slackware install on asus vivotab note 8 (m80ta) or other bay trail tablet.
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I have been following this thread for 3 weeks since I was thinking of purchasing this tablet. Now its 1 week with the 64GB tablet and I have not been able to access the BIOS at all. I've tried, Power+VolUp, Power+VolDown, Power+WinKey, then Power+Vol+WinKey and even Esc with a USB keyboard. What key combination are you using?
I believe the instructions are in the second link of the first post in this thread. The page is for the Asus t100, but how to get to the uefi settings works the same.
From within windows the shutdown menu has an option for recovery and other options that I cannot remember off the top of my head. ( I am currently at work). From a bunch of different menu choices will finally let you into the uefi ( not bios ) where you can turn off secure boot and demote the windows boot loader.
rEFInd works very well and will let you boot windows easily if you must.
I am happy to see that you didn't give up and made obvious progress. I hope you'll contribute your findings to http://docs.slackware.com as that will interest more and more people to be able to install Slackware on a tablet.
Just one little remark: the expression "EFI BIOS" is kind of an oxymoron as explained here. Sorry to be a bit pedantic at times
One more off topic remark: it's nice to have Grub able to make EFI images, but from an aesthetical point of view using it as boot manager in case of EFI firmware hurts my eyes, as somehow it's like having a boot manager (Grub) on top of another boot manager (EFI boot manager). I'd prefer as much as possible set the NVRAM variables using efibootmgr, for instance, so that to have the relevant boot entries directly in EFI boot manager's menu. Maybe you could try that as an exercise when you will be done installing, as efibootmgr is shipped in Slackware? (but I won't buy you another tablet in case that damages the firmware, of course...)
Please continue to let us know how that goes.
Cheers,
once i get the touch screen and the ssd rpmb errors fixed i will work on a step by step guide and hopefully it is not as crazy as the path i have taken so far...
I believe the instructions are in the second link of the first post in this thread. The page is for the Asus t100, but how to get to the uefi settings works the same.
From within windows the shutdown menu has an option for recovery and other options that I cannot remember off the top of my head. ( I am currently at work). From a bunch of different menu choices will finally let you into the uefi ( not bios ) where you can turn off secure boot and demote the windows boot loader.
rEFInd works very well and will let you boot windows easily if you must.
i had actually started writing an in depth (or long winded) how to, but today at work i realized it really isn't that complicated.
the short short version.
get a kernel, a normal initrd, a setup initrd, and bootia32.efi on to the 100 mb efi partition.
this can be done in windows if you open a command prompt as administrator and type
mountvol S: /S the s: can actually be any available drive letter, but the capital S in /S is required. this will mount the efi partition as the s drive. you will be able to copy and move files to and fro, but not cp or mv.
once you can boot the grub cmd line then you can boot the kernel and the setup initrd to install to an sd card, then you do not have to mess with the windows partition at all. setup can run just as it normally would.
Don't give up, lots of us are following this thread closely. Thank you for the hard work!
Right now I am running x64 Debian in Virtual Box (yes 64bit OS in our little 32bit host Asus M80TA) as a substitute until there is a stable Linux I can install. Some time soon I will try to boot the VHD directly by putting an option to boot the VHD in the Win 8 boot loader (but I'll try booting a Windows VHD first).
i also tried the android-x86.org release for the t100, but it had the same problem. i had thought about asking the linux wacom driver guys for help, but the atmel touchscreen has the same problem, so i don't think it is a wacom specific issue. i don't know if it is an actual bug to be reported to someone, or just a case of hardware that hasn't been seen by the dev's and needs to be documented. from what i can figure out, the touchscreen and digitizer are i2c devices connected by the spi bus.
Any progress on this? I recently was given one of the Insignia Flex 8" tablets (cheap Bay trail Windows tablet made by Best Buy) and I was thinking of trading it in and getting an Asus Vivotab Note 8 for it's built-in wacom digitizer. I've had mild success getting linux to work properly on the Insignia Flex tablet, but I didn't want to have to pay for anything unless the Note 8 would at least eventually have good mainstream linux support.
As of today, what's working? Any issue with the wifi? (What chipset is it even?) How about sound, camera, GPS, accelerometer? Can you see battery percentage? Can you put it into sleep mode?
Let me know if you think it's worth getting to run linux on and if there is anything I can do to help with development. I'm an avid arch linux user and no stranger to getting down and dirty with my own patches and fixes.
i2c_hid i2c-WCOM0004:00: probe
i2c_hid i2c-WCOM0004:00: could not register for WCOM0004:00: interrupt, irq = -1, ret = -22
no idea how to get around this, a tablet is not very useful without a touchscreen.
Have you tried any other distros?
Do you have to manually add an entry in grub to boot to windows during your linux testing (can you still boot windows while testing various linux installs to sdcard)?
Is there a way to enter the bios without first booting/rebooting windows?
I already deleted all partitions when I switched to Win 8.1 Enterprise but I want linux dual boot now (even without touch screen because I could hopefully use a BT kb/mse. Some folks on another forum cannot recover from failed Win 10 installs and I do not want to end up not being able to boot anything at all...
Can you continue with the guide you started please? Thanks in advance!
sorry i have been awol on this, 2 jobs + the holidays don't leave much time
i have tried 3.18.1 as well as the latest kubuntu, the newest fedlet, and android x-86, they all give the same error.
so the issue is with the kernel, but in which area?
i also have the new asus x205t baytrail netbook, it doesn't have the touchscreen or stylus, but it has the same issue of hard drive getting full during slackware install.... kubuntu works, but without wifi.
It's my first post here. I'm really interested on this tablet, but for using in GNU/linux, evidently, in my case in Arch Linux.
About the wifi card, did you try to obtain what wifi card it has? Probably it is showed with `lsusb` or `lspci`
On the other hand, the error with wacom is clear that it doesn't have any driver. It is possible that some previous drivers works but kernel doesn't know it. Probably we need to wait for it. Soon, the 4.0 kernel will be released.
it contains a very similar error to what i have with the m80ta, and WOOHOOO, it seem the fix for the -22 irq error is in the linux-next kernel. so i compiled and booted it up and IT WORKS!!!!
of course after configuring, compiling, install and testing, the battery is just about whooped. so i will work a bit more when it is charged. i did notice a weird issue. after using the stylus, the touchscreen did not respond to finger input. i did notice that sound modules were loaded, but i did not do any testing of audio. the bluetooth appears to not be working still, but the wifi worked just fine.
now i need to figure out how to have a virtual keyboard be available to login with, and the real fun can begin..... once it is done charging.
i will also test the linux-next kernel on the asus x205 netbook and i am waiting for an asus t100 to arrive. so i will have a lot of baytrail systems to play with.
Last edited by ElfShotTheFood; 03-31-2015 at 07:54 PM.
Well, I bought the tablet this weekend. In fact, I bought the L80TA, it is just a "cheap" version for Japanese with 32 GB of SSD. Technically I haven't seen any difference yet.
I installed the rEFInd this weekend easyly. However I having problems to detect the installation USB of Linux distributions. I tried with Arch and Ubuntu but the rEFInd didn't detect the USB or the microSD never.
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