Slackware ARM on a tablet?

Has anybody got Slackware ARM installed on a tablet? I have an Asus Transformer tf300, and want slackware on it... but I don't know if I can pioneer this, and was hoping someone has done it already.

Have a look here ... I have it on a Allwinner SOC based tablet
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...ad700_7_tablet

Not sure what hardware is inside the Asus Transformer tf300, is it a tegra 3 ? ... I also put slackware on my ac100 http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...00_dynabook_az ... but that's a tegra2, not sure how much of that kernel would work on tegra3.

Many thanks louigi600... that is very nice documentation! well, I know that they have ubuntu going on asus transformers, tf201 and tf300, from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=48947306&postcount=342... So I'm sure slackware could run on it to... I just don't have android/arm development experience, and am afraid of bricking the tablet while I try... there is a tool called nvflash, that hopefully I can use to make some recovery blobs... I guess I'll try, and if I brick it, I'll replace it with a zelig pad.

I edited mu previous reply while you wrote yours ... have a look because I also have slackware on the ac100 (tegra2).
The userland wil runn on it ... just borrow the kernel from ubuntu like I did for the AC100.

Wow Louigi600... Thanks again... Your AC100 tutorial even has examples of how to use the nvflash! I'm not as scared any more! I will borrow ubuntu kernel, and check out their .config and their initrd...

Yes,Asus tf300 has a Tegra 3. /proc/cpuinfo says ARM 7 processor - Rev. 9

Just be careful not to wipe android until you're sure everything works in Slackware ... for instance a tablet with non functional touchscreen is pretty much useless ... ok you can play with external keyboard (and your tablet comes stock with one I understand) but for you might not want to carry one around with you.

taking louigi600's last comment as an extremely valuable one, I have begun by backing up android, so no matter what my tinkering does, I can get my tablet back to it's current state... I followed the guide at https://www.androidroot.mobi/pages/g...ash-jellybean/.

Dear louigi600, I followed your hacking xzpad700 tutorial and it worked fine on my tablet. Mine is an India branded (Celkon CT2) tab with sim slot. It boots your miniroot (slackware 14.0) and it looks great on my Tab. I would like to know what I should do to get X11 and minimal window manager installed. I do not have wifi at home. I have a sim slot. Would mobile broadband work? Or can I download on my desktop and install on the tab? If so what I should download? I just became a forum member and posting my first query. So please excuse me if I have done something wrong. Looking forward to your guidance.

You have a minimal slackware installation (it's basically Stuart's miniroot with a couple of things added to it).
There are many ways you could go about taking a miniroot to a full system ... this is the one I use most of the time (but requires networking to be functiona):
install manually into the miniroot everything you need to get slackpkg working (wget and installpkg a few time to satisfy the dependencies),
configure slackpkg to use the right mirror for your system (edit /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and comment out ftp://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/sla...kwarearm-14.0/ ... or something that looks like that),
run "slackpkg update" (this will update just the repo)
run "slackpkg install X n l xap" this will install the package series and get most of the stuff you need)

You will then need to edit inittab to change the default runlevel into runlevel 4 and possibly choose whatever version of xdm you wish to use.

If you can't get networking to work you might want to install via chroot from another pc that mounts the target SD.

Be warned that you may run into all sorts of problems with the touch screen.
Forgot to mention ... you will also need to do something about a virtual keybord unless you want to carry a physical one around with you (http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd/#download)

BTW: thre is a whole lot of other distro alternatives if you're looking just for something different to Android: http://linux-sunxi.org/Category:Linux_Distributions

Thanks louigi600 for your instructions. Touch screen is important, without that a Tab is useless. Now that you have warned me about touch screen problems I am not sure whether to proceed or not. You have given me a link for alternate linux distros, would they also have touch screen problems or are you aware of any that work. I tried lubuntu-desktop-12.04-4-1080p-512mb-miniand.com.img.7z. I removed slackware from sd2 partition and copied lubuntu sd2 partition over there. It displays boot msgs and then stuck there for a long time. I gave it 30 mins and then switched off. Then I tried mele-sd-4gb-lui-5.2.90.img.xz. This is puppy arm port by Barry Kauler. Thanks to him. I copied the sd2 partition like I did for lubuntu. This booted nicely into a graphical desktop. X11 and JWM. I could do everything with an usb keyboard. But no touch screen. I do not know how to make the touch screen work. I want linux and touch screen on my Tab. So I am going to wait around until you experts come out with a magic script that would make linux and touch screen work. If android with a linux kernel can work the touch screen then I do not understand why linux fails in this area. Thanks again.

Hum .... not sure: the problem here is that different hardware have very much different touch screen implementations and a lot of the drivers never make it into the mainstream kernel. On top of that there are also other problems that arise from the way the different TS hardware is used and configured and from the need of closed source binary blobs that are put into the custom drivers for any particular implementation.

I don't want to make it sound impossible but if you're lucky your hardware may have a supported combination and all might work as long as you load the correct driver for it.
Boot whatever came stock with the tablet and try to figure out what the TS hardware is and what kernel module is needed to get it working: look for the same module in your linux-sunxi kernel (if it's not there have a look at the sources and any possible patches to have support for it) ... once you have the module load it and then try it out.
On the other side you might get unlucky like I was on my A13 tablet (with the FocalTech ft5x ts) where I was unable to get a it fully functional (maybe had I been a little more prepared I could have extracted the blob out of the working module from it's stock android ... or possibly use the same toolchain to build the same version kernel and just reuse the stock module but my kids come first). This does not mean that some other ft5x implementation might work out of the box ... it's a matter of luck if you like to look at it that way.

Whatever it's got little to do with whatever linux distribution you choose to have on the tablet, the only exception to that is whatever came stock with the hardware (where the manufacturer most likely hired a programmer to write a driver for the hardware that come in their product and had him sigh a contract of non disclosure of the code).

If all the rest works carry a small usb mouse with you and you'll be ok ;-)

Hello louigi600. Guess what I found out today. Though the puppy desktop works with an attached keyboard, when I did lsmod it displayed nothing. Then I realized that the sd card I prepared with your script contains kernel 3.4.43.sun4i+ where as puppy has 3.0.8+ kernel modules. Since I only replaced the sd2 partition, because of mismatch it did not load any kernel modules. This is my guess as I am not knowledgeable in this area. Then I did insmod ft5x_ts. My touch screen started working. But it was not registering where I was touching. It was way off. So I need your help to fix this. In fact I need your help in two areas:

1. Touch screen to register touch where I touch the screen

2. /lib/modules/ has hundreds of modules. Do I need to load all of them? If not how can I find what all the modules need to be loaded. I also noticed sound not working. So my priority is touchscreen, network and sound in that order.

Looking forward to your suggestion. Thank you.

sorry I can't help much on 1) ... I gave up for similar reasons on my ft5x ... you may try changing stuff in the script.bin (orientation of the TS) but in may case any changes resulted in the thing not booting.

2) no: you only need to load the modules for the hardware that is present on your tablet, loading modules for hardware that is not present is at best useless and sometimes can crash.
I don't know the details of your tablet ... you might want to load modules for things like wifi, bluetooth, ethernet. I generally don't bother with the usb gadget stuff for using the otg port as usb-storage for sharing the tablet's internal storage.

Thanks louigi600. I will report back if there is any success from my side.