In this guide I will be demonstrating how to install Linux on the Linx 1010B tablet, a low-cost 10-inch Windows 10 tablet. It uses the Bay Trail chipset, which has a history of causing frustration when trying to boot Linux, particularly because although it features a 64-bit processor, it uses an EFI system that only operates in 32-bit. Linux support for the hardware in general is not perfect, but now provides most of the same functionality as Windows.

The good news is, if you just want to use the latest Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) release on this tablet, it’s now pretty easy! The next few sections of this guide will show you how.

Ubuntu 20.04 on a Linx 1010B tablet

What’s Working?

Your first decision is the distribution and version of Linux to install. My personal preference is for Ubuntu Linux and the GNOME desktop environment, as this combination seems to provide the best tablet support at the current time.

With Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS, the following all work:

Installation
Dual-booting with Windows 10
Touchscreen with multi-touch and on-screen keyboard
Gestures and long-press to right click
Sleep
Screen brightness
Sound
WiFi (although sometimes unreliable)
Bluetooth
Battery level

The one big omission seems to be the cameras. Neither front nor back camera work on Ubuntu 20.04.3, or any OS apart from older versions of Windows.

If you’re happy to use Ubuntu 20.04.3 with GNOME, carry on reading! If not, you might want to jump down to the “Other Setups” section.

What about later (non-LTS) versions of Ubuntu?

At the time this page was last updated (January 2022), there have been three releases since 20.04 LTS. However, their installers don't work properly on the Linx tablet and will leave the system in an unbootable state, presenting a grub rescue prompt when trying to boot up the installed system. For this reason I still recommend installing Ubuntu 20.04.3. You can then do an in-place upgrade to 21.10 if you like.

Equipment Required

To get started you will need:

Linx 1010B tablet and charger
Ubuntu Linux ISO image (20.04.1 LTS 64-bit recommended, download from here)
A USB memory stick with at least 4GB capacity
The Linx 1010B keyboard attachment, or other USB keyboard is useful just in case you have touchscreen problems, though shouldn’t strictly be needed.

Considering Dual-Boot

Whether you dual-boot with Windows or wipe out Windows completely and just use Ubuntu is up to you. Ubuntu is now suitable for daily use on this tablet, so I’ve wiped off Windows completely. If you’re not sure, you can dual-boot for a while, but note that when dual-booting, Linux will be very limited in the amount of space available.

Whichever way you choose, the Ubuntu installer will handle if for you during the installation, but if you’re dual-booting you may need to clear out some space from within Windows, then run a disk cleanup, to ensure at least 8GB of space is free.

Preparing for the Install

Begin flashing your Ubuntu ISO onto your memory stick using Unetbootin.
The USB stick will currently be bootable on EFI systems in 64-bit mode, but not in 32-bit mode (which is all this tablet supports). To fix this, grab this bootia32.efi file and place it in <usb stick>:\EFI\boot\.
Turn your tablet off.
Connect your Linx or USB keyboard.
Turn the tablet on while holding the Volume Up button. The screen should say something like “Esc is pressed”, then you will be given a setup menu.
My tablet had Secure Boot disabled by default, so you should be able to press “Boot Manager” and you’ll see your USB device in the list. Press it to continue. (If you don’t see it, play around in the setup menu until you find the option to disable Secure Boot, then press F10 on the keyboard to save, and repeat this step.)
You will boot from the memory stick and get to the GRUB bootloader screen, following which Ubuntu will boot automatically.

Installing Ubuntu

In Ubuntu 18.04 or later, this is now very easy as the installer understands about the 32-bit UEFI issue. You can click the “Install Ubuntu” icon and select most options as you normally would in the installer.

If you’re choosing to dual-boot, choose “Install Ubuntu alongside existing operating system” when prompted for where to install, and ensure that at least 8GB of space is allocated. Otherwise, you can choose to replace the existing Windows OS at this stage.

You shouldn’t need to select “advanced partitioning options”, but if you do it will offer to let you encrypt the disk. I would recommend you don’t select this option—not because it’ll break anything, but simply because there is no on-screen keyboard support on the disk unlock screen. If you set this option, you will require a keyboard every time you power on.

Once installation is complete, your tablet will prompt you to reboot. It should now start up automatically into the new Ubuntu installation.

Congratulations! At this point, if you’re using Ubuntu 20.04.3 as recommended, you’re done! You should be able to connect to WiFi, use the tablet with or without the keyboard, and do almost everything you'd like to do with the tablet. Unless you'd like to explore other operating systems or desktop environments, you can stop reading here.

Post-Install Usage Notes

If you’re encountering choppy scrolling, particularly noticeable in web browsers, it may be resolved by switching to Wayland as your graphics server. (See this bug report.) To do that, log out, select your name on the login screen, and before entering your password click the “cogs” icon at the bottom right. Choose “Ubuntu on Wayland”.
If GNOME feels sluggish, it can be slightly improved by turning off animations. This is possible using the “GNOME Tweaks” tool that you can install from Software Centre.
If you’d like to reclaim some screen space, you can set the dock to auto-hide, or remove it entirely, also using GNOME Tweaks. It’s provided by the Ubuntu Dock GNOME Shell extension. (If you remove it completely, press “Activities” in the top left to get an application menu.)
It’s not that intuitive how to summon the GNOME on-screen keyboard if it doesn’t pop up automatically. You do it by swiping up from the bottom of the screen!

Warning: As of January 2022, there is a known bug that prevents sound from working on the tablet after updating your kernel. When applying system updates, I recommend at the moment that you don't accept any kernel updates (packages of the form linux-image-*), otherwise you may lose sound capability. There is no known solution to this at the moment, feel free to keep an eye on the linked bug page and if you're affected, let people know there.

Other Setups

If you want an Ubuntu version other than 20.04.3, a desktop environment other than GNOME, a different Linux distribution, or a different Linux derivative such as Chrome OS or Android, the following sections gives some information and additional steps that may help you out. From here on, we assume a reasonable level of knowledge with Linux, disk partitioning etc. The majority of users who have followed the instructions above can stop reading here!

Ubuntu 18.10 on a Linx 1010B tablet

Other Desktop Environments

GNOME seems to be the best set up for tablets at this time, although it can be slow. If you want to stay with GNOME but speed things up a bit, you can install “GNOME Tweaks” and turn off animations, which gives a slight improvement.

I have also tried Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE on the tablet. As desktop environments that have more of a traditional desktop feel, they are less demanding and therefore faster and more responsive than GNOME. However, they also don’t fully cater for tablets in the way that GNOME does. None of the three support automatic rotation of the screen based on the accelerometer, or automatic rotation of touch inputs. That means you’ll have to set your screen rotation to landscape manually if you want to use it in that orientation, and if you want to use the touchscreen in landscape orientation, you’ll need to rotate it using the command-line scripts shown here.

In XFCE particularly, I have also had issues with tapping to click and long-pressing to right-click.

Ubuntu 21.10, 21.04 & 20.10

These are more recent releases than the recommended LTS version, 20.04.3. However, they seem to have a regression in terms of their support for Bay Trail tablets in the installer, and they does not correctly set up 32-bit EFI and grub. If you install from an Ubuntu 20.10, 21.04 or 21.10 image, you will likely find that you will boot to a grub rescue prompt and can’t get into your new installation.

You can attempt to fix this by following this procedure, but it will be much easier (although more time consuming) to install 20.04.3 LTS as recommended and do an in-place upgrade to a later release.

Additionally, automatic screen rotation based on the accelerometer seems to be broken in Ubuntu 21.10.

Ubuntu 20.04

I have tested Ubuntu 20.04.1 and 20.04.3 and found them to be working very well, as documented above. However, back before the “.1” update when using the base Ubuntu 20.04, a couple of people posted in the comments below about being unable to boot from USB after installation. We never got to the bottom of this, so for now I would not recommend going back to the base 20.04.

Linux Mint 20.1

Mint 20.1 installs almost as well as the recommended Ubuntu 20.04.3, using the 32-bit EFI boot file trick. There are two caveats:

While Ubuntu Live USB automatically boots into “Try Ubuntu” after a few seconds, Mint does not. You’ll therefore need a physical keyboard (just to press Enter once during first boot!) If that’s not possible for you, you can work around it by opening <usb stick>:\boot\grub\grub.cfg on the computer you used to make it, and add the line GRUB_TIMEOUT=5.
See the note above on Other Desktop Environments regarding Cinnamon and MATE.

Other Linux Distros

If you prefer Fedora, Dave H in the comments below reports that Fedora 29 with Gnome works well. There’s also Fedlet, a customised version specifically for Bay Trail computers, but it’s been out of development since 2016 so the main branch of Fedora is now much more likely to provide proper support for the tablet.

Chrome OS

Two main builds of Chrome/Chromium OS exist for installation on generic PCs – Arnold the Bat and Neverware CloudReady. As of January 2021, Arnold the Bat’s arm 64-bit builds do boot (without any 32-bit EFI files required), but they do not recognise the tablet’s WiFi adapter, or a USB WiFi adapter that I plugged in for testing. Unfortunately Chromium OS does not have a means to skip this section of the install, so I cannot test it any further.

CloudReady works a bit better, and provides more drivers for generic PC hardware including the WiFi. However, note that its installer doesn’t support dual boot, so if you want to install it you’ll have to get rid of Windows.

The last version of CloudReady that I tried is 87.3.41 (January 2021), which runs up fine (albeit slowly) in the USB stick environment, but does not successfully install. Prior to that I tried 83.4.4 (August 2020), which I did manage to install successfully. It’s usable in “laptop mode”, but with the following issues (see forum thread). The exact same issues were all present in version 76.4 (August 2019) as well, so I wouldn’t expect them to be resolved soon - Bay Trail tablets are not officially supported by the project.

No touchscreen support at all
No orientation detection – screen needs rotating to 90 deg manually if you want to use it in landscape mode
Brightness control doesn’t work
Wifi is tempramental - sometimes it works fine, sometimes it reconnects over and over again
Cameras don’t work
No Bluetooth support
No Sleep/Suspend support

Android

The Android x86 project allows Android to be run and installed on generic Intel hardware such as the Linx 1010B. As of their Oreo/8.1 release, this does work, but it is very slow! It’s just about usable for light web browsing but it can take over a minute just to get from the lock screen to the launcher. On that basis, it’s not recommended.

If you want to try, you’ll need the same 32-bit EFI trick as with the standard Ubuntu instructions to get the USB stick to boot. It installs fine though and you can dual-boot with Windows. Sleep/suspend and cameras don’t work.

Windows 10

As well as Linux-based operating systems, I have done several reinstalls of Windows 10 over my time playing with this tablet. While you would think Windows would provide the best experience on the tablet, as of January 2021 and Windows 10 20H2, there are several problems. Principally, the touchscreen, audio and cameras do not appear to work, despite scouring the web for suitable drivers.

Since LINX have dropped support for this tablet, I don’t imagine any fixes will be forthcoming. Therefore if you are intending to install an operating system from scratch, I would say that at this point Linux offers a better experience than Windows.

Ubuntu versions earlier than 18.04

Ubuntu 15.10 on a Linx 1010B tablet

These versions do not install alongside Windows properly or set up GRUB properly with the system’s 32-bit UEFI. Follow this procedure to get them installed:

When it comes to step 3 of the installation, you should be offered to “Install Ubuntu alongside Windows Boot Manager”. Don’t choose this, instead choose “Something Else”.
In the free space you cleared, create a single ext3 partition and choose to mount it at /. (I didn’t have much luck with ext4, the installer locked up every time.) Make a note of the partition name — it should be /dev/mmcblk0p5.
You’ll also be asked which disk/partition to install GRUB too — just leave this as the default as it won’t work anyway. We’ll fix that later.
You’ll be warned about the lack of a swap partition. To save the flash memory from excess writing, and because very little space is available for Linux anyway, I chose to do without one.
After copying files and configuring the system, the installer will show an error message because it failed to install GRUB. This is OK — installing GRUB is the last step, so the rest of the install has worked fine.
Shut down the tablet, leaving the USB stick attached.

Currently, there’s no boot loader that will let you boot your Ubuntu install. What we can do temporarily is use the copy of GRUB on the USB stick, and tweak it to boot the copy of Ubuntu on your internal storage instead of the one it normally boots.

The easiest way I found to do that is as follows:

Boot into Windows.
Open up your USB stick in Explorer, and open the file <usb stick>:\boot\grub\grub.cfg in a text editor.
Just above the line menuentry "Try Ubuntu without installing" {, add the following lines:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
menuentry "Run from internal disk" {
    linux    (hd1,gpt5)/boot/vmlinuz-4.2.0-16-generic.efi.signed root=/dev/mmcblk0p5 intel_idle.max_cstate=0 quiet splash $vt_handoff
    initrd   (hd1,gpt5)/boot/initrd.img-4.2.0-16-generic
}

Note: I believe this should be the right kernel version that gets installed with Ubuntu 15.10. If it doesn’t boot at all, when you try to boot from GRUB in a moment, press C and enter the linux and initrd commands yourself, using tab completion to find the right versions. If it boots but you get a busybox console instead of a proper Ubuntu login GUI, check your partition numbering — /dev/mmcblk0p5 may not be the right partition.

Now turn your tablet off, and turn it on again with Volume Up held. As before you should be able to boot from the USB stick, but this time the GRUB menu will have a new “Run from internal disk” option. Ubuntu should start and you can log in as the user you set up.

Now follow these steps to get GRUB set up permanently without requiring the USB stick:

Install the 32-bit version of grub by executing the following from a terminal: sudo apt-get install grub-efi-ia32 grub-efi-ia32-bin
As before, we still don’t have a proper 32-bit EFI file for grub, so download this one.
Place the downloaded file in the right location, instead of the 64-bit file that grub is expecting, which is at /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi. (For example, sudo mkdir -p /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu && sudo cp grubia32.efi /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi.)
Edit the default GRUB configuration on your tablet by opening /etc/default/grub in a text editor as root (e.g. sudo nano /etc/default/grub).
There should be a line that reads GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash". Edit that so it reads GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="intel_idle.max_cstate=0 quiet splash".
There should be a commented out line that reads GRUB_TERMINAL="console". Uncomment that line.
To start up without a keyboard attached, you will want the default GRUB option to boot automatically without you having to press Enter. To do this, make sure the lines at the top of the file that read something like:
```
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
```
If you have a line that sets GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT, comment it out.
Save and close the file.
Install GRUB with sudo update-grub && sudo update-grub2 && sudo grub-install.
Check that GRUB has added “ubuntu” as an option to the EFI boot manager by running sudo efibootmgr -v. Check the four-digit numbers of each partition against the boot order shown, and it should list your Ubuntu install as the first one. If not, manually add this install to your EFI boot list with sudo efibootmgr -c --disk /dev/mmcblk0 --part 1.
Shut down your tablet and remove the USB stick.
Start up the tablet (no need to hold Volume Up any more!), and it should show you GRUB for a few seconds, then start up to the Ubuntu login screen.

Other Useful Information

If you’re using a non-standard setup, some of the following sections might provide some useful information and code to fix problems you may have.

Screen Rotation

If you’re using GNOME, the screen is probably rotating with tablet orientation as you would expect. If not, to rotate it, run the following commands. The first rotates the display to landscape mode, the second is required to rotate the touch input so it matches the screen.

xrandr -o right
xinput set-prop "pointer:Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen" 'Coordinate Transformation Matrix' 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 0 1

If you want this to happen automatically when you log in, save both commands to a file (e.g. ~/scripts/rotate), make it executable (chmod +x ~/scripts/rotate) and add it to your desktop environment’s Startup Applications.

The equivalent script to set the screen back to portrait mode is as follows (thanks to Scott in the comments!):

xrandr -o normal
xinput set-prop "pointer:Goodix Capacitive Touchscreen" 'Coordinate Transformation Matrix' 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

On Ubuntu 18.10 using the default GDM3 login screen, it should rotate automatically with tablet orientation as you would expect. Otherwise, it should be possible to apply the manual rotation above to the login screen as well by editing its configuration.

For example, in Ubuntu 15.04 using the default LightDM login screen, we achieve this by creating a file named /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/80-display-setup.conf with the following contents:

[SeatDefaults]
display-setup-script=xrandr -o right && xinput set-prop "pointer:Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen" 'Coordinate Transformation Matrix' 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 0 1

However, depending on the choice of login screen this may produce a “low graphics mode” error on startup and fail to display the login screen. In this eventuality it’s easiest just to perform the login in portrait orientation.

Onboard setup

If you aren’t using GNOME, it’s a good idea to run “Onboard” (an on-screen keyboard) and configure it to your liking. (You may also prefer it to the GNOME on-screen keyboard anyway!) The following settings make it behave a lot like the Windows keyboard:

General -> Auto-show when editing text
General -> Show status icon
Window -> Window options -> Dock to screen edge
(Grab your onboard window and stretch it to your desired height)
Window -> Resize Protection -> Window handles: None
Layout -> Small
Typing Assistance -> Show suggestions

Long-press to Right Click

If you’re using Ubuntu 18.10 or above with the default GNOME environment, you should already be able to do a long press to right-click as you would expect. If not, Ubuntu’s “Universal Access” panel contains a “Simulated Secondary Click” option that should allow you to long-press on the touchscreen to get a right click effect. You can also achieve the same from the terminal with:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.mouse secondary-click-enabled "true"

On older versions of Ubuntu, the touchscreen sensitivity seems to be very high, so even if you keep your finger relatively still, it is still counted as a left button drag rather than a right button click. No other GNOME/Unity settings appear to alter this.

There are some xinput options that are configurable and should achieve this as well, such as those below, but I have not succeeded in getting them working so far.

xinput --set-prop "Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen" "Evdev Third Button Emulation" "1"
xinput --set-prop "Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen" "Evdev Third Button Threshold" "100"
xinput --set-prop "Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen" "Evdev Third Button Timout" "500"

Installing 32-bit Grub after a Botched Install

If you have installed a version of Linux (such as Ubuntu 20.10, 21.04 or 21.04) which installs a 64-bit grub and thus doesn’t boot, my recommendation as above is still to start from 20.04.3 LTS and upgrade in place. If for any reason you aren’t willing to do that, you may be able to make your installation bootable by following this procedure, provided by Damien in the comments.

First, boot from your Live USB and connect to WiFi. Then run the following commands.

Warning: The disk and partition names included here are correct for the internal disk of my tablet. You may need to change them depending on your setup. Note there are four variables to set—three at the top and one inside the chroot. Be very careful if you are trying to dual boot with Windows as your partitions will be different!

# Gain root permissions
sudo -iH

# Set the EFI partition on the disk. The example here is the default if you
# have chosen to remove everything and install only Linux.
efi=/dev/mmcblk1p1
# Set the root partition on the disk used by Linux. The example here is the
# default if you have chosen to remove everything and install only Linux.
root=/dev/mmcblk1p2
# Set a temporary location in which to mount the root partition.
tempmount=/mnt/target

# Mount everything we need to perform a chroot into the tablet's installed
# Linux environment
mkdir -p $tempmount
mount $root $tempmount
mount $efi $tempmount/boot/efi
for i in dev dev/pts sys proc run ; do mount --bind /$i $tempmount/$i; done

# chroot in. From this point forward you will effectively be working within
# the installed environment, and not the Live USB environment
chroot $tempmount /bin/bash

# Set the disk you will install grub into the bootloader of. The example here
# is my internal storage on the tablet.
disk=/dev/mmcblk1

# change the prompt so we know we're in the chroot, for safety
export PS1="(chroot) $PS1" 

# Install 32-bit grub
apt install grub-efi-ia32-bin
grub-install $disk

# Update grub so it picks up your partitions, kernel version etc
update-grub

# Leave the chroot
exit

# Now we have left the chroot. Time to unmount it all.
# (note the "" to umount target /)
for i in dev/pts dev sys proc run boot/efi "" ; do umount $tempmount/$i; done

# check we've not missed any umounts - should return blank.
mount | grep $tempmount

Restart the tablet without the Live USB inserted, and hopefully you get into your proper installed OS.

Thanks To…

To get this far I’ve used information from the following places. I’m extremely grateful to the people that wrote them!

Latest steps to install Ubuntu on the Asus T100TA
Installing Ubuntu on Bay Trail tablets (version 2)
How do I repair grub2 (not) booting 32-bit EFI on a 64-bit machine?
How to reinstall GRUB2 EFI?
lightdm – rotated monitor. login screen needs rotation
And all the many commenters down below who have contributed to this page.

Installing for i386-efi platform. Could not delete variable: No space left on device Could not prepare Boot variable: No space left on device grub-install: error: efibootmgr failed to register the boot entry:Input/output error.

Damien 07 June 2020

Re Cameras:

I saw https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.8-Media-Updates and figured I should take a look at the daily build from https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ but sadly the Ubuntu daily build didn’t have the relevant config set, so I built it myself. Couldn’t resist posting it here as this seems to be the site with most interest in the 1010b.

Word to the wise.. Turn off CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO or you’ll run out of space fast. Oddly, the daily build /boot/config-5.xxx file has it set even though the binary kernel clearly doesn’t. Shame Ubu don’t switch on /proc/config to avoid such packaging snafus.

Built.. Installed. dmesg shows camera(s) beng detected, then the module seems to crash. Regardless, it seems we can all hope for cameras on our 1010b’s soon. I have run out of time today, but may look into submitting bug reports if this isn’t resolved in the next couple of 5.8-rc builds.

Extract of dmesg:

[ 8.867486] atomisp_gmin_platform: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned. [ 8.880660] atomisp_ov2680: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned. [ 8.880820] atomisp_gmin_platform: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned. [ 8.884058] atomisp_ov2680: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned. [ 8.945318] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: ov2680_probe: ACPI detected it on bus ID=CAM2, HID=OVTI2680 [ 8.945342] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: gmin: power management provided via XPower AXP288 PMIC (i2c addr 0x34) [ 8.945437] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_CamClk [ 8.945518] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_ClkSrc [ 8.945595] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_CsiPort [ 8.945672] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_CsiLanes [ 8.946057] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_eldo1_1p8v [ 8.946135] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_eldo1_sel_reg [ 8.946214] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_eldo1_ctrl_shift [ 8.946292] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_eldo2_1p8v [ 8.946370] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_eldo2_sel_reg [ 8.946447] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:00_eldo2_ctrl_shift [ 8.946534] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find gmin variable gmin_V1P8GPIO [ 8.946616] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: Failed to find gmin variable gmin_V2P8GPIO [ 9.045171] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: camera pdata: port: 0 lanes: 1 order: 00000002 [ 9.045662] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: sensor_revision id = 0x2680, rev= 0 [ 9.055235] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:00: register atomisp i2c module type 1 [ 9.093194] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: ov2680_probe: ACPI detected it on bus ID=CAM4, HID=OVTI2680 [ 9.093205] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: gmin: power management provided via XPower AXP288 PMIC [ 9.093296] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_CamClk [ 9.093371] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_ClkSrc [ 9.093449] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_CsiPort [ 9.093524] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_CsiLanes [ 9.093900] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_eldo1_1p8v [ 9.093982] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_eldo1_sel_reg [ 9.094061] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_eldo1_ctrl_shift [ 9.094139] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_eldo2_1p8v [ 9.094217] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_eldo2_sel_reg [ 9.094295] ov2680 i2c-OVTI2680:01: Failed to find variable OVTI2680:01_eldo2_ctrl_shift [ 9.094354] RIP: 0010:gmin_subdev_add+0x2a3/0x400 [atomisp_gmin_platform] [ 9.094405] gmin_camera_platform_data+0x36/0x60 [atomisp_gmin_platform] [ 9.094415] ov2680_probe+0x12f/0x494 [atomisp_ov2680] [ 9.094524] ov2680_driver_init+0x1c/0x1000 [atomisp_ov2680]

Loads omitted as this is just a taster, not a bug report.

root@linx1010b:~# mkdir -p /tmp/bootpart root@linx1010b:~# mount /dev/mmcblk1p1 /tmp/bootpart root@linx1010b:~# ls /tmp/bootpart/EFI/BOOT/ BOOTIA32.EFI root@linx1010b:~# ls /tmp/bootpart/EFI/ubuntu/ grub.efi grubia32.efi

#/etc/udev/hwdb.d/61-sensor-local.hwdb #Trekstor Wintab Duo W1 10.1 #acpi:BOSC0200:BOSC0200: #dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvrBW3_VT4.109:bd03/09/2016:br5.11:svnTrekStor:pnSurfTabduoW110.1(VT4):pvrTobefilledbyO.E.M.:rvnHampoo:rnCherryTrailCR:rvrV200:cvnToBeFilledByO.E.M.:ct3:cvrToBeFilledByO.E.M.: #dmi:*:bvrTP15-VT5.2.1.3:*:svnTrekStor*:pnSurfTabtwin11.6:* sensor:modalias:acpi:BOSC0200*:dmi:*:bvrBW3_VT4.109:*:svnTrekStor*:pnSurfTabduoW110.1(VT4):* ACCEL_MOUNT_MATRIX=-1, 0, 0; 0, -1, 0; 0, 0, -1 ACCEL_LOCATION=display sensor:modalias:acpi:BOSC0200*:dmi* ACCEL_MOUNT_MATRIX=1, 0, 0; 0, -1, 0; 0, 0, 1

# /etc/udev/hwdb.d/99-HHKB-keyboard.hwdb # the evdev address product, vendor must be entered in upper case HEX values # the key names must be entered without KEY_ and in lower case evdev:input:b0003v1c4fp0063* KEYBOARD_KEY_7004a=pageup KEYBOARD_KEY_7004d=pagedown KEYBOARD_KEY_7004b=home KEYBOARD_KEY_7004e=end

sudo -iH root=/dev/sda2 ; efi=/dev/sda1 t=/mnt/target mkdir -p $t mount $root $t mount $efi $t/boot/efi for i in dev dev/pts sys proc run ; do mount --bind /$i $t/$i done chroot $t /bin/bash # We are are now inside chroot... the target system. export PS1="(chroot) $PS1" # change the prompt so we know we're in the chroot. apt install grub-efi-ia32-bin grub-install /dev/sda # CAREFUL YOU PICK THE RIGHT DRIVE update-grub # NOT grub-update exit # Leave the chroot # Now we have left the chroot. Time to unmount it all. # (note the "" to umount target /) for i in dev/pts dev sys proc run boot/efi "" ; do umount $t/$i done #check we've not missed any umounts mount | grep $target

disk="Hello" echo $disk # returns Hello chroot / export PS1="(chroot) $PS1" echo $disk # Will return nothing exit echo $disk # Have exited back out of chroot # so should yield Hello #A possible UGLY workaround #we pass the variable in to the chroot: #one gotcha.. the path to 'env' inside the chroot needs to be known, but it's /usr/bin/env in just about every distro now. chroot / /usr/bin/env disk="$disk" /bin/bash export PS1="(chroot) $PS1" echo $disk # works. exit

Comments

Scott 05 August 2016

So close...

Ian, thanks for a really comprehensive and accurate guide. I get all the way to the last step - installing the boot loader. I got on error running update-grub saying that GRUB_TIMEOUT can't be set if GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is also set. So I commented out the latter.

No other errors displayed... but it doesn't work on reboot, going straight to windows boot loader instead. Have you any suggestions?

Thanks again irrespective.

Scott 14 August 2016

OK I found the problem: there's a missing step.

Before step 11 in "Booting to Ubuntu properly" you need to install grub:

sudo sudo grub-install

Then shut down as per step 11. Works for me now (thanks again Ian).

BTW, here's instructions for returning the screen to portrait mode in the hope it's useful:

xrandr -o normal
xinput set-prop "Goodix Capacitive Touchscreen" 'Coordinate Transformation Matrix' 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

Typo: make that sudo grub-install.

Ian 15 August 2016

Scott,

I'm glad you got it working in the end, and thanks for providing corrections to the guide! I've updated the process above to include the sudo grub-install step (not sure how I managed to leave that one out!), plus the GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT issue and the un-rotate script.

Thanks again!

Scott 19 August 2016

You're welcome Ian, thanks for updating instructions. Another find after a kernel update today meant the tablet stopped booting into linux & resorted to Windows; you need to repeat the following:

re-copy the grub ia32 EFIfile. I keep the downloaded copy in ~/Downloads, so:

cd ~/Downloads && sudo cp grubia32.efi /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi

Then update grub per above:

sudo update-grub && sudo update-grub2 && sudo grub-install

That did the trick for me; now boots into the updated kernel.

Ian wrote:

Scott,

I'm glad you got it working in the end, and thanks for providing corrections to the guide! I've updated the process above to include the sudo grub-install step (not sure how I managed to leave that one out!), plus the GRUBHIDDENTIMEOUT issue and the un-rotate script.

Thanks again!

Ashleigh 24 August 2016

Hi Ian, I've been messing around with doing this and managed to do this without your tutorial, only found this one when looking into fixing grub XD Typical, i spent 3 days doing what could be done in an hour with this guide XD
Anyway, i have the onboard wifi working, i will have to check what i've done when i get home, but so far i have wifi working, havent checked Bluetooth yet, but with the driver i have, i'm sure it is. i'll check the HDMI out once i find a cable for it, and the battery level hasn't worked yet, though i believe i heard that there was a driver being developed. suspending the tablet i don't know yet but will try that when i get home, but i hold little hope as that's always the last one to work

Anyway, must get back to work, but i will update you asap with info of the wifi

Anonymous 15 October 2016

Ashleigh wrote:

Anyway, i have the onboard wifi working, i will have to check what i've done when i get home,

Hi Ashleigh, any details on what you did to get the wifi working?

Thanks,
Scott.

Damien 09 October 2018

Here in October 2018 the issues are still far from clobbered with Bay Trail. However, I’m joining the 1010B fun due to a rash purchase yesterday.

I’ve not checked this with anything other than Mint 19, but I seem to have sussed the brightness without resorting to kernel rebuilds. Edit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add these lines in order: pwm_lpss pwm_lpss_platform pwm_lpss_pci i915

Then, sudo update-initramfs -u And reboot. This stops the i915 module loading ahead of the pwm_lpss modules.

Inspired by https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96571

All the best, and thanks for the head start.

Damien

Don 12 March 2019

Hi.

Thanks for this. It’s helping me a great deal but I am getting stuck at the same point every time.

When I install GRUB with:

sudo update-grub &amp;&amp; sudo update-grub2 &amp;&amp; sudo grub-install

The first 2 commands work just fine but then….

Any ideas please? I’ve Googled but to no avail.

Thanks in advance of any assistance. Don

Ian 14 March 2019

Hi Don,

All I can think of is either there really is no space left on the drive, or that maybe your /boot is in a partition that’s unmounted or mounted read-only. “df -h” should show you disk usage, and “cat /etc/mtab” should show the current state of mounted partitions.

If you have trouble interpreting them, paste the output here and I’ll see if I can figure it out!

Dave H 24 March 2019

Hi - thanks for your guide I found it really helpful. I managed to install MX Linux which worked okay after some fiddling about, then I did some research and downloaded Fedora 29 with Gnome, most things work out of the box including sound and no need to place boot files for 32 bit uefi as this is already included in the ISO. I haven’t managed to get the cameras running yet but will persist and update here when I succeed. I have completely ditched W10 as it got on my nerves an am typing this on my Linx 1010B via Chrome (Flash & Widevine function out of the box).

Once again thanks for sharing.

Ian 24 March 2019

No problem, happy to help! Please do let us know if you get the cameras working.

Retroisbest 19 July 2019

I’ve created a nice rotate script for my linx 1010b, when in portrait mode it rotates the screen and xinput and because it’s in portrait loads the on screen keyboard… I’m really struggling though with the onboard WiFi, very poor signal and intermittent connection issues.

DP 01 November 2019

Thanks for all the useful info. I got a 1010L cheaply a while ago as the windows 10 updates wouldnt fit on the smaller 16gb storage. Ive managed to use it quite well with xubuntu apart from one thing that has never worked: Shutting down!

When I try to shut it down, either by shutdown -h now or via the GUI it will go through the whole process, the screen will turn off, but then about 5 seconds later it will start up again. It seems that sometimes it will shut down if I have power plugged in, but its not guaranteed.

The only way to get it powered off safely is to halt it then hold the power button until it powers off. Has anyone else got this issue or any ideas on how to fix it?

Tony 24 November 2019

Thanks for your guide, I’ve been wanting to put Ubuntu on my Linx for a while.

But I’m having trouble with this. I have to remove one of the efi files in order to make space for the bootia32.efi file.

It then just boots to the grub command prompt, and not the boooader.

I’m doing it on a 1010 though, not the 1010b, but I don’t think that would matter?

Actually, I just checked and I have the 1010b as it came with the keyboard.

I was getting confused with the 1010 vs the 1020

Ian 24 November 2019

I don’t think there should be a difference. Whenever I’ve made install USBs I haven’t had to delete any files to make space though. How are you creating yours - are you using Unetbootin and a downloaded ISO or some other way?

Tony 25 November 2019

I’m using Balena Etcher, I’ll try with the tool you suggested

I used Unetbootin, and it works now.

CH 19 December 2019

Hey Ian,

Should these steps work for the 12v64 do you know? I can find very little on it and keep hitting post-GRUB errors with this tablet. It’s just going for recycling if I can’t make it work.

Thanks!

Ian 19 December 2019

I would have thought they’d work, maybe even more easily (without the 32-bit EFI file) if it’s a proper 64-bit tablet. I don’t own one myself to test though, sorry.

Drako 04 January 2020

Every time I try this I get GRUB installation failed:

the ‘grub-efi-ia32’ package failed to install into /target/. Without the GRUB boot loader, the installed system will not boot.

Am I doing something wrong?

Ian 04 January 2020

Are you using Ubuntu 19.04 as recommended or a different version? (I haven’t had chance to try the most recent 19.10 version yet so it’s possible that if you’ve opted for that, they’ve broken something or the guide needs to be updated.)

And are you setting it up to dual boot or replacing Windows entirely? If you’re dual booting it’s worth checking for the simple problems e.g. is your Linux partition so small it just doesn’t have space to install grub?

Ziad Khalil 01 March 2020

I’ve installed ubuntu instead of windows after i backed up a drive image , I was trying to revert it back to windows, but it doesn’t see the bootable usb stick as a booting option, can anyone help ?

Ian 29 March 2020

Do you have Secure Boot turned on in the EFI config? That could potentially cause it to refuse to boot. It’s worth checking if your USB stick appears as an option in the EFI menus as well, as you can use that to force it to boot from a certain device. Failing that - is the device definitely bootable? I know I have one memory stick (a Kingston I think) which is just never bootable regardless of that files are on it; a different stick with the same contents works fine. If you have another stick maybe give that a try.

Marc0 06 June 2020

First thank you so much for this tutorial page, you have given at my old tablet linx 1020 (1020b if i remember) a new life! So i have tried lot of things: i have downloaded the last 20.04 ubuntu and all worked well, wifi, rotation screen, sound,…but onboard keyboard not present, some lags/freeze, very not good in a long use. Then i have decided to install the 19.10 version with actually i m writting this reply and absolutly all work very well but not the both camera and rotation screen doesn’t rotate in a good way :) possible i need find some tips to set up all that! i need to find how to do the long press click etc…read again this tutorial ehehe

Ian 06 June 2020

Hi Marc0, glad you have got it mostly working! I only have a 1010B not a 1020 so I may not be able to replicate all your problems but I will see what I can do.

The cameras are probably not going to work at all I’m afraid - like I say in the article I haven’t managed to get them working so I think they are just unsupported on Linux at the moment. Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to start writing device drivers!

When you say the screen “doesn’t rotate in a good way” - is it not rotating at all, or is it rotating but the angle is wrong e.g. it’s always upside-down?

Long press to right-click is covered in the article, although it does work out of the box on 1010B. Try the GNOME “Universal Access” settings as described, but if it still doesn’t work, you may need to change times and sensitivities using xinput.

Marc0 07 June 2020

Hi ian, thank you for your reply! So Screen rotation accelerometer is inverted and long-press does not trigger right-click like you described in this post. Yes when i am in portrait the screen is upside down, not in the good way. Longpress activated in the Universal access, all is set up good but still doesn’t. I looking for too in the internet if i find somethings to improve feature on this tablet.

Ian 07 June 2020

I’m not sure how best to fix the rotation accelerometer - I will do some Googling as well. In the mean time, Gnome does have a Rotation Lock feature so you can get the orientation the right way, then lock it, then rotate the tablet to the proper position.

For the right-click problem, it could be a sensitivity issue as mentioned above, and the system is not treating it as a “long press” but as a sequence of very small movements. I’m not sure whether xinput settings work in Ubuntu 19.04 or if not what the replacement is, but it’s worth searching around that to see if anyone else has a solution to touchscreen fingre movement sensitivity.

Brt 20 June 2020

I followed this and installed Ubuntu 20.04, which worked almost perfectly. Then I broke my /etc/fstab, and it won’t boot (it says “minimal bash-like line editing is supported”).Fair enough I thought, I’ll re-install… Now, when I attempt to boot from USB, no USB drives are recognised. I’ve tried multiple USB sticks and multiple ways of flashing (unetbootin, dd, mkusb etc) and none of them have worked.

The obvious option is to somehow fix my fstab from this grub command line, but I just can’t seem to do it

I’m fairly sure I haven’t changed any settings within UEFI, and Secure Boot is disabled… Any ideas?

Ian 21 June 2020

That’s a strange one. The “minimal bash-like editing” prompt appears when you’re booting to GRUB, but GRUB can’t find the partition(s) with its config in - that might well result from messing around with partitions on the disk/breaking fstab. But the problem there is all contained within the device’s internal disk, nothing about that should prevent booting from USB. When you go into the tablet’s BIOS menus with your USB stick attached, does it appear in the menus as one of the boot options?

Marc0 21 June 2020

I have exactly the same problem then Brt, multiple installation to try different OS linux, and now impossible to install correctly the 20.04 version without error files and don’t finish the installation…. I haven’t changed nothing in the Bios, I have tried to format the internal disk without success. Tried with different usb key, downloaded multiple Linux…still issue.

Rob Smith 21 June 2020

Thanks for replying. Sorry, I should have been clearer, there isn’t even an option to boot from usb. There are three options, Ubuntu, Ubuntu and Internal EFI Shell.

It’s frustrating because it DID work, I was able to boot from USB but now I’m not, but nothing I’ve changed should prevent me from being able to boot from USB!

From fiddling with the grub command line, I’ve been able to load the kernel, but it fails to boot and drops to an initramfs command prompt. I’m definitely out of my depth at that point!

This is really weird. I’m thinking the same as you - I can’t understand what the Ubuntu install could be doing to the PC so that it can’t then boot from USB, because booting from USB should be handled at the BIOS/UEFI level and not touched by Ubuntu. Rob Smith/Brt you using 20.04 as well as Marc0? I will add a warning to the top of the page as this seems like a repeatable issue now that more than one person has reported it.

Rob Smith 24 June 2020

Yes, I used 20.04 too. I see you’ve already put the disclaimer but just wanted to confirm

Roger Trewinnard 27 June 2020

Have you tried booting from a USB DVD drive to install Ubuntu when a pen drive fails to work,(old fashioned I know) as I have used this method in the past.

David 23 July 2020

Have just installed mx linux 19.02 on my linx 1010 tablet and it works ok, after install i have installed the Budgie decktop on top of mx linux and also the inferno theme which give a red 3D look ,kanadalcons icons, also ue-red-3D CURSOR, in budgie decktop i turned of the black theme button that gives the full 3D look to Budgie and all popups, i downloaded the theme/icons and the cursor from OPENDECKTOP.ORG, so at login you can boot into which one, ps i also installed ubuntu 19.04 on another linx tablet after reading your page above and it as been updated to ubuntu 20.04, both are working ok THANK YOU.

Paul O'Brien 01 September 2020

Hi thanks for this. Installed Ubuntu 20.04 using this and it worked flawlessly. Seems way faster than Windows ever did on it. Only glitch seems to be the Linx Keyboard dock which works intermittently. Perhaps a hardware error? Other than that a great way to get introduced to Linux.

Ian 01 September 2020

No problem, thanks for reporting that Ubuntu 20.04 now seems to be working.

I think the keyboard could well be a hardware issue, I often find mine is glitchy as well, usually resolved by removing the tablet from the keyboard and re-inserting it with force!

I will try Ubuntu 20.04 myself in the near future and see if the keyboard seems any worse than on other OSes that could indicate a software problem.

Ian 04 September 2020

I’m now on a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04.1, and can confirm everything’s working (apart from the cameras, which is standard). I can still boot from USB.

Rob/Marc0, just to double check (if you remember after all this time), when you were trying to boot from USB and your drive didn’t appear, did you definitely remember to add the extra ```bootia32.efi file to the USB disk?

Paul, I don’t seem to have any additional keyboard problems in Ubuntu apart from the occasional disconnection which I had in Windows too, so I think it may be a slightly dodgy connector rather than a software problem.

Rob 20 September 2020

Hi, me again.

I’ve followed this to the letter on Ubuntu 20.04.1 and it’s worked! I’m 99% sure I would have put the bootia32.efi file in when I tried previously. I tried it so many times so many different ways, I just can’t believe I would have omitted it so many times.

Anyway, a thousand thanks, Ian. It’s working now and I solemnly swear I will not fiddle about with fstab again

Hi me again.

I’ve attempted this again with Ubuntu 20.04.1 and it’s worked perfectly first time.

I find it hard to believe that I missed the bit about bootia32.efi EVERY time I tried to install it previously, so it can’t be as simple as that.

Anyway, it’s working now, a thousand thanks Ian

Ian 20 September 2020

Haha, no problem. Glad you got it working again in the end!

Aditya 13 October 2020

This guide is very helpful. my Linx tablet is not working, I guessed that internal memory is gone. after several attempts I found your page, it worked like a charm and I could open Ubuntu on my tablet. but as internal memory is no there I could not install. Then I read some other pages and installed Ubuntu on the pendrive and used it. It worked.

But I am not happy as Camera and Volme are not working. I want to install Windows 8. I read some pages on Windows togo and tried several installers like (Rufus, Yumi, Yumi-uefi, wintousb and AOMEI), but my tablet is not recognizing the the boot. If I place your Bootia32, its going to grub terminal.

Can you advise how can I load my Windows 8 ToGo pendrive on this tablet ?

Ian 13 October 2020

Hi, unfortunately I have not tried Windows To Go so I can’t give you a definite solution. However, please check whether you are using 32-bit or 64-bit Windows To Go? According to this page, with a legacy 32-bit UEFI system like the Linx 1010B, only 32-bit Windows To Go will work.

aditya 13 October 2020

Thank you for quick response. I tried 64 bit only, but let me try 32 bit. I will update you.

marco 03 November 2020

Just thought I’d add… I’ve just successfully installed Kubuntu (KDE desktop) first time using these instructions, which are excellent. Initial findings… Touchpad is fine and is in sync with (manual) screen rotation. Touch screen is fine and is in sync with default portrait mode; it goes out of sync after rotation to landscape. All other features listed at the very top also work fine. I’ve run a Muon (package manager) update - all good. I’ve set the ‘app dashboard’ as my alternative launcher - all good. Thanks to all for a really good guide.

Eddie 18 November 2020

I cannot add the bootia32.efi to the efi/boot folder. Maybe be very straight forward to some but could do with some help please!

Ian 18 November 2020

Can you give any more information on what the problem is, e.g. does it say the USB stick isn’t writeable? Have you managed to get the Ubuntu image onto the memory stick properly or were there errors in that process too?

EMB 06 December 2020

For those with the screen orientation issue with the 1010L you can edit /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-sensor.hwdb

This file already has an entry for the 1010B

Find the lines for the 1010B, copy them and change the 1010B to 1010L to apply the correct matrix for the 1010L too.

Andreas 26 December 2020

Hello Ian, I chose to erase disk and install the ubuntu on the installation but after everything is complete when I turn on the linx 1010 i get that blue screen from windows saying Recovery —- Your PC/Device needs to be repaired.

This is probably a BIOS thing trying to boot windows BUT i check on BIOS that ubuntu is at the top AND i tried to manually selecting to boot ubuntu from holding power + volume up key but still that blue screen appears.. If i choose to boot from the bootable usb with the linux it boots and works fine but that is not a solution…

Do you know what can be done to fix the problem?

Ian Renton 26 December 2020

Andreas,

I haven’t encountered this problem before but the first thing I would suggest to check is that Secure Boot is properly disabled in the EFI boot menus. If this is enabled, it could lead to EFI trying to boot Windows when it can’t.

If Secure Boot is definitely disabled, it may be worth trying to install Ubuntu again in case something went wrong with installing the boot loader last time. Which version of Ubuntu are you using?

When I go to secure boot options:

Secure Boot Database Unlocked Secure Boot Status Disabled User Customized Security YES

Enforce Secure Boot Disabled

So I take it as it is indeed disabled.

I tried to install ubuntu 20.10 since that was the newest. Maybe I should try the 20.04.1 LTS as you suggested and update results?

Secure boot settings look fine. Yeah, could be worth trying 20.04.1 in case there’s a problem with installing 20.10. I’m running 20.10 at the moment but I did an upgrade from a 20.04.1 install, so if you can get the earlier version to install, you should be able to upgrade without a problem.

Hey Ian, tried to install the 20.04.1 and somewhere close to the end there’s a message saying the grub-efi-ia32 package failed to install into /target/.

During the 20.10 install everything was smooth. Any ideas?

I’m fast running out of ideas unfortunately, I’m not sure what’s different about your setup than mine! If you’re confident doing so, maybe try the advanced partitioning in the install process to make sure any partitions on the internal drive are deleted before the install, or even set up the partition manually to make sure the correct boot device is chosen.

(On which note, do you have an SD card plugged in? If so it might be worth temporarily removing it to make sure Ubuntu is being installed to the internal storage not the SD card.)

Got an update on the situation! I tried the advanced partitioning in the install process and deleted everything so there is no windows boot loader on the system any more BUT after a successful installation on ubuntu, when the system boots it says ubuntu boot failed. I go to the bios and i see that it recognises ubuntu as an option to boot but it fails to boot and doesnt show why. Using ubuntu from the usb stick performs as expected though and the installation process completes. There has to be something I’m missing…

Hmm :S

During the advanced partitioning, was the “install boot loader” location definitely set to /dev/mmcblk0 (or whatever internal storage appears as - I don’t remember I’m afraid!)

When you start up, do you get the GRUB screen and then your error message, or does that message appear before GRUB gets loaded?

First of all, thank you for your support so far!

During the partitioning yes indeed it was set to dev/mmcblk1 and now running the install again on the partitions I can see /dev/mmcblk1p1 as efi and mmcblkp2 as ex4 with ubuntu on it.

During start up GRUB screen indeed does not show up and I directly get the error message. I ran the boot-repair on the linx and got the following (if you are familiar with it):

http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/YjYFy9hKsN/

Weird huh!

Hmm, I’m not super familiar with the output of Boot Repair but based on what I can see: you have a /dev/mmcblk1p1 that contains EFI boot files, which is what I’d expect, but they look quite different to mine. I have that bootia32.efi file which is referenced above (and required for it to boot properly on a Bay Trail processor) in there, whereas your paste doesn’t show that file at all. I have:

I’m not sure why your install has put files for a 64-bit bootloader in there when (at least in my case) it properly detected the Bay Trail processor and used the bootia32.efi file in there.

I’ve zipped up the contents of my EFI partition (/dev/mmcblk1p1) and put them here for you to download. If you boot from your memory stick, mount the partition as in my example above, and unpack the zip file into there, it might work. At least I hope so, because I’m running out of ideas!

Andreas 27 December 2020

Morning Ian!

I have transferred your files inside and now on boot I get the grub rescue file /boot/grub/i386-efi/normal.mod not found.

I have booted the system using the USB drive to look for the normal.mod and I have found it on /boot/grub/x64_86-efi/normal.mod

So I tried to tell grub rescue that it is on that folder but it insists of trying to find /i386-efi/normal.mod and not x64_86-efi/normal.mod.

So I said okay I will boot into ubuntu with live USB and rename that x64_86-efi folder name to i386-efi so that everything is cool BUT i found out I cannot change file names because i have no priviledges so I opened terminal gained superuser status with sudo -i and navigated to /boot/grub folder in terminal. When i hit ls it shows all the files inside but not the fonts and x86_64-efi folder so i cannot rename it! Hitting ls one step back in /boot shows all the files and the grub folder but not the efi folder. Are they hidden or something?

Ian Renton 27 December 2020

There’s no such thing as a “hidden” folder in Linux really, apart from the convention of hiding filenames beginning with .. The problem might be that you’re looking in /dev/mmcblk1p2 instead of /dev/mmcblk1p1 while you’re investigating?

Regardless, I don’t think just copying that directory will work. I suspect you have a second problem here - the installer didn’t detect your Bay Trail 32-bit EFI issue properly, so not only has it not put BOOATIA32.EFI in the right area, it’s also installed a 64-bit grub instead of a 32-bit one.

This used to be a problem with Ubuntu prior to 18.04, so there are some steps here that I originally used to resolve it. Essentially what you will have to do is use grub on your memory stick, tweak the boot options so it actually boots your installed Ubuntu, then once you’re inside that environment, install 32-bit grub. As well as my instructions above, there’s also this Medium article that has a simpler method of following of the same process - scroll down to “Fixing your new installation, and, what’s GRUB?”. I’d suggest starting with their process.

I hope that helps. I still don’t quite understand why you’re having this trouble whereas for me it correctly detected the 32-bit EFI problem and installed 32-bit grub right from the installer. Are you definitely using Ubuntu 20.04.1 and a LINX 1010B, not another variant?

Andreas 28 December 2020

I managed to be able to boot into ubuntu from the flash drie and update grub etc but at the final step sudo update-grub had a problem and now I have to manually load the kernels every time i boot. I ran sudo update-grub and it finishes but I still have to manually enter kernels every time I boot. On further investigation I realised that it updated the grub.cfg file that is on the partition that the ubuntu is installed and not on the efi partition so I need to perform the sudo update-grub and tell it to update the efi folder. That’s why I think the problem existed in first place. It was trying to locate /boot/grub on the big .ext4 where ubuntu was installed rather than the specifically efi created partition… Good news is that everything is up and running, but bad news I have to manually load kernels everytime. I’m sure there has to be a way to solve it.

Oh wait I fixed it! I ran the loop again for installing the 32-efi in terminal and then sudo update-grub worked! Now everything is cool!

I want to thank you very much for your help and support Ian! Maybe one time I will get to buy you a pint!

Andreas

Ian Renton 28 December 2020

Brilliant, glad you got it working in the end! You’re more than welcome, it’s been a learning experience for us both :)

One thing to keep an eye on is any system updates that provide a new kernel. GRUB should be automatically reconfigured to point to the new locations, but if your tablet gets stuck in a state where it won’t boot after applying updates, that’s probably what’s happened.

Ricardo 11 January 2021

Hello everyone!

I want to know if I can install Ubuntu on this particular tablet: It’s an ECS TR10RS1, specs are: Intel Atom Z3735F @ 1.6GHz (Bay Trail SoC) 1GB DDR3 RAM @ 1333MHz 16GB eMMC Cannot remember if the touchscreen panel was SiLead or Goodix

I want to install Ubuntu on it because it runs Android 4.4.4 and it runs pretty bad and most apps aren’t compatible to this date.

I have tested the Linuxium project but the touchscreen does not work. So I want to know if anyone had (or has) any experiences with this tablet… Thanks in advance!

Ian 11 January 2021

Hi Ricardo,

The Linuxium modifications are designed to improve Bay Trail support in Ubuntu so I doubt they would make anything worse - therefore I think it’s likely that the touchscreen won’t work on Ubuntu either.

However, there’s no harm in trying! The Ubuntu installer lets you try out Ubuntu in a live environment from the USB stick before installation, so you can see if the touchscreen works there before making any commitment.

The Linx 1010B uses a Goodix touchscreen so if it’s similar, you should be in luck. If it’s a Silead device there are some unofficial kernel drivers here which may help. Unfortunately I don’t have this device so I can’t say if they will work or not.

Wezzle 15 March 2021

Thanks for keeping this updated, Ian! I’ve just reclaimed a Linx 7 and a Linx 8 tablet from my parents who have upgraded to fire tablets which are similar in hardware to your 1010b if you also have Kionix G-Sensor, Goodix touchscreen and HM2056 webcams. After installing 20H2 I found not much working in either however… The commonly found Linx 8 driver zip worked on both devices but not before I had removed the Camera and IGD entries in the driver installer config. It seems Linx released an update to the 8 in 2017 and among the updated drivers and bios is a working hm2056 webcam driver - I now have everything working in the latest 20H2 of Win10 on both 7 & 8 tablets. I’ll note however, responsiveness is poorer with my “clean 20H2” than it was with the “dirty” 1607 windows 10 build I claimed them with.

I will now be following your guide on Ubuntu :)

Ian 15 March 2021

Good luck with the Ubuntu install!

I’m not sure what webcam the 1010B has unfortunately, but I will check.

Looks like the Linx 7 & 8 have better support in Windows 10 20H2 than the 1010B so that’s a good sign in case you need to go back. I did try a fresh Win 10 install on the 1010B a couple of months back and there were a lot of things I couldn’t find working drivers for - touchscreen, audio and cameras included.

Josef 27 March 2021

Hi Ian,

many thanks for these instructions. They helped me to install Ubuntu 20.04.02 (the .01 is not available any more) onto my TrekStor SurfTab Duo W1 10.1.

After all was setup I first used scripts to make the screen rotate and the touch screen providing the correct position. All attempts and hints from internet did not work to run these scripts or Xorg changes work correctly and finally I used udev rules and hwdb to correct the accelerometer (for screen rotation issues) and the touch positions (which where mirrored for the X-axis):

for the touch screen:

#/etc/udev/rules.d/98-touchscreen-cal.rules
ATTRS{name}=="Goodix Capacitive TouchScreen", ENV{LIBINPUT_CALIBRATION_MATRIX}="-1 0.0 1 0.0 1 0"

Finally I mappped the Pos1 and End key to act as PgUp and PgDown:

My findings are documented at https://github.com/hjgode/trekstor_surftab_duo_w1

Many thanks for sharing all these information.

Josef

Adam Poynton 29 March 2021

I have been playing around with a Linx 10. Got Ubuntu working on it and for some reason it upgraded to Pop and things started acting up. Decided to try with Mint and it worked fine. Then I tried Elementary and it is perfect. Changed the theme to MacOsh and it looks like a Mac in many ways even though I have never used a Mac. I consider myself a newbie with things like this but the internet is great for finding things out.

Damien 18 April 2021

I generally use my 1010b in landscape mode as a laptop, and only want the scrambled desktop to happen manually. LightDM rotation didn’t work for some reason, leading to black screen and blinking cursor. I got it to behave properly by creating scripts for landscape and portrait in /usr/local/bin/, and calling those from /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/80-display-setup.conf thus:-

… [SeatDefaults] display-setup-script=/usr/local/bin/landscape …

landscape

… #!/bin/bash dienow(){ echo “Failed $1” >&2 ; exit 100 ; } touchscreen=$(xinput | sed -n ‘/Goodix.pointer/s/^.id=([0-9])[^0-9]./\1/p’) [ -z “$touchscreen” ] && dienow “Couldn’t find xinput identifier for touchscreen” xrandr –output DSI-1 –rotate right xinput set-prop $touchscreen ‘Coordinate Transformation Matrix’ 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 0 …

portrait

… #!/bin/bash dienow(){ echo “Failed $1” >&2 ; exit 100 ; } touchscreen=$(xinput | sed -n ‘/Goodix.pointer/s/^.id=([0-9])[^0-9]./\1/p’) [ -z “$touchscreen” ] && dienow “Couldn’t find xinput identifier for touchscreen” xrandr –output DSI-1 –rotate normal xinput set-prop $touchscreen ‘Coordinate Transformation Matrix’ 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 …

Niklas 27 April 2021

I have been searching high and low for a solution to this. I installed android x86 on my device after trying to get Linux onto it without luck.

Your guide worked like a charm for getting Ubuntu onto the device.

Can anyone tell me how to get windows back onto the device, so i can dual boot?

Whenever i run bootia32.efi the splashscreen with the circle comes up for a second then throws a BSOD with the following message: ACPI_BIOS_ERROR

I’ve checked all the bios settings including safe boot without any luck.

When making the USB stick for windows installation is there any additional steps I’m missing?

Tried with both win 8.1 and 10.20h2

Thanks in advance

Ian 27 April 2021

I’ve not encountered that problem before when booting the tablet from the Windows 10 installation USB, so I’m not sure what to suggest there really. Double check that your USB stick is good, contains the right stuff, and that you’re using the 32-bit version of Windows and not 64-bit.

I don’t think you need the bootia32.efi from this page when installing Windows, just the image you download from Microsoft should be enough.

Does it give you any more details of the error other than “ACPI_BIOS_ERROR”?

Niklas 01 May 2021

Hello Ian,

Thanks for your answer,

The Windows 10 creation tool does create the bootia32.efi file, that I’m trying to run.

When i did the initial installation of Linux I nuked all of the other partitions.

The BSOD only says the error that i started earlier, nothing more.

Yesterday i spent some time setting up a fresh win 10 installation on a VM, then cloned the partition onto the device, but it wouldn’t boot from the cloned partition. (Did multiple combinations of MBR/GPT - FAT32/NTFS. As i understand it should be FAT32/GPT for the bios to read it correctly. Ofc I also checked the appropriate flags for the partition :)

Even tried to install win 8 / 8.1, but without any progression.

One more thing i can note (don’t really know if it will help) is that the BSOD will only be visible for a short period (had to use slow motion camera to even read the msg) if i have any partition on the disk. If the disk is blank the message will stay on screen until force reboot.

Again; thank you for taking your time to answer! :)

Ian 02 May 2021

No problem. I’m still trying to figure out what your issue might be but without much success!

Unfortunately my 1010B is at work at the moment and I can’t grab it to play with BIOS settings for another week or so, but you could try Method 4 & 5 listed here and see if the 1010B has comparable BIOS settings to the ones in the picture?

If I recall correctly the 1010B BIOS settings are pretty limited compared to a “real” PC motherboard but it’s worth a shot.

WildCat 06 May 2021

Thanks for this excellent tutorial. I managed to get Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 working on my old Linx 1020 tablet following your instructions (I will add that I needed to have internet connected for it to install properly - otherwise it fails at the installation of the local grub 32 bit boot module). However, for me the touch screen did not work at all - only the physical keyboard and touchpad or USB mouse. I tried rebooting with these disconnected but then I couldn’t input anything. I know the touch screen works because it works on the tablet BIOS pages. Any idea how I might manually install the drivers or otherwise fix this? Thanks.

Ian 07 May 2021

You could try Ubuntu 19.10, one of the previous commenters with a 1020b had more luck with that than 20.04. Or, you could try an in-place upgrade to 20.10 and see if that includes the right driver.

If those don’t fix it, or you would like to stay on 20.04, the next step would be to try and figure out which touchscreen device you have in the device. Depending on how the touchscreen communicates with the board, utilities such as lspci or lsusb can be used to list all devices, then try to figure out from that list what your touchscreen is.

If it’s a Goodix device like the 1010b it should work out of the box, so something else is awry. If it’s a Silead device, another commenter above posted a link to this repository which may have some drivers you can use. If it’s not either of those manufacturers, it’s back to Google to figure out if it can be made to work!

WildCat 07 May 2021

I found a ‘solution’ for the Linx 1020 touch screen not working problem - it is a real quirk. Here it is:

With a USB mouse or the keyboard-trackpad attached, go to the top right menu that gives you the power down options and select ‘Suspend’.
After screen blanks out and power goes to suspend, short press the main power button on the back of the tablet to bring the unit out of suspend mode.
Now the tablet will accept touch screen input and you can discard the keyboard/mouse.

Alternatively, when you are on the GNOME login page you can just do a short press on the tablet power button to put the unit into ‘Suspend’ and then another short press to bring it out of suspend and have touch screen activation. This method doesn’t need a keyboard attached at any stage so may be better than the above but does not work when you are not on the login page - when you have already logged in this does not provide a ‘Suspend’ option (only ‘Restart’, ‘Power Off’ or ‘Cancel’).

I found that this trick worked even at the installation from USB stage (because the problem occurs even from that time). So when installing 20.04.2 from USB as per the instructions in this blog, when the first install window comes up in the GNOME desktop environment, you will need an attached mouse or trackpad to do the above ‘trick’ to get your touch screen working and then you can continue the installation with touch screen alone. After install, on the final ‘Restart’ stage when it tells you to remove the removable media and press ‘ENTER’ you can just do a long press (about 10 seconds) on the main tablet power button to force a reboot instead (if you don’t want to add a physical keyboard just to press ‘Enter’).

Before I found this I tried 20.1 in-place upgrade (v 19.10 is no longer available for download) but this didn’t fix the problem (it just made the login screen appear in portrait mode and messed up the accelerometer effect by rotating 180 degrees out of sync whereas 20.04.2 got it almost right). Also, v20.1 had strange behaviour with the accelerometer - it only worked when the physical keyboard was attached. It was while messing about with 20.1 that I discovered the above workaround but when I removed the physical keyboard the accelerometer no longer worked at all and when I put the physical keyboard back on the accelerometer worked again. It is for that reason I decided to try again with 20.04.2 using the ‘Suspend’ trick and it worked.

Now both touch screen and accelerometer screen autorotation work but the portrait modes are upside down. If you have any advice to fix that I would be grateful.

I hope this experience will help others with a Linx 1020.

Thanks again for making this really useful blog.

Michael 15 June 2021

First thanks for writing the tutorial. I want to install Bliss Os after testing the live usb which seem to work a lot better than the raw android x86. I am confused with the UEFI. When I am installing if I select the whole drive wouldn’t it delet the UEFI partition as well? Should I be installing at a partition? I see mccblk1 as a whole drive or mccblk0p1, mccblk0p2, mccblk0p3 and mccblk0p4 as partitions.

Ian 16 June 2021

I’m afraid I don’t know what Bliss OS uses for an installer. The Android x86 software I used installs the Android partitions as files inside the Windows partition, and ties into the Windows boot process to chain them - probably why it’s so slow!

You will need an EFI partition for sure, the only question is if you select “the whole disk”, will the installer figure it out and create a new EFI partition for you as well as the OS partition(s).

If you’re not sure, picking a single partition to install into is the less risky option, so try that first!

Michael 16 June 2021

Thank you for replying. Bliss OS is just refined version of android x86 as the android x86 have so many bugs. I tired the live image everything seem to work sound, wifi and auto-rotation. Also its run quite fast and smooth.

I only used to work with old Bios, is UEFI a bit like boot loader in an android phone. Does each OS have its own version UEFI or the UEFI have to be custom made by the hardware manufacture?

I think mccblk0p1 is the UEFI as its Vfat. mccblk0p2 has no format so may be just gap between partition, mccblk0p3 I think is the windows as its ntfs and mccblk0p4 I think is the windows recovery partition but its only about 450mb. So I think its safe to install on mccblk0p3. I am just worry choosing the whole drive will wipe my UEFI along with it and brick my table. Or am I worrying too much?

Many Thanks

Ian 17 June 2021

EFI is a complicated beast and I’m not super knowledgeable about it myself! Part of it is baked into the board firmware in the same way as BIOS, but an EFI partition is also required on disk, along with GPT replacing the older disk MBR. (Most EFI enabled firmware is still able to boot from MBR disks, never tried it on the Linx tablet though.) The firmware comes from the device manufacturer, while partitions on disk generally come from an operating system you have installed - though third party EFI boot loaders like rEFInd are available (I use rEFInd to switch between Windows and Linux on my desktop PC).

I think your assessment of what your partitions are is correct. Choosing to use the whole drive won’t wipe the EFI firmware on the board and brick the tablet, but it will delete the EFI partition on the disk, so I would only go down that route if you’re confident the BlissOS installer will create its own EFI partition after removing your existing one. It’s definitely safer to try just installing it to a single partition first and see if that works!

Michael 20 June 2021

Thanks for the explanation. I found a windows 10 restore image for Linx 1010b so I just did a whole hard disk install and it worked fine. And the tablet is now working nicely with Bliss os 11.14 Thanks

I found the restored image on this forum by JaydenTheYT. I have not tested it as my install work out fine, I did open it and look inside and look like the real thing. https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/threads/linx-tablet-drivers-and-bios-downloads.18641103/page-4

Direct download link here: https://mega.nz/#!mYwEjSxA!gzjpH68-dArLal6oX6QDujxQdoJmPic7SRb_8tHQyGY

Ziad 08 July 2021

Hello ian, I’ve used this tutorial to run ubuntu on my linx 1020 , and it works fine, but after a while, I wanted get back to windows, the oem windows image on the support page freezes at the windows loading page, how can i restore it back ?

Ian 09 July 2021

Ziad, I’m not 100% sure as your device is slightly different to mine, but if the OEM Windows install doesn’t work properly, you could always try downloading the Windows 10 installer from Microsoft’s page. Make sure to select 32-bit not 64-bit.

You may end up having to hunt for drivers though, I’m not sure if the stock Windows 10 install will have all the drivers it needs for a Linx 1020.

Smatt 09 August 2021

Hi Ian, firstly thanks for taking the time to experiment and post your results and a great how-to. I have spent the last week messing around with my old Linx1010b using your guide. I have successfully installed Ubuntu 20.04.2 and then upgraded it to 21.04. It seems fine just weirdly need to detach the keyboard give the screen a flip from portrait to landscape so that it recognises the change in orientation then reconnect the keyboard. Other than that it seems fine.

Also I have reinstalled Windows 10 (version 21h1 or whatever the latest is as per 08/08/2021.) I have the Win10 drivers which were available for a while from Linx. If you go straight to the device manager in control panel after install and use the Linx drivers against the unrecognised devices the Linx1010b springs back into life as if it just came out the box! Everything works perfectly the cameras, accelerometer etc

Word of warning DO NOT install the drivers from the optional Windows updates. They really mess things up!

MrT10001 20 August 2021

I have just installed Ubuntu 20.04.1 on a Linx 1010E. Flawless install. 21.04 failed to boot, installed fine, but wouldn’t boot!

Richard 02 September 2021

Hi,

Is debian Bullseye already tested? Also Gnome 40 has better support for touchscreen and gestures. I have on another laptop and installed debian bullseye and found a manual updating to gnome 40.

Ian 03 September 2021

I have only tried GNOME versions up to 38 so far, and only on Ubuntu, not on Debian. I will give that combination a try when I can and will let you know how I get on!

James 05 September 2021

Hi, many thanks for the really useful article. I’ve installed 20.04.1 on a Linx 1010B, but mouse gestures are not working, only single/double primary click, and drag. The simulated secondary click option doesn’t work either (I’m aware of the precision issue but you indicated this was only on older versions). I’m wondering what the difference is as I’ve used exactly the same hardware and software as in the article, and presumably this wasn’t a problem for you? Any suggestions for enabling mouse gestures or confirming the touchscreen type? lspci and lsusb don’t list anything that looks like a touchscreen. I’ve tried 20.04.3 but had the same problem. Thanks again.

Zeust 09 September 2021

In case more people might be interested, I managed to install Linux to an SD card and get it dual-booted with Windows! It did take some trial and error, because the EFI bootloader doesn’t have access to the SD card yet, so you need a /boot partition on the tablet’s built-in storage. So basically the layout is:

/dev/mmcblk2p1 /        (root partition on SD card)
/dev/mmcblk1p5 /boot    (boot partition on built-in storage)
/dev/mmcblk1p1 /boot/efi (existing EFI system partition)

Notes:

You need to shrink the Windows volume in order to create the boot partition. A boot partition size of 500 MB should be more than enough.
While using the (pre-existing) EFI system partition as your /boot partition is considered a valid choice on many machines, don’t do that on this tablet. It’s only 100 MB and will fill up before your bootloader is properly installed and configured. And since it’s at the start of the disk, it can’t be enlarged unless you completely throw away your Windows volume.
I would recommend using a “high endurance” SD card, since these have wear leveling just like an SSD, and as a result will survive many more write operations than regular SD cards. These seem hardly more expensive than regular ones; I got a high endurance 128 GB micro-SD card for under €20, and my system is running smoothly from it.

Ian 11 September 2021

Richard:

I’ve tried installing Debian Bullseye on the tablet but I have not been successful. I can boot into the installer but it seems like the installer doesn’t recognise the USB stick it booted from as an installation source. This is with both the netinst and full images. However I’m using a different USB stick than the one I used to use for installs on this tablet, so it might be the USB stick causing the problem rather than anything wrong with Debian.

I did however find an Ubuntu 21.04 PPA for Gnome 40, which I installed following these instructions. The result isn’t perfect—as you can see in this picture there are some strange visual artifacts when using the new Activities view—but I’m not sure that’s specific to the Linx tablet, more likely it’s just due to the software not being fully supported on Ubuntu yet. Touch screen, rotation etc. work fine.

Linx Gnome 40

James:

I’m not sure why simulated secondary click (i.e. long-press-to-right-click) isn’t working for you if you have identical hardware and software. Are you using Xorg or the Wayland? (If you’re not sure, that’s the difference between the “GNOME”/”Ubuntu on Wayland” and the “GNOME on Xorg”/”Ubuntu” sessions on the login screen session list.) They handle inputs differently so if you have issues with one you could try the other. FWIW I use Wayland.

The touchscreen device won’t show up in lsusb or lspci, but it will in lsdev—I get a line that says GDIX1001:00. You can also get more information using xinput list in Xorg or libinput list-devices (from the libinput-tools package) in Wayland.

Zeust:

Thanks for the info! Unfortunately the SD card reader on my Linx is defective so I can’t try this myself, but it looks like a good approach for those wanting to dual boot.

Eli 06 November 2021

Hi Ian, hope your good and thanks for this amazing tutorial much appreciated. I have manage to install ubuntu 20.4.3 lts with gnome version 3.36.8 into my linx tablet1010b without major issue,the only prblm i am facing now is the screen orientation , when i tilt the screen in portrait mode it looks upside down but landscape work fine, at the moment its locked in the landscape mode. is it possible to tell me how to fix this please ? thanks. also the camera ligt on …

Ian 07 November 2021

Hi Eli, I have just tried a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04.3 and I’m afraid I can’t replicate your problem. The screen orientation works correctly for me. It’s possible you could have a faulty unit, did the orientation work correctly on Windows?

GNOME does have an orientation lock option, so to use it in portrait you could work around this by holding it one way, locking orientation then turning it round.

Regarding the camera light, I don’t believe the Linx 1010B has one? Are you referring to the red LED that comes on (admittedly near the camera) when the unit is charging?

Eli 07 November 2021

Hi Ian, thanks for your reply , i think my model is linx10 32GB , yes the camera is not working and theres red light on beside it all the time . i had an issue before with it when i had windows 10 installed but i manged to get drivers for the sensor and got the orientation fixed and also camera drivers but now this seems a problem with ubuntu. as i said i can lock the screen just fine but id like to see if theres a way to fix the orientation . this is how i fixed when i had windows —> https://samuelpinches.com.au/blab/windows-10-screen-rotation-problem-kionix-registry-fix/ thanks

If your tablet uses a Kionix accelerometer, that may explain the different behaviour on your device compared to my 1010B using a Goodix device.

It looks like the latest kernel used in Ubuntu 20.04 is 5.11.0; although this thread is talking about Arch it does contain advice to update from 5.12.13 to a newer kernel for improved Kionix driver support. Ubuntu 21.10 uses kernal 5.13 so it may be worth trying to upgrade and seeing if that fixes the problem?

once again thanks for taking your time to answer my questions, sorry i am a noob so what be the command to update the kernel ? thanks.

There is almost certainly a way to update just the kernel, but I wouldn’t recommend it—if you want to stay on Ubuntu 20.04, it is an LTS version so it would be best to wait until the developers mark it as an update.

My recommendation would be if you want to try the newer kernel, update the whole of Ubuntu to a newer version that uses that kernel. The command for that is sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.

Eli 08 November 2021

Thank you so much , I think I will just take your recommendation option and wait , it doesn’t really bother me that much but it’s a bit annoying that’s all . In anyway thanks .

Damien 20 January 2022

For me at least, (using LinuxMint 20.3), sound is working fine up to and including kernel 5.11, but the Ubuntu 5.13 and 5.14 kernels seem to break bytcr-rt5640 built-in audio, seeing it as plain rt5640 AFAICT. This may mean our beloved Linx’s sound may be broken in future releases. Bluetooth etc. audio are fine still. I’ve filed a bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-meta-hwe-5.13/+bug/1958410 so if you can see this behaviour too, please up the bug-heat on it by clicking that it affects you too.

Ian 22 January 2022

Thanks Damien, I can confirm the same here.

Base install of Ubuntu 20.04.3, kernel 5.11.0-38, sound works
After applying latest update through apt, now on kernel 5.13.0-27, sound does not work.

Damien 23 January 2022

I’m installing 21.10 to a USB stick to see if the newer kernels break audio on that rel.

Figured I’d use “minimal install” for speed. Crazy! It installs everything, then uninstalls libreoffice and stuff, so minimal needs as much space, and more time, than ‘all’.

Ian 23 January 2022

What a bizarre way of doing it!

Let me know if you manage to get 21.04 to install properly, for me it boots from Live USB but not after install—I think maybe it’s not installing 32 bit grub support or not setting up grub properly.

Again.. I’m just keeping you in the loop. Will tell you if it actually worked after reboot.

This is what I did to get it to do the grub32 thing. You may want to trim it down a bit and update your “Installing 32-bit Grub after a Botched Install” section. Also, note that update-grub is the command, not grub-update.

I couldn’t think of a sane way to put variables through to the chroot, else I’d have made the target drive a variable. Here, I’m using an external USB stick, so it’s /dev/sda. Clearly, that’ll be /dev/mmcblk${x} for internal SSD/SD

Will report back after reboot in a minute.

That seems to work… ish. Grub appears fine. It loads initrd then seems to reboot instantly, in my case returning to the grub on SSD. Same for recovery mode. Investigating.

Ah ok.. thanks. You may want to trim the cruft, please feel free to trim/edit/remove any of my posts.. above, please change “grep $target” to “grep $t”

I’m typing from the booted USB of 21.10 :-) I’d chrooted into it, nano /etc/default/grub and in the hope of seeing more boot stuff, commented out #GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash” and for less neck-twisting, eye straining, added GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”fbcon=rotate:1”

re-ran update-grub. When booting, I’d been selecting the UEFI USB option from firmware… mistake.. the plain USB option was the winner. Wait before you edit anything in your tutorial though..as after all the updates and checks I’m running I’ll revert that and see if if breaks boot, or fixes the next bit:-

Auto-rotate screen was working in the installer, but not here in the installed system. That may be due to my setting rotate in grub.

This is likely just the Linx WiFi not liking my particular AP, but I had to turn WiFi off and on again to get a connection. (I often have to do that in my normal Mint too, and usually only with my home AP. If I use an ESP-01 or my phone as an AP, it hooks up immediately.)

So 21.10 can be installed from scratch and work, with no more than one chroot to fix it. A slow USB stick is not the optimal target though. apt upgrade is still running. I’ll let you know in a few boots, after checking the newer kernels in-place if the grub settings were relevant.

So.. the 5.13.0-27 on 21.10.. sound works. Have updated on launchpad.

Reverting /etc/default/grub, it still boots. Auto-rotate is still absent.

Before I chrooted to revert grub and run update-grub, I had seen two options to boot the USB from the Linx’s boot menus (esc at boot) “ubuntu (SanDisk)” and “EFI USB Device (SanDisk)”, and as I mentioned in my last post, I had to select the non EFI one to get a successful boot. After the chroot/revert/update-grub, I only see the EFI variant, which boots fine. Oddness!

Back in Mint XFCE… happpier. Re: the WiFi thing. It seems to work better in 5.13, best in 5.14, but quirky in all. Also, an error.. my script on mint doesn’t replug the modules, it used to, but now it just uses rfkill block/unblock. I only use/need it when the wifi fails to connect after boot.

Thanks for all your work on this! To be honest my “Installing 32-bit Grub after a Botched Install” section was a bit of a throwaway “I think this is pretty much how to do it” so would you mind if I replaced it with your much better version? (Including tweaks from your later comment)

Go ahead Ian.

You might want to break the code into harder to paste “all at once” chunks. I fumbled earlier and unmounted half my host system :-) Maybe “Get chroot”, “Inside chroot”, and “After chroot”.

The variables defined at the top will be there after chroot (but of course not inside it), so it might be worth including an “After chroot” test like “echo $t” to help Joe Sixpack through the task without error. We all pasted into the wrong terminal once right :-D

Maybe obfuscate drives as perhaps /dev/FixMe to force folks to think before they b0rk. Don’t forget the one inside the chroot.

That’s my two-pennuth. All that I just said may be overkill… you write better for the humans than I do. Please use what I pasted how you see fit.

…and thanks for all YOUR work. Without it, I’d have re-sold this £80 impulse purchase within days, instead of it turning out to be my main “still portable” laptop for good while now.

This message will self destruct in 5. 4. 3… \o/

Ian 24 January 2022

No problem, happy to help people get a bit more use out of their old hardware.

I’ve updated the page now with chroot instructions based on yours, hopefully they make sense!

Damien 24 January 2022

grub-install $disk <- won’t work, as the variable was defined outside the chroot.

Luckily, the effect of the variable being empty should be that grub-install fails to run.

It’s a pity, ‘cos it’s more readable with everything defined at the top. All is not lost though :)

Some options.

Move :disk=/dev/mmkblk1 inside the chroot block,
Just do it static with a second big fat warning.
Rob the workaround below.

To see what I mean:-

Damn, yep you’re right of course… you reminded me about that in your previous comment and I still forgot! Better update the page again :)

« Guide

HOWTO: Install Linux on a Linx 1010B Tablet

What’s Working?

Equipment Required

Considering Dual-Boot

Preparing for the Install

Installing Ubuntu

Post-Install Usage Notes

Other Setups

Other Desktop Environments

Ubuntu 21.10, 21.04 & 20.10

Ubuntu 20.04

Linux Mint 20.1

Other Linux Distros

Chrome OS

Android

Windows 10

Ubuntu versions earlier than 18.04

Other Useful Information

Screen Rotation

Onboard setup

Long-press to Right Click

Installing 32-bit Grub after a Botched Install

Thanks To…

Comments

Richard:

James:

Zeust:

Add a Comment

What’s Working?

Equipment Required

Considering Dual-Boot

Preparing for the Install

Installing Ubuntu

Post-Install Usage Notes

Other Setups

Other Desktop Environments

Ubuntu 21.10, 21.04 & 20.10

Ubuntu 20.04

Linux Mint 20.1

Other Linux Distros

Chrome OS

Android

Windows 10

Ubuntu versions earlier than 18.04

Other Useful Information

Screen Rotation

Rotating the Login Screen

Onboard setup

Long-press to Right Click

Installing 32-bit Grub after a Botched Install

Thanks To…

Comments

Richard:

James:

Zeust:

Add a Comment