I'm putting this thread in mobile simply because that's where I'm finding the largest number of similar threads, although I'm not sure whether this counts as a mobile device.

I have an Android laptop with a keyboard, touchpad, Ethernet port, and USB ports, but it lacks a touchscreen.

Most places that talk about Android only tell you how to get a chrooted Linux environment running in a terminal or via VNC on top of the Android OS, but that's not really what I want to do. My laptop is probably powerful enough to run Linux with a lightweight X distribution natively, but definitely not beefy enough to handle Android and a VNC on top of X.

I also frequently hear people mention that they might lose some phone functionality or touchscreen functionality, but that's not an issue in my case because this laptop doesn't have a SIM card, a touchscreen, or even a GPS. So it seems like a good candidate for an ARM Linux distribution.

The laptop has a Cortex A9 running at 1.5GHz, Mali 400MP2 Graphics, and 1GB of RAM. The 1GB of RAM is the main reason why I don't like the idea of running an X server inside a VNC viewer. Also, I'm annoyed that nothing ever runs full-screen under Android because the bottom part of the screen is always occupied with this weird taskbar, even when it's emptied/darkened.

I'm having a lot of trouble finding out how to get started because I can't figure out how to get further than rooting the device and installing BusyBox. There seems to be very limited interest in doing anything other than playing around with Linux as a novelty via VNC viewers and terminals.

Is what I want to do possible? The way the device is now, it's not really useful for much outside of Chrome and Netflix due to the lack of a touchscreen, so I wouldn't be devastated if I bricked it.

I have no idea about that device, other than it apparently has an ARM CPU. For ARM, Debian is the way to go. It has ARM versions. But without knowing more about the device, such as what bootloader, etc it has, I can't tell you much. The place to go for help with Android devices is XDA-Developers. Their forums are dedicated to Android, and if anything can be done, they've done it.

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XDA-Developers? I was afraid you were going to say that. That site is extremely unhelpful. The people there are really picky about forcing you to exhaust every possible search and post in the correct subforum out of hundreds of categories, many of which seem arbitrary. Even if you do all that, they tend to ignore the posts of people asking questions like mine because everyone there is much more advanced. My threads get ignored for days over there.

It's very frustrating, but what I've found in life is that the people who are smart enough to help me with a technical problem are usually the ones least willing to actually help me out with it, and demand that I either figure it out for myself or pay them a ridiculous sum of money. I tend to say the wrong thing, bring out their arrogance and upset them somehow. I rub programmers and hard-core hackers the wrong way somehow.

It looks like asking around won't get me anywhere, and I'm probably going to be forced to try and gather information over several weeks of creatively-phrased Internet searches. Which is frustrating because there are so many false leads that are either device-specific or only tell you how to set up a VNC/Terminal approach as if they're convinced it's superior and you shouldn't even be looking at the other method.

The simplest method would be to wipe the drive and just install Linux if you want to go for it. Then you can try to get it working from there and always go back to Android if you need to with a drive image you saved.

I doubt you'll get much help here, because I haven't noticed that many people who like or run Android. You can try the related AndroidQuestions forums. There's a link on the top right of the page here.

The problem with installing Linux on these types of devices is that they tend to have proprietary firmware, unlike standard laptops, and it takes a certain level of knowledge and dedication to figure out how to deal with them. Something like this is not a popular item, and therefore not a lot of people care about dealing with it. Since you didn't even give the manufacturer or much other pertinent information, it's not even possible to use Google to do your searches for you. The people on XDA Developers, as well as here, are all volunteers, on their own time, and expect you to do due diligence with searching for answers and asking intelligent questions while providing necessary information. If you don't do that, you won't get much love anywhere.

athenian200, first of all you should post some link to what device you are actually running there.
i just tried a websearch for "WM8880/GA-1311F" and got nothing.

you already got one good advice: "For ARM, Debian is the way to go."

if you don't get frustrated, you will get somewhere eventually.

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I have gotten a little further, actually. I found out that I have something called U-boot running on my device, and that it looks for a file called FirmwareInstall/autorun.1.wmt on the SD card. So far, the only thing I can get it to do is cycle the machine's power on and off, but I at least know it's there if I can figure out what to do with it. It's a ridiculously primitive bootloader.

Well, part of the problem is that there's no manufacturer listed anywhere on the device. The specs are there, and it tells you that there's a WM8880 chipset, and the model number of GA-1311F can be found in the Google Play store. Everything on the device says WonderMedia technologies, and there's string in the kernel logs suggesting that the kernel was built somewhere near Hong Kong by someone named reilienchen@szche16. That is as close as I can get to locating the manufacturer.

Debian's documentation was helpful because it told me about U-boot, and doing research on that helped me find it on my device. However, everything I've heard since has been bad news. Half the documentation is an an apology about ARM not being standardized and telling me I have to either reverse-engineer or rely on the manufacturer for what I need, and I'm even expected to know exact memory addresses for loading the kernel. It's also not very optimistic about device support, saying that you need an entire device tree for your exact chipset... and while there is one for the WM8850, there isn't one for my device. Worse, there have been suggestions that the default console is a serial console that you have to tear open the computer to access.

So I'm getting the impression that I'm going to have to work really, really hard to even get the installer running, maybe even tear the device open and buy special cables, and even then it may not be able to do anything but run a BASH prompt in a framebuffer... if I'm lucky. This seems really unfair, every chipset in cheap tablets is supported, but I'm screwed because I bought the one model no one felt was worth supporting.

EDIT: It took me a long time to figure out who made this machine, but I finally found them on a website called Alibaba. Apparently the manufacturer is Elovo, in association with Shenzhen Big Master Technology. The model number is X6-13V21. This isn't advertising because I don't recommend the product.

http://elovo.en.alibaba.com/product/...the_world.html

There's also this YouTube video of it.

https://youtu.be/gQbIhRw2Bf0

I saw this device on Amazon for $200 under "Generic," but it was a lot cheaper when I got it from another website that no longer carries it, though. Just over $100. But if you look at the pictures, you'll see why I can' tell you anything about the manufacturer from the box or the casing. It's unbranded, nearly always sold as generic, so all you have are the specs and the chipset. That model number is nowhere on the device, and you wouldn't see it unless you look up the manufacturer on Alibaba yourself.

ok, wondermedia was the keyword.
i did a web search for "wondermedia linux", and it seems to be possible:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-linux-857830/
https://www.coldplug.net/node/7

good luck and keep us posted!

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The coldplug.net site mentions the 8880, but says there is no kernel yet available for it. It would definitely use armhf with that CPU, but it probably would require a custom kernel for the hardware. One could try installing the regular armhf version of Debian, but it might not run. Hard to say without trying it. There should be a newer kernel available for armhf since the post was written. I would try Sid if it's available (haven't looked for armhf Sid in a long time) or Jessie, which is currently running the 4.x line of kernels at least on the mainline versions. I'm not optimistic about it working, but good luck anyway. Could be a valuable learning experience, or a long bout of frustration.

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Well, I've figured out how to do it, although I've had to associate with some amazingly advanced people to do so. It would involve partitioning an SD card or USB stick with a FAT partition for the script and an ext3/4 file system for Linux, cross-compiling a custom kernel, and possibly attaching wires to UART pins in order to see the installer, unless I can get the Ethernet device up so I can do a net install (which is likely to work with a Netbook).

Even after I do all this, I'll only have Linux running on a Framebuffer with support for many things broken. SD cards might be broken on my machine because it has a 13" screen rather than 7" screen, I may not be able to use both ARM cores properly, the internal NAND might not be accessible, and I wouldn't have sound or video acceleration. In other words, it would be an incredibly bad Linux installation.

The problem is that the people writing the support for the device had to reverse engineer every aspect of this chipset without any kind of official specs from VIA/WonderMedia. It's a common problem with Wondermedia netbooks and tablets, but since they're not as popular as other devices like the Wii, there aren't enough people working on it to get anything done quickly.

The laptop is probably more useful for Remote Desktop sessions and Chrome on Android than it ever would be as that sort of Linux laptop.

Anyway, here's the best resource I've been able to find for WM8880-based stuff. The fact that it's buried in a WonderMedia Kernel development group should tell you something about the status of Linux support for my poor laptop's chipset.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...el/yyf6aQaY0MQ

Still, they want me to try and install it to document as much behavior as possible, and I'm tempted to do what I can to help them out. Honestly, I have enough computers lying around that bricking the device to help these people out wouldn't be much of a loss to me. I guess I might as well try it after coming this far.