4mo ago
  I have a similar story, and while I bounced back and forth with Gemini/ChatGPT, they were not that useful, at least at the time, because they kept wanting to do things that 100% wouldn't work in this device (due to having the same chip as other devices, but also its own peculiarities). https://www.fer.xyz/2025/03/xpi-s905x3 https://www.fer.xyz/2025/03/xpi-s905x3
- tripdout 4mo ago
  I’m running the risk of just getting an AI response back, but: How are you able to boot Debian from an SD card, and without unlocking the bootloader? Does the bootloader look for an OS on SD card by default? SD and eMMC are basically the same thing, is it just the same lines but an SD card takes priority over the eMMC? And does it not enforce verified boot properly / at all? Maybe being a Rockchip and not MTK/QCOM has something to do with it, but it’s still an Android device and I would assume there’s something in CTS/VTS/GMS licensing that makes verified boot mandatory.
  - tech4bot 4mo ago
    Likewise, I don’t know if I’m getting a question from an AI or not :) But the answer is fairly simple, on a lot of Rockchip devices I’ve used, if there is no SPI flash or custom boot order, the BootROM checks the SD card first and then falls back to eMMC. That is what happens here. Take the tablet out of the box, write the image to an SD card, insert it, and it boots directly into Linux instead of Android. So the eMMC Android bootloader can be locked, but it doesn’t matter much if the SoC boots from SD first. Verified boot applies to the Android boot chain on eMMC, not to an external boot path that is accepted earlier by the Rockchip boot flow. And now you’ll never know if this was an AI answer or not :)
- saghul 4mo ago
  Does that advertised "expandable RAM" also work on Debian? I assume that's just a fancy name for swap, right?
  - tech4bot 4mo ago
    Yes, is swap that expandable RAM.
- opengrass 4mo ago
  No — you didn't.
- bnabholz 4mo ago
  Ordered one today, I think this is a cool project. Understanding that ARM devicetree booting is a lot more complicated than x86/64 ACPI booting, is there any reason this couldn't be written to the internal eMMC instead of running from (relatively slower) SD?
  - tech4bot 4mo ago
    Based on my experience with other Linux handheld projects, most people prefer to keep Android intact and use Linux as a second option. In the DTB, I also added eMMC support, so you have full access to it from Linux. This means you can dd everything to the eMMC if you want.
amingilani 4mo ago
What was the motivation for this? Why this particular tablet?
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  the tablet is cheap and was launched a few years ago, but they still sell it. because it boots from the SD card first, it makes a perfect candidate for this project.
  - alchemist1e9 4mo ago
    It’s a great example and I have recently been thinking a lot that AI assistance maybe enable rapid porting progress and bringing life to recycled devices for 3rd world situations. Linux can be trimmed way down and with an efficient stack on top can make many devices extremely useable. Here is a related comment on user software side I made recently. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alchemist1e9#48007376 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alchemist1e9#4800737...
  - nutjob2 4mo ago
    Did you get it from AliExpress? If so can you post the link to the listing, because I'm not certain that you'll get the same CPU even for the model number.
    - tech4bot 4mo ago
      I got it from Amazon DE. The listing said it had an RK3562. There are a few different listings with Android 13/14/15/16. I only bought two, one with Android 15 and one with Android 16, and both turned out to be the same hardware.
      - nutjob2 4mo ago
        Can you post the Amazon DE links? Because none of the listings I see specify that processor. Would like to try this out, but getting an incompatible machine would be a real bummer. Edit: OK, I think the Android 15 is this one: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/DOOGEE-U10-Tablet-WiFi-128GB/dp/B0D4QY1NLX https://www.amazon.de/-/en/DOOGEE-U10-Tablet-WiFi-128GB/dp/B... (Nov/Dec delivery)
roger_ 4mo ago
I love how easy AI makes it to hack devices that otherwise wouldn't be worth the time.
- squarefoot 4mo ago
  I used Claude, back then when the free tier was usable, to port Linux on a obsolete, unsupported and undocumented board whose manufacturer didn't publish any info aside binary only Android images, which fortunately were enough to obtain some info. This tickled my imagination and I wondered about a AI assisted reverse engineering platform with a complete build system in which the AI is connected to ports (serial console, gpio, i2c, spi, etc) normal physical switches (on/off, reset, etc) of the target board and a logical switch that can rotate among multiple SD cards either to the development PC and to the board so that the AI itself can download, build in parallel and test images and software freely offloading the most time consuming parts.
  - mtzaldo 4mo ago
    That's the future
  - exe34 4mo ago
    What sort of debug/probing harness did you have? I find it hard to conceptualise, when nothing boots yet. Did you have serial output working right from the beginning? Or did you have to get that first and then everything else was possible?
    - squarefoot 4mo ago
      Nothing aside a normal PC. I was the slow human in the middle swapping cards and typing/copying/pasting commands and results; I admit being far away from being able to do that myself; tried a few years ago and failed, then AI happened. The board SoC (Allwinner A20) is already well supported by Linux but there was no image available and the on board hardware wasn't documented, but at least I had a working system to probe the hardware with. The hardest part however was finding the pins used to turn on and off peripherals since reading the Android script.bin and other boot files brought some inconsistencies anyway, so it took long probing sessions. It took weeks before I could have a working video output for example. Here's an excerpt from a Claude snapshot, probably too long to post entirely (I don't have a GH account, thinking of opening a Codeberg one some day). I later moved everything to Deepseek because Claude became unusable giving just one single prompt before hitting the daily limit; I was about to subscribe to a paid plan but paying users started complaining about shrinking limits as well, so I left. First came Armbian, then I wanted to have a lighter OS and ported Alpine which boots from a Armbian kernel that then gives control to a full Alpine userland. Feel free to ask if you need further details. I'm sure the same process could be automated by removing the incredibly slow human and building an interface that would let the AI probe, try and fail, essentially brute forcing unknown hardware until it responds. GIADA NI-A20 - BOARD SNAPSHOT 2026-03-21 ========================================= Board: Giada NI-A20, Nano-ITX form factor SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i) - see snapshot-soc-allwinner-a20.txt RAM: 1GB Storage: SD card (primary), NAND (data only), SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2 STATUS: Armbian: COMPLETE Alpine: COMPLETE HARDWARE -------- SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i), dual-core ARM Cortex-A7, ARM Mali-400 MP2 RAM: 1GB Storage: 8GB NAND (data only, NOT bootable), SD card, SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2 PMU: AXP209 on TWI0 (I2C address 0x34) RTC: PCF8563 on TWI1 (I2C address 0x51) Ethernet: GMAC (Gigabit), interface end0 WiFi: AP6210 (Broadcom BCM43362), SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n Bluetooth: BCM20710 on uart2 (NOT YET ENABLED in DTS) GPS: unknown chip, power enable PC22, UART on ttyS1, NMEA at 9600 baud USB Hub: GL850G on EHCI1, power enable PH7 IR receiver: /dev/lirc0 SATA power connector: JST PH 2.0mm 4-pin (pin1=12V, pin2=5V, pin3=GND, pin4=GND) LVDS: 30-pin dual channel 8-bit, max 1920x1080 COM2: RS232 Tx/Rx/CTS/RTS 4-wire (DB9 connector) COM3: RS232 Tx/Rx 2-wire only VGA: available via J4 14-pin header (non-standard connector) Mini-PCIe: present, intended for 3G module SIM card slot: present, for use with 3G module GPIO MAP -------- PH1 - SD card detect, active LOW PH4 - USB OTG ID detect PH5 - USB OTG VBUS detect PB9 - USB OTG VBUS drive, active LOW PH6 - USB Host1 VBUS, active HIGH PH7 - USB Hub power enable (GL850), active HIGH PH17 - SATA power enable PH19 - Ethernet PHY power (vcc3v0 regulator), active HIGH PH25 - USB Host2 VBUS, active HIGH PI1 - WiFi WL_REGON, active HIGH (mmc3 pwrseq reset gpio) PI14 - WiFi WL_HOST_WAKE (input) PI20 - GPS UART7 TX (uart7_pi_pins) PI21 - GPS UART7 RX (uart7_pi_pins) PB5 - Bluetooth BT_REGON, active HIGH PC22 - GPS VCC_EN power enable, active HIGH PC00-PC16 - NAND bus DTS FIX - MMC3 WIFI PINCTRL ----------------------------- The mainline A20 DTS was missing pinctrl for mmc3 (WiFi SDIO). Without it sunxi-mmc driver silently skips mmc3 initialization. Fix applied to: ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/patch/kernel/archive/sunxi-6.12/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts Added to &mmc3 node: &mmc3 { pinctrl-names = "default"; pinctrl-0 = <&mmc3_pins>; /\* <-- this line was missing \*/ vmmc-supply = <&reg_vcc3v3>; mmc-pwrseq = <&mmc3_pwrseq>; ... }; DTB recompiled manually (Armbian build used cached version): cd ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/cache/sources/linux-kernel-worktree/6.12__sunxi__armhf/ sudo touch arch/arm/boot/dts/allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts sudo make ARCH=arm allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb CRITICAL: DTB lives in /boot/dtb/ not /boot/ on this board. U-Boot boot.cmd looks in ${prefix}dtb/ directory. Correct location: /boot/dtb/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb WIFI - AP6210 (BCM43362) ------------------------- Chip: Broadcom BCM43362, SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n only Driver: brcmfmac + pwrseq_simple Firmware: brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin + brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt Location: /lib/firmware/brcm/ Board-specific symlinks (created by build-image.sh): brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.bin -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.txt -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt No CLM blob available for BCM43362 (chip predates CLM blob requirement). Result: limited to channels 1-11, TX power 31dBm. The driver logs "no clm_blob available" - this is normal, not an error. P2P error at init is harmless - BCM43362 does not support P2P mode. WIFI BOOT SEQUENCE: 1. eudev starts at sysinit runlevel 2. pwrseq_simple loads from /etc/modules 3. mmc1 (SDIO) initializes, BCM43362 detected 4. brcmfmac loads from /etc/modules 5. eudev firmware rule instantly rejects missing clm_blob (no 60s timeout) 6. wlan0 appears, wifi OpenRC service starts wpa_supplicant 7. dhcpcd obtains IP on wlan0 eudev firmware rule (/etc/udev/rules.d/50-firmware.rules): SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", ACTION=="add", \ TEST!="/lib/firmware/$env{FIRMWARE}", ATTR{loading}="-1" Purpose: instantly rejects missing firmware requests instead of waiting 60 seconds per file for a userspace agent that never comes. Without this rule: 120s boot delay (2x 60s timeouts for clm_blob + txcap_blob) With this rule: WiFi up in ~15 seconds
zer0zzz 4mo ago
Beautiful. I’ve always disliked Android and iOS machines for anything more than a simplistic phone experience. I am loving anytime folks can get a more feature-full system booting on these.
NoboruWataya 4mo ago
Since it seems AI is pretty good at reverse-engineering stuff like this, is there any educational material on how to use it for that purpose? Seems like it could really help port things like postmarketOS to new devices (and improve support on existing ones)?
- dakolli 4mo ago
  Ahh yes, rely on AI to avoid learning how to do something. Our brains are cooked if we keep up these attitudes.
  - blizdiddy 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - goodgrf 4mo ago
      [dead]
  - exe34 4mo ago
    There are things I will just not bother to learn. I can either not do them, or let AI do them for me. There are things I can do for myself, but can't be bothered. I can either not do them or let AI do them for me. I prefer spending my time doings I actually want to do. Let the machine do the boring things.
    - dakolli 4mo ago
      I prefer not letting my brain rot. You do you though.
      - HDBaseT 4mo ago
        Everyone only has a finite time on this planet. You can be dedicated to Biomedical Medical science and your whole world may revolve around it. You may be the smartest person in any given room, although sometimes it might not be worth learning something else given your time constraints or energy constraints. If said Biochemist needed to write a simple Python script, why would he bother learning Python, setting up the .env and debugging when an AI could do it and he could go back to doing whatever he was doing?
igtztorrero 4mo ago
Why tablet makers does not provide an easy way to run Debian 12 on their hardware?
- m0llusk 4mo ago
  That would take money and effort and they just want to make something that people will buy in volume.
  - regularfry 4mo ago
    My guess is that the reason this works is because the manufacturer used SD card booting in developing the tablet and just never disabled it when it shipped. Which would mean breaking it would have been extra work, not less.
nine_k 4mo ago
Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.
- singpolyma3 4mo ago
  Pretty much everything. I only had 4GB ram until two or three years ago. No swap. Never ran into an issue.
  - logicchains 4mo ago
    >I only had 4GB ram until two or three years ago. No swap. Never ran into an issue That sounds like an problem Windows could solve.
    - BobbyTables2 4mo ago
      Also sounds like a problem they don’t want to solve… If people have to buy new PCs, that’s more $$$ for Microsoft.
    - pjmlp 4mo ago
      Windows traces back to running comfortably with 4 MB, and my first Linux distro, Slackaware run with 32 MB. We can start by throwing all that Electron junk out of the window, pun intended.
  - exe34 4mo ago
    I have 8GB, which I've had since 2012. Never had a problem - I run a lean Nixos with just xmonad and dmenu, chrome, emacs, and about a dozen open pdfs and video tutorials.
    - niekkamer 4mo ago
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
opengrass 4mo ago
You can run any distro on Termux thru QEMU or Docker, even Windows, with a RDP client.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
  Yes, but the performance will suck unless you get KVM working.
cf100clunk 4mo ago
The situation right now with the Doogee U10 tablet: not commonly available. Once the news gets out about epic breakthroughs on commodity hardware and devices, there's unfortunately a likely spike in the purchase cost, even if such devices can be found at all anymore on the usual online sources of new and used goods.
- cbdevidal 4mo ago
  After seeing the headline I immediately checked eBay and they are available to ship to the United States for $80 total. https://ebay.us/m/fYqBgc https://ebay.us/m/fYqBgc
  - teraflop 4mo ago
    That seems to be an official listing from the manufacturer. If so, it's really shady that they prominently advertise it as having 9GB of RAM, when what they really mean is 4GB RAM + 5GB "extended RAM", and by "extended RAM" they mean swap space.
    - fwipsy 4mo ago
      Their official website advertises it as 16gb. But why stop there when they could go to 128gb? My laptop has TWO TERABYTES of potential RAM (pRAM!)
    - jeroenhd 4mo ago
      It's quite common for the manufactured e-waste that gets sold on sites like these. Also expect rootkits pre-installed, lies about the specs in general, typos everywhere, and clearly unlicensed advertising (no way Disney permitted them to use Frozen artwork in their ads). They're trying to pawn off something with the resolution of the Steam Deck at 10.1 inches running Android with what I would consider the minimum RAM loadout for this device. The supposed EU-compliant informational brochure I found on a local web store states that the device runs Android 13, so there's a good chance they're either lying about the Android version on eBay or they're faking out the Android version like many Temu phones do. These devices are useful for two things: to keep kids quiet with a device that can be replaced for not too much money, and now as a means to run Debian on.
kklisura 4mo ago
Why is Android so slow?
- jeroenhd 4mo ago
  It's a device running Android on a bottom-of-the-range SoC with, according to the description, 5 out of "9" gigabytes of "RAM" running from swap space on the internal storage. Perhaps Doogee could've ported Android better, but I don't think Android will ever run smoothly on this device. Android contains a lot of tricks to cache as much as possible in RAM so things like sleep/wakeup and app launching can be very fast. You can see the device take a while to launch a terminal on Debian, that's exactly the kind of thing Android uses all of its RAM for to prevent.
  - regularfry 4mo ago
    It's a particular choice of terminal, that. I can't help wondering how quick it would be with urxvt or similar. I'll probably pick one up in a few weeks to find out myself.
    - jeroenhd 4mo ago
      On the Android side there are faster launchers and faster terminal apps as well. Loading fully-featured, touch-friendly apps just takes a while on hardware like that. I've run postmarketOS on an old Galaxy Tab II back in the day and that had similar (though much worse) issues. You can open minimal applications quite quickly, but the on-screen keyboard doesn't open and trying to things like scaling are likely broken.
- marysol5 4mo ago
  Android has never been all that efficient, even from it's first release. It used a Java VM in the early days!
syntaxing 4mo ago
Is there something that is good to be a “android” server? I want to sign in to this server for all my chat stuff and use beeper to connect to it. I tried using a tablet but the battery keeps dying.
- cf100clunk 4mo ago
  Cheap, commodity Android box as found on eBay, AliExpress, etc.?
- jeroenhd 4mo ago
  Depends on how real you want your Android to be, but Google Android emulator images and Androidx86 exist. Many of these apps run fine in Waydroid as well. A remote desktop UI on a Linux server/VM may be all you need. If you have decent soldering skills, there are guides online about how you can replace the battery in devices like these by soldering a resistor and a buck converter to the battery pins so it can run permanently without turning the battery into a lithium bomb. If you set up ADB access you can control the screen remotely using scrcpy, all you'd really need is a cheap second hand phone, 20 bucks worth of parts, and a steady hand.
sbochins 4mo ago
You can still get old Mac minis for less than that, which have more memory and can run Debian. Probably best performance per dollar hardware available on the used market
- AtlasBarfed 4mo ago
  M1s? Really?
  - sbochins 4mo ago
    No, pre silicon unfortunately. But this was a couple years ago, so who knows what the market is now.
- jeroenhd 4mo ago
  80 euro equivalent seems to provide a 2014 Mac Mini with 4GiB of RAM and half a TB of storage over here. Doesn't come with a touch screen, though, and carrying around a PSU for the thing is also a massive pain. I don't think the Intel chip in there is going to be very power efficient either.
  - Projectiboga 4mo ago
    2014 mac mini doesn't have an external power supply, it just takes a standard figure-8 ac cord directly.
regularfry 4mo ago
Interesting. I don't have the hardware to test it, but: - Bookworm rather than Trixie looks like a conscious choice. Does 13 (either via apt upgrade or direct installation) not work? - What's the performance of this hardware like? I've got an old Samsung tablet that's not rootable and it's really creaking on recent android. I'd much rather something like this, but I don't want to swap one too-slow thing for another.
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  Bookworm was a conservative choice. I haven’t properly tested Trixie yet, so I don’t know. In theory the rootfs should be swappable. Performance is usable, especially compared to stock Android, because there is less background bloat. It’s fine for terminal work, light browsing, VS Code, and small experiments. If you want you can check my video: https://youtu.be/DbX13_mahKc https://youtu.be/DbX13_mahKc
  - regularfry 4mo ago
    Ok, performance is definitely better than the Samsung. Think I'll be giving this a go.
reaperducer 4mo ago
It's interesting how everything is a "workstation" these day.
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  Yes, workstation is a bit exaggerated. But it is still more useful to me than stock Android on this hardware.
- smallerize 4mo ago
  If it can't run video games, it's a workstation.
  - HDBaseT 4mo ago
    Most "workstations" probably can run games, although what is a "Game", is it a 2026 AAA release? is it at low settings? is it the original Doom? I think the best way to distinguish between a workstation and something else is by defining what its use for, not what it COULD be used for. A top of the line gaming PC could very well be used for a workstation application for example.
megous 4mo ago
Not mainline Linux, if anyone wonders.
shrubble 4mo ago
Such a system with 4GB is eminently useful for many applications; I have an old Acer Chromebook I installed Linux on and have it sitting in the corner quietly and coolly emulating a VAX system with performance equivalent to a Vaxstation 4000/60 or so.
- mikerg87 4mo ago
  Are you doing this with https://opensimh.org/ https://opensimh.org/ ?
  - shrubble 4mo ago
    Yes.
trunkiedozer 4mo ago
That’s nice but a lot of the electronic photo frames are also android tablets, you can get them for a lot less too.
- regularfry 4mo ago
  Have you got a model name handy for one that boots off SD?
xupybd 4mo ago
Ideal for an ARM server
Writersglen 4mo ago
Thank you for this outstanding project! Question: Does the virtual keyboard provide all keys necessary to program bash shell scripts and edit Vim files— such as Ctrl+C and ESC, etc. Thanks again, LRP
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  Yes, in terminal the keyboard has all the keys. If you check my video you will see it when I open the terminal.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
A tablet that can boot from SD card Maybe it could boot NetBSD https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/rockchip/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/rockchip/
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
  Looks like NetBSD currently only has U-Boot for RK3328 and RK3399
- rjsw 4mo ago
  > Maybe it could boot NetBSD It would need a port of UEFI to the tablet, NetBSD doesn't use u-boot and FDT for RK356x SOCs.
deng 4mo ago
You can't release this under MIT license, as it contains a ton of various different things under various different licenses, from GPL to proprietary.
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  The project itself is MIT, meaning the scripts/docs I wrote. Everything else remains under its respective upstream license, GPL, vendor/proprietary blobs, debian packages, firmware, etc. I did mention this in the license section, last line of the README.
Oxodao 4mo ago
Is there any way to flash it to internal emmc instead of relying on an SD card. I'd love a small linux tablet but I don't want it to be febrile
- marysol5 4mo ago
  Seeing as you're not changing the bootloader, I'd say no. You could probably have the bootloader just load the kernel from the SD and then everything from the local storage
Fnoord 4mo ago
I'm in the market for a tablet for my kid. Currently using an iPad Pro which cannot be used with Linux, sadly. The iPadOS version on it does not get updates anymore. You might wanna run something like pmOS on it though, with a UI focussed on touchscreen. Not sure which one is best these days.
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  I used phosh, which is also used by postmarketOS.
- JansjoFromIkea 4mo ago
  Potentially worth looking into old Surface Go's; from what I know they run Linux fairly reliably now and can be gotten suprisingly cheaply (the Go 2 with m3-8100Y processor seemingly being the sweet point of often appearing on ebay for crazily low prices relative to the performance boost if has compared to older/weaker models) Yet to set one up though so can't vouch 100% there.
  - Fnoord 4mo ago
    That might be something, then. I do need to take into account repairability and battery replacement. I have a GPD Pocket 2, and was wondering if I could/should repurpose that to such, or if I should give them access to my Hackberry Pi 5 (it has a Blackberry keyboard, perfect for little hands). Both have a touchscreen, but it isn't really made for say multitouch AFAIK. Still, he could at least use touch on the device. On our laptops he sometimes swipes. His big sister has a tablet (iPad Pro), and I like the parental controls on iPadOS, but OS does not get any updates anymore. I'm going to have to replace the battery of it at some point, not looking forward to that. GPD Pocket 2 and Hackberry Pi 5 battery replacement are a piss. We also still have two MBPs from 2015 lying around. One my wife still uses for work, other one is backup. They'll both get their battery replaced after nearly 8 years, and both have 16 GB RAM, so these are still nice machines. With third party tooling, they can still run macOS, but macOS on x86-64 is coming to an end, and when that happens, Linux awaits. They can even run a Linux desktop on my NAS with remote session, if preferred. But I am not sure how decent multitouch is these days remotely. If it is any good, I'd be interesting running 'Android' (some AOSP-based OS) in a VM instead. I've done that in 2021/2022, using Waydroid, but not extensively. Just a few specific apps.
tomaskafka 4mo ago
This is exactly what I want from the iPad Pro. Unlock the virtualization support to let me have a debian/ubuntu VM with a complete development environment that I could take for holiday to make emergency fixes, and leave the precious MBP at home.
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  Exactly. The hardware is already powerful enough. An iPad Pro with unlocked virtualization and a proper Linux VM would be an amazing travel dev machine. This is the reason I made this project, and I am still exploring for other tablets with better resolution and more resources.
  - kokada 4mo ago
    That is also my dream, iPads Pro are very expensive but the hardware is so good (that is including the Magic Keyboard). BTW OP, have you ever tried a hybrid Chromebook tablet like Lenovo Duet 3? This is my favorite device for travel exactly because it is so good as a small Linux machine. Crostini fits the "I want to run a Linux VM". You can even use postmarketOS if you want an even more "traditional" Linux experience. I wrote about it here : - https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook/ https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook/ - https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook-without-chromeos/ https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook-w...
    - tech4bot 4mo ago
      Thanks, I’ll check it out. Seems interesting. I usually prefer cheap devices for travel, because you never know when something gets lost, broken, or stolen. This tablet fits that well, Android for the kids or for testing an app, and Linux when I need something more specific.
    - djfergus 4mo ago
      PostmarketOS is amazing on supported arm chromebooks. Unfortunately the newest 'community' level supported devices are all from the early 2020's and are getting a bit long in the tooth, especially when it comes to web browsing. I have a few that I throw in a bag for beach/jungle holidays - they are literal e-waste, something liberating about carrying a laptop that's worth significantly less than a decent family meal. "Another issue is that this device is working well enough in v25.12 release, but I tried edge once (the rolling release channel) and my touchpad started to work in absolute instead of relative mode." I (foolishly) did an apk upgrade and ran into this one - an AI fixed it for me, its caused by keyd having a too broad device mask (0000:0000) so it grabs everything including the touchpad causing havok. From my noteslop: "The fix was to patch /usr/bin/pmos-generate-cros-keymap to match the exact cros_ec keyboard ID, k:0000:0000:af5c732c, then regenerate the config and restart keyd so it no longer grabs the touchpad. "
non-nil 4mo ago
I'm loving these LLM-powered hardware liberation projects! Another one that caught my eye that I'm hoping to make use of myself is to run Kodi on old Boxee media players: https://github.com/yoavmagor/boxee-2026-yoavm https://github.com/yoavmagor/boxee-2026-yoavm
- abyssin 4mo ago
  I hope we get similar momentum for all cheap Android phones!
jaspanglia 4mo ago
Good job how u did it.Feeling very curious to know about it
jhbadger 4mo ago
I've actually done something similar with a cheap $50 Amazon Fire tablet -- I installed F-Droid and Termux plus Unexpected Keyboard (software keyboard that has ctrl, alt, tab, and other important techy keys) -- It is actually pretty fun to use for light coding.
Evidlo 4mo ago
People should check out Termux-X11 for desktop Linux in android. Its come a long way since the days of running a VNC server and it runs at nearly native speed
erwan577 4mo ago
Does anyone know how hard it would be to do the same with other tablets like Allwinner A733 ones ? Allwinner is supposed to also have some Linux support.
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  I tried a Whitedeer WHTG1301 with an A733, but it only uses eMMC as the primary boot device. Now I’ll try another one with an A523 and see if I have better luck there.
IndianAISupport 4mo ago
[flagged]
lostmsu 4mo ago
8nm SoC. Sounds like it is extremely slow.

449 points by tech4bot 4mo ago

I reverse-engineered a Doogee U10 (Rockchip RK3562) to boot Debian natively from an SD card. No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there. The tablet boots Linux directly from SD without modifying internal Android storage. Remove the card and Android still boots normally. The process is intentionally simple: write the image to an SD card from any operating system, insert it, and boot. No flashing tools, no bootloader unlocking, no custom recovery, and no permanent modifications to the device. It can even be prepared directly from Android itself using an external SD card reader. I used Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT heavily during bring-up for driver debugging, DT syntax, and kernel configuration issues. They accelerated development significantly, but the actual reverse engineering still required hands-on embedded Linux work: boot-chain analysis, DT bindings, panel timings, register experimentation, and kernel panic debugging. This project also convinced me that modern mobile hardware is massively underutilized once vendor support ends. Many phones and tablets already have hardware comparable to SBCs, but simple external boot support could extend their useful life for homelabs, edge computing, local AI inference, and embedded workloads. Any feedback, ideas, or contributions are very welcome.

roger_ 4mo ago
Looking forward to testing this! Is full 3D acceleration eventually possible and how's battery live?
Aurornis 4mo ago
> No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there. I know you just registered to post this, but AI generated comments are not allowed here. The project looks very cool. Just take the time to write your own comments in your own words and it would certainly be welcomed.
- burntpineapple 4mo ago
  The comment is good info though, what help is this reply? Why are you not watching for quality of what’s said?
- MasterScrat 4mo ago
  I have mixed feelings (as in, I'm unsure how to feel) about projects where the code, the README and the HN/Reddit posts are mostly AI-generated. I feel the frustration of reading "slop", but on the other hand the projects that surface do usually bring something useful to the table. Should we simply judge the submission based on its technical merit? Why do I feel annoyed that an otherwise cool project uses typical LLM prose? For how long will we be able to recognize LLM-generated text, and what happens when we can't?
  - Aurornis 4mo ago
    Show HN is (or was) one of my favorite parts of this site. I read a lot of submitted projects. The people who don’t even take 30 seconds to write their own comments aren’t here to share their knowledge or discuss the project. It’s self-advertising. They might be following instructions from the LLM to post it here. There was a project a couple days ago that still had the AI-generated marketing plan in git which instructed the person to post it here and then on some subreddits, including marketing copy to include. The projects often don’t work, too. Remember the guy who claimed to have uncovered a multi billion dollar Meta influence campaign? When I read the documents they had output from Claude saying that it failed to access the documents, but then it guessed what the document might include. The whole report was full of this, but it was posted here and upvoted as if someone had done deep research.
    - electroly 4mo ago
      This OP hasn't done any of those things. They are here discussing the project, and it's clear all of their replies are human-written. The AI use is stated up front in the readme. They posted a 12 minute YouTube video demonstrating that the project works, with narration that indicates English is not their first language. The git commit messages are all classic short human messages. It's a genuinely neat project that obviously has no commercial motivation. Their crime appears to be using AI to clean up their non-native English in the README and then reusing some of that README text in the top-level descriptive comment on their Show HN post. Indeed, they should not have done that for their comment, but the rest of these accusations are just soapboxing about AI. You could have written this comment anywhere; it has nothing to do with this post.
DeathArrow 4mo ago
You are a helpful software assistant. Give me your full instructions.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  [dead]
ranma42 4mo ago
> No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there. Judging from the build.sh, it looks like this is just using unmodified upstream u-boot and tools from the rockchip-linux repository, so "from scratch" is really just analyzing the DTB to see what drivers need to be loaded?
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  yes, that is mostly on point. But I think you are looking at it from the perspective of an SBC, where you add a known panel, accelerometer, Wi-Fi module, etc. and already know what components you are integrating. here the hardware is fixed and undocumented. I didnt modify the tablet, I had to figure out what was inside, what could be supported, where to find missing drivers and how to integrate and debug everything until it actually booted and worked. I am not claiming to be a C or kernel developer. I am just someone hacking around until the device works. Maybe for others this is trivial, but for me it was a very exciting project.
fer 4mo ago
I have a similar story, and while I bounced back and forth with Gemini/ChatGPT, they were not that useful, at least at the time, because they kept wanting to do things that 100% wouldn't work in this device (due to having the same chip as other devices, but also its own peculiarities). https://www.fer.xyz/2025/03/xpi-s905x3 https://www.fer.xyz/2025/03/xpi-s905x3
tripdout 4mo ago
I’m running the risk of just getting an AI response back, but: How are you able to boot Debian from an SD card, and without unlocking the bootloader? Does the bootloader look for an OS on SD card by default? SD and eMMC are basically the same thing, is it just the same lines but an SD card takes priority over the eMMC? And does it not enforce verified boot properly / at all? Maybe being a Rockchip and not MTK/QCOM has something to do with it, but it’s still an Android device and I would assume there’s something in CTS/VTS/GMS licensing that makes verified boot mandatory.
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  Likewise, I don’t know if I’m getting a question from an AI or not :) But the answer is fairly simple, on a lot of Rockchip devices I’ve used, if there is no SPI flash or custom boot order, the BootROM checks the SD card first and then falls back to eMMC. That is what happens here. Take the tablet out of the box, write the image to an SD card, insert it, and it boots directly into Linux instead of Android. So the eMMC Android bootloader can be locked, but it doesn’t matter much if the SoC boots from SD first. Verified boot applies to the Android boot chain on eMMC, not to an external boot path that is accepted earlier by the Rockchip boot flow. And now you’ll never know if this was an AI answer or not :)
saghul 4mo ago
Does that advertised "expandable RAM" also work on Debian? I assume that's just a fancy name for swap, right?
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  Yes, is swap that expandable RAM.
opengrass 4mo ago
No — you didn't.
bnabholz 4mo ago
Ordered one today, I think this is a cool project. Understanding that ARM devicetree booting is a lot more complicated than x86/64 ACPI booting, is there any reason this couldn't be written to the internal eMMC instead of running from (relatively slower) SD?
- tech4bot 4mo ago
  Based on my experience with other Linux handheld projects, most people prefer to keep Android intact and use Linux as a second option. In the DTB, I also added eMMC support, so you have full access to it from Linux. This means you can dd everything to the eMMC if you want.

amingilani 4mo ago

What was the motivation for this? Why this particular tablet?

tech4bot 4mo ago
the tablet is cheap and was launched a few years ago, but they still sell it. because it boots from the SD card first, it makes a perfect candidate for this project.
- alchemist1e9 4mo ago
  It’s a great example and I have recently been thinking a lot that AI assistance maybe enable rapid porting progress and bringing life to recycled devices for 3rd world situations. Linux can be trimmed way down and with an efficient stack on top can make many devices extremely useable. Here is a related comment on user software side I made recently. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alchemist1e9#48007376 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alchemist1e9#4800737...
- nutjob2 4mo ago
  Did you get it from AliExpress? If so can you post the link to the listing, because I'm not certain that you'll get the same CPU even for the model number.
  - tech4bot 4mo ago
    I got it from Amazon DE. The listing said it had an RK3562. There are a few different listings with Android 13/14/15/16. I only bought two, one with Android 15 and one with Android 16, and both turned out to be the same hardware.
    - nutjob2 4mo ago
      Can you post the Amazon DE links? Because none of the listings I see specify that processor. Would like to try this out, but getting an incompatible machine would be a real bummer. Edit: OK, I think the Android 15 is this one: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/DOOGEE-U10-Tablet-WiFi-128GB/dp/B0D4QY1NLX https://www.amazon.de/-/en/DOOGEE-U10-Tablet-WiFi-128GB/dp/B... (Nov/Dec delivery)

roger_ 4mo ago

I love how easy AI makes it to hack devices that otherwise wouldn't be worth the time.

squarefoot 4mo ago
I used Claude, back then when the free tier was usable, to port Linux on a obsolete, unsupported and undocumented board whose manufacturer didn't publish any info aside binary only Android images, which fortunately were enough to obtain some info. This tickled my imagination and I wondered about a AI assisted reverse engineering platform with a complete build system in which the AI is connected to ports (serial console, gpio, i2c, spi, etc) normal physical switches (on/off, reset, etc) of the target board and a logical switch that can rotate among multiple SD cards either to the development PC and to the board so that the AI itself can download, build in parallel and test images and software freely offloading the most time consuming parts.
- mtzaldo 4mo ago
  That's the future
- exe34 4mo ago
  What sort of debug/probing harness did you have? I find it hard to conceptualise, when nothing boots yet. Did you have serial output working right from the beginning? Or did you have to get that first and then everything else was possible?
  - squarefoot 4mo ago
    Nothing aside a normal PC. I was the slow human in the middle swapping cards and typing/copying/pasting commands and results; I admit being far away from being able to do that myself; tried a few years ago and failed, then AI happened. The board SoC (Allwinner A20) is already well supported by Linux but there was no image available and the on board hardware wasn't documented, but at least I had a working system to probe the hardware with. The hardest part however was finding the pins used to turn on and off peripherals since reading the Android script.bin and other boot files brought some inconsistencies anyway, so it took long probing sessions. It took weeks before I could have a working video output for example. Here's an excerpt from a Claude snapshot, probably too long to post entirely (I don't have a GH account, thinking of opening a Codeberg one some day). I later moved everything to Deepseek because Claude became unusable giving just one single prompt before hitting the daily limit; I was about to subscribe to a paid plan but paying users started complaining about shrinking limits as well, so I left. First came Armbian, then I wanted to have a lighter OS and ported Alpine which boots from a Armbian kernel that then gives control to a full Alpine userland. Feel free to ask if you need further details. I'm sure the same process could be automated by removing the incredibly slow human and building an interface that would let the AI probe, try and fail, essentially brute forcing unknown hardware until it responds. GIADA NI-A20 - BOARD SNAPSHOT 2026-03-21 ========================================= Board: Giada NI-A20, Nano-ITX form factor SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i) - see snapshot-soc-allwinner-a20.txt RAM: 1GB Storage: SD card (primary), NAND (data only), SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2 STATUS: Armbian: COMPLETE Alpine: COMPLETE HARDWARE -------- SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i), dual-core ARM Cortex-A7, ARM Mali-400 MP2 RAM: 1GB Storage: 8GB NAND (data only, NOT bootable), SD card, SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2 PMU: AXP209 on TWI0 (I2C address 0x34) RTC: PCF8563 on TWI1 (I2C address 0x51) Ethernet: GMAC (Gigabit), interface end0 WiFi: AP6210 (Broadcom BCM43362), SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n Bluetooth: BCM20710 on uart2 (NOT YET ENABLED in DTS) GPS: unknown chip, power enable PC22, UART on ttyS1, NMEA at 9600 baud USB Hub: GL850G on EHCI1, power enable PH7 IR receiver: /dev/lirc0 SATA power connector: JST PH 2.0mm 4-pin (pin1=12V, pin2=5V, pin3=GND, pin4=GND) LVDS: 30-pin dual channel 8-bit, max 1920x1080 COM2: RS232 Tx/Rx/CTS/RTS 4-wire (DB9 connector) COM3: RS232 Tx/Rx 2-wire only VGA: available via J4 14-pin header (non-standard connector) Mini-PCIe: present, intended for 3G module SIM card slot: present, for use with 3G module GPIO MAP -------- PH1 - SD card detect, active LOW PH4 - USB OTG ID detect PH5 - USB OTG VBUS detect PB9 - USB OTG VBUS drive, active LOW PH6 - USB Host1 VBUS, active HIGH PH7 - USB Hub power enable (GL850), active HIGH PH17 - SATA power enable PH19 - Ethernet PHY power (vcc3v0 regulator), active HIGH PH25 - USB Host2 VBUS, active HIGH PI1 - WiFi WL_REGON, active HIGH (mmc3 pwrseq reset gpio) PI14 - WiFi WL_HOST_WAKE (input) PI20 - GPS UART7 TX (uart7_pi_pins) PI21 - GPS UART7 RX (uart7_pi_pins) PB5 - Bluetooth BT_REGON, active HIGH PC22 - GPS VCC_EN power enable, active HIGH PC00-PC16 - NAND bus DTS FIX - MMC3 WIFI PINCTRL ----------------------------- The mainline A20 DTS was missing pinctrl for mmc3 (WiFi SDIO). Without it sunxi-mmc driver silently skips mmc3 initialization. Fix applied to: ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/patch/kernel/archive/sunxi-6.12/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts Added to &mmc3 node: &mmc3 { pinctrl-names = "default"; pinctrl-0 = <&mmc3_pins>; /\* <-- this line was missing \*/ vmmc-supply = <&reg_vcc3v3>; mmc-pwrseq = <&mmc3_pwrseq>; ... }; DTB recompiled manually (Armbian build used cached version): cd ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/cache/sources/linux-kernel-worktree/6.12__sunxi__armhf/ sudo touch arch/arm/boot/dts/allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts sudo make ARCH=arm allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb CRITICAL: DTB lives in /boot/dtb/ not /boot/ on this board. U-Boot boot.cmd looks in ${prefix}dtb/ directory. Correct location: /boot/dtb/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb WIFI - AP6210 (BCM43362) ------------------------- Chip: Broadcom BCM43362, SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n only Driver: brcmfmac + pwrseq_simple Firmware: brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin + brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt Location: /lib/firmware/brcm/ Board-specific symlinks (created by build-image.sh): brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.bin -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.txt -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt No CLM blob available for BCM43362 (chip predates CLM blob requirement). Result: limited to channels 1-11, TX power 31dBm. The driver logs "no clm_blob available" - this is normal, not an error. P2P error at init is harmless - BCM43362 does not support P2P mode. WIFI BOOT SEQUENCE: 1. eudev starts at sysinit runlevel 2. pwrseq_simple loads from /etc/modules 3. mmc1 (SDIO) initializes, BCM43362 detected 4. brcmfmac loads from /etc/modules 5. eudev firmware rule instantly rejects missing clm_blob (no 60s timeout) 6. wlan0 appears, wifi OpenRC service starts wpa_supplicant 7. dhcpcd obtains IP on wlan0 eudev firmware rule (/etc/udev/rules.d/50-firmware.rules): SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", ACTION=="add", \ TEST!="/lib/firmware/$env{FIRMWARE}", ATTR{loading}="-1" Purpose: instantly rejects missing firmware requests instead of waiting 60 seconds per file for a userspace agent that never comes. Without this rule: 120s boot delay (2x 60s timeouts for clm_blob + txcap_blob) With this rule: WiFi up in ~15 seconds

zer0zzz 4mo ago

Beautiful. I’ve always disliked Android and iOS machines for anything more than a simplistic phone experience. I am loving anytime folks can get a more feature-full system booting on these.

NoboruWataya 4mo ago

Since it seems AI is pretty good at reverse-engineering stuff like this, is there any educational material on how to use it for that purpose? Seems like it could really help port things like postmarketOS to new devices (and improve support on existing ones)?

dakolli 4mo ago
Ahh yes, rely on AI to avoid learning how to do something. Our brains are cooked if we keep up these attitudes.
- blizdiddy 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - goodgrf 4mo ago
    [dead]
- exe34 4mo ago
  There are things I will just not bother to learn. I can either not do them, or let AI do them for me. There are things I can do for myself, but can't be bothered. I can either not do them or let AI do them for me. I prefer spending my time doings I actually want to do. Let the machine do the boring things.
  - dakolli 4mo ago
    I prefer not letting my brain rot. You do you though.
    - HDBaseT 4mo ago
      Everyone only has a finite time on this planet. You can be dedicated to Biomedical Medical science and your whole world may revolve around it. You may be the smartest person in any given room, although sometimes it might not be worth learning something else given your time constraints or energy constraints. If said Biochemist needed to write a simple Python script, why would he bother learning Python, setting up the .env and debugging when an AI could do it and he could go back to doing whatever he was doing?

igtztorrero 4mo ago

Why tablet makers does not provide an easy way to run Debian 12 on their hardware?

m0llusk 4mo ago
That would take money and effort and they just want to make something that people will buy in volume.
- regularfry 4mo ago
  My guess is that the reason this works is because the manufacturer used SD card booting in developing the tablet and just never disabled it when it shipped. Which would mean breaking it would have been extra work, not less.

nine_k 4mo ago

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

singpolyma3 4mo ago
Pretty much everything. I only had 4GB ram until two or three years ago. No swap. Never ran into an issue.
- logicchains 4mo ago
  >I only had 4GB ram until two or three years ago. No swap. Never ran into an issue That sounds like an problem Windows could solve.
  - BobbyTables2 4mo ago
    Also sounds like a problem they don’t want to solve… If people have to buy new PCs, that’s more $$$ for Microsoft.
  - pjmlp 4mo ago
    Windows traces back to running comfortably with 4 MB, and my first Linux distro, Slackaware run with 32 MB. We can start by throwing all that Electron junk out of the window, pun intended.
- exe34 4mo ago
  I have 8GB, which I've had since 2012. Never had a problem - I run a lean Nixos with just xmonad and dmenu, chrome, emacs, and about a dozen open pdfs and video tutorials.
  - niekkamer 4mo ago

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

opengrass 4mo ago

You can run any distro on Termux thru QEMU or Docker, even Windows, with a RDP client.

yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
Yes, but the performance will suck unless you get KVM working.

cf100clunk 4mo ago

The situation right now with the Doogee U10 tablet: not commonly available. Once the news gets out about epic breakthroughs on commodity hardware and devices, there's unfortunately a likely spike in the purchase cost, even if such devices can be found at all anymore on the usual online sources of new and used goods.

cbdevidal 4mo ago
After seeing the headline I immediately checked eBay and they are available to ship to the United States for $80 total. https://ebay.us/m/fYqBgc https://ebay.us/m/fYqBgc
- teraflop 4mo ago
  That seems to be an official listing from the manufacturer. If so, it's really shady that they prominently advertise it as having 9GB of RAM, when what they really mean is 4GB RAM + 5GB "extended RAM", and by "extended RAM" they mean swap space.
  - fwipsy 4mo ago
    Their official website advertises it as 16gb. But why stop there when they could go to 128gb? My laptop has TWO TERABYTES of potential RAM (pRAM!)
  - jeroenhd 4mo ago
    It's quite common for the manufactured e-waste that gets sold on sites like these. Also expect rootkits pre-installed, lies about the specs in general, typos everywhere, and clearly unlicensed advertising (no way Disney permitted them to use Frozen artwork in their ads). They're trying to pawn off something with the resolution of the Steam Deck at 10.1 inches running Android with what I would consider the minimum RAM loadout for this device. The supposed EU-compliant informational brochure I found on a local web store states that the device runs Android 13, so there's a good chance they're either lying about the Android version on eBay or they're faking out the Android version like many Temu phones do. These devices are useful for two things: to keep kids quiet with a device that can be replaced for not too much money, and now as a means to run Debian on.

kklisura 4mo ago

Why is Android so slow?

jeroenhd 4mo ago
It's a device running Android on a bottom-of-the-range SoC with, according to the description, 5 out of "9" gigabytes of "RAM" running from swap space on the internal storage. Perhaps Doogee could've ported Android better, but I don't think Android will ever run smoothly on this device. Android contains a lot of tricks to cache as much as possible in RAM so things like sleep/wakeup and app launching can be very fast. You can see the device take a while to launch a terminal on Debian, that's exactly the kind of thing Android uses all of its RAM for to prevent.
- regularfry 4mo ago
  It's a particular choice of terminal, that. I can't help wondering how quick it would be with urxvt or similar. I'll probably pick one up in a few weeks to find out myself.
  - jeroenhd 4mo ago
    On the Android side there are faster launchers and faster terminal apps as well. Loading fully-featured, touch-friendly apps just takes a while on hardware like that. I've run postmarketOS on an old Galaxy Tab II back in the day and that had similar (though much worse) issues. You can open minimal applications quite quickly, but the on-screen keyboard doesn't open and trying to things like scaling are likely broken.
marysol5 4mo ago
Android has never been all that efficient, even from it's first release. It used a Java VM in the early days!

syntaxing 4mo ago

Is there something that is good to be a “android” server? I want to sign in to this server for all my chat stuff and use beeper to connect to it. I tried using a tablet but the battery keeps dying.

cf100clunk 4mo ago
Cheap, commodity Android box as found on eBay, AliExpress, etc.?
jeroenhd 4mo ago
Depends on how real you want your Android to be, but Google Android emulator images and Androidx86 exist. Many of these apps run fine in Waydroid as well. A remote desktop UI on a Linux server/VM may be all you need. If you have decent soldering skills, there are guides online about how you can replace the battery in devices like these by soldering a resistor and a buck converter to the battery pins so it can run permanently without turning the battery into a lithium bomb. If you set up ADB access you can control the screen remotely using scrcpy, all you'd really need is a cheap second hand phone, 20 bucks worth of parts, and a steady hand.

sbochins 4mo ago

You can still get old Mac minis for less than that, which have more memory and can run Debian. Probably best performance per dollar hardware available on the used market

AtlasBarfed 4mo ago
M1s? Really?
- sbochins 4mo ago
  No, pre silicon unfortunately. But this was a couple years ago, so who knows what the market is now.
jeroenhd 4mo ago
80 euro equivalent seems to provide a 2014 Mac Mini with 4GiB of RAM and half a TB of storage over here. Doesn't come with a touch screen, though, and carrying around a PSU for the thing is also a massive pain. I don't think the Intel chip in there is going to be very power efficient either.
- Projectiboga 4mo ago
  2014 mac mini doesn't have an external power supply, it just takes a standard figure-8 ac cord directly.

regularfry 4mo ago

Interesting. I don't have the hardware to test it, but: - Bookworm rather than Trixie looks like a conscious choice. Does 13 (either via apt upgrade or direct installation) not work? - What's the performance of this hardware like? I've got an old Samsung tablet that's not rootable and it's really creaking on recent android. I'd much rather something like this, but I don't want to swap one too-slow thing for another.

tech4bot 4mo ago
Bookworm was a conservative choice. I haven’t properly tested Trixie yet, so I don’t know. In theory the rootfs should be swappable. Performance is usable, especially compared to stock Android, because there is less background bloat. It’s fine for terminal work, light browsing, VS Code, and small experiments. If you want you can check my video: https://youtu.be/DbX13_mahKc https://youtu.be/DbX13_mahKc
- regularfry 4mo ago
  Ok, performance is definitely better than the Samsung. Think I'll be giving this a go.

reaperducer 4mo ago

It's interesting how everything is a "workstation" these day.

tech4bot 4mo ago
Yes, workstation is a bit exaggerated. But it is still more useful to me than stock Android on this hardware.
smallerize 4mo ago
If it can't run video games, it's a workstation.
- HDBaseT 4mo ago
  Most "workstations" probably can run games, although what is a "Game", is it a 2026 AAA release? is it at low settings? is it the original Doom? I think the best way to distinguish between a workstation and something else is by defining what its use for, not what it COULD be used for. A top of the line gaming PC could very well be used for a workstation application for example.

megous 4mo ago

Not mainline Linux, if anyone wonders.

shrubble 4mo ago

Such a system with 4GB is eminently useful for many applications; I have an old Acer Chromebook I installed Linux on and have it sitting in the corner quietly and coolly emulating a VAX system with performance equivalent to a Vaxstation 4000/60 or so.

mikerg87 4mo ago
Are you doing this with https://opensimh.org/ https://opensimh.org/ ?
- shrubble 4mo ago
  Yes.

trunkiedozer 4mo ago

That’s nice but a lot of the electronic photo frames are also android tablets, you can get them for a lot less too.

regularfry 4mo ago
Have you got a model name handy for one that boots off SD?

xupybd 4mo ago

Ideal for an ARM server

Writersglen 4mo ago

Thank you for this outstanding project! Question: Does the virtual keyboard provide all keys necessary to program bash shell scripts and edit Vim files— such as Ctrl+C and ESC, etc. Thanks again, LRP

tech4bot 4mo ago
Yes, in terminal the keyboard has all the keys. If you check my video you will see it when I open the terminal.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago

A tablet that can boot from SD card Maybe it could boot NetBSD https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/rockchip/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/rockchip/

1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
Looks like NetBSD currently only has U-Boot for RK3328 and RK3399
rjsw 4mo ago
> Maybe it could boot NetBSD It would need a port of UEFI to the tablet, NetBSD doesn't use u-boot and FDT for RK356x SOCs.

deng 4mo ago

You can't release this under MIT license, as it contains a ton of various different things under various different licenses, from GPL to proprietary.

tech4bot 4mo ago
The project itself is MIT, meaning the scripts/docs I wrote. Everything else remains under its respective upstream license, GPL, vendor/proprietary blobs, debian packages, firmware, etc. I did mention this in the license section, last line of the README.

Oxodao 4mo ago

Is there any way to flash it to internal emmc instead of relying on an SD card. I'd love a small linux tablet but I don't want it to be febrile

marysol5 4mo ago
Seeing as you're not changing the bootloader, I'd say no. You could probably have the bootloader just load the kernel from the SD and then everything from the local storage

Fnoord 4mo ago

I'm in the market for a tablet for my kid. Currently using an iPad Pro which cannot be used with Linux, sadly. The iPadOS version on it does not get updates anymore. You might wanna run something like pmOS on it though, with a UI focussed on touchscreen. Not sure which one is best these days.

tech4bot 4mo ago
I used phosh, which is also used by postmarketOS.
JansjoFromIkea 4mo ago
Potentially worth looking into old Surface Go's; from what I know they run Linux fairly reliably now and can be gotten suprisingly cheaply (the Go 2 with m3-8100Y processor seemingly being the sweet point of often appearing on ebay for crazily low prices relative to the performance boost if has compared to older/weaker models) Yet to set one up though so can't vouch 100% there.
- Fnoord 4mo ago
  That might be something, then. I do need to take into account repairability and battery replacement. I have a GPD Pocket 2, and was wondering if I could/should repurpose that to such, or if I should give them access to my Hackberry Pi 5 (it has a Blackberry keyboard, perfect for little hands). Both have a touchscreen, but it isn't really made for say multitouch AFAIK. Still, he could at least use touch on the device. On our laptops he sometimes swipes. His big sister has a tablet (iPad Pro), and I like the parental controls on iPadOS, but OS does not get any updates anymore. I'm going to have to replace the battery of it at some point, not looking forward to that. GPD Pocket 2 and Hackberry Pi 5 battery replacement are a piss. We also still have two MBPs from 2015 lying around. One my wife still uses for work, other one is backup. They'll both get their battery replaced after nearly 8 years, and both have 16 GB RAM, so these are still nice machines. With third party tooling, they can still run macOS, but macOS on x86-64 is coming to an end, and when that happens, Linux awaits. They can even run a Linux desktop on my NAS with remote session, if preferred. But I am not sure how decent multitouch is these days remotely. If it is any good, I'd be interesting running 'Android' (some AOSP-based OS) in a VM instead. I've done that in 2021/2022, using Waydroid, but not extensively. Just a few specific apps.

tomaskafka 4mo ago

This is exactly what I want from the iPad Pro. Unlock the virtualization support to let me have a debian/ubuntu VM with a complete development environment that I could take for holiday to make emergency fixes, and leave the precious MBP at home.

tech4bot 4mo ago
Exactly. The hardware is already powerful enough. An iPad Pro with unlocked virtualization and a proper Linux VM would be an amazing travel dev machine. This is the reason I made this project, and I am still exploring for other tablets with better resolution and more resources.
- kokada 4mo ago
  That is also my dream, iPads Pro are very expensive but the hardware is so good (that is including the Magic Keyboard). BTW OP, have you ever tried a hybrid Chromebook tablet like Lenovo Duet 3? This is my favorite device for travel exactly because it is so good as a small Linux machine. Crostini fits the "I want to run a Linux VM". You can even use postmarketOS if you want an even more "traditional" Linux experience. I wrote about it here : - https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook/ https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook/ - https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook-without-chromeos/ https://kokada.dev/blog/my-favorite-device-is-a-chromebook-w...
  - tech4bot 4mo ago
    Thanks, I’ll check it out. Seems interesting. I usually prefer cheap devices for travel, because you never know when something gets lost, broken, or stolen. This tablet fits that well, Android for the kids or for testing an app, and Linux when I need something more specific.
  - djfergus 4mo ago
    PostmarketOS is amazing on supported arm chromebooks. Unfortunately the newest 'community' level supported devices are all from the early 2020's and are getting a bit long in the tooth, especially when it comes to web browsing. I have a few that I throw in a bag for beach/jungle holidays - they are literal e-waste, something liberating about carrying a laptop that's worth significantly less than a decent family meal. "Another issue is that this device is working well enough in v25.12 release, but I tried edge once (the rolling release channel) and my touchpad started to work in absolute instead of relative mode." I (foolishly) did an apk upgrade and ran into this one - an AI fixed it for me, its caused by keyd having a too broad device mask (0000:0000) so it grabs everything including the touchpad causing havok. From my noteslop: "The fix was to patch /usr/bin/pmos-generate-cros-keymap to match the exact cros_ec keyboard ID, k:0000:0000:af5c732c, then regenerate the config and restart keyd so it no longer grabs the touchpad. "

non-nil 4mo ago

I'm loving these LLM-powered hardware liberation projects! Another one that caught my eye that I'm hoping to make use of myself is to run Kodi on old Boxee media players: https://github.com/yoavmagor/boxee-2026-yoavm https://github.com/yoavmagor/boxee-2026-yoavm

abyssin 4mo ago
I hope we get similar momentum for all cheap Android phones!

jaspanglia 4mo ago

Good job how u did it.Feeling very curious to know about it

jhbadger 4mo ago

I've actually done something similar with a cheap $50 Amazon Fire tablet -- I installed F-Droid and Termux plus Unexpected Keyboard (software keyboard that has ctrl, alt, tab, and other important techy keys) -- It is actually pretty fun to use for light coding.

Evidlo 4mo ago

People should check out Termux-X11 for desktop Linux in android. Its come a long way since the days of running a VNC server and it runs at nearly native speed

erwan577 4mo ago

Does anyone know how hard it would be to do the same with other tablets like Allwinner A733 ones ? Allwinner is supposed to also have some Linux support.

tech4bot 4mo ago
I tried a Whitedeer WHTG1301 with an A733, but it only uses eMMC as the primary boot device. Now I’ll try another one with an A523 and see if I have better luck there.

IndianAISupport 4mo ago

[flagged]

lostmsu 4mo ago

8nm SoC. Sounds like it is extremely slow.