Introduction
This project is an efford to get GNU/Linux running on [Nextbook Flexx 10.1"] (http://nextbookusa.com/productdetail.php?product_id=26) Intel Atom Bay Trail (ASoC) device.
NOTE: Fleex 9 has almost the same hardware.
This document has been tested with the following "GNU/Linux" distributions:
- [Debian] (http://www.debian.org)
- [Ubuntu] (http://www.ubuntu.com)
- [ElementaryOS] (https://elementary.io)
- [Arch Linux] (https://www.archlinux.org) (Thanks to: @nicman23)
Except for distribution related commands, this documentation can be useful for:
- [Android-x86] (http://www.android-x86.org)
- [This google groups discussion] (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-x86/un74okmr30g)
- [Android-x86] (http://www.android-x86.org) (Installed on USB stick ... it worked, but I have not written any doc yet ... [Linux Live USB Creator] (http://www.linuxliveusb.com) -- officially support Android-x86)
System Hardware Summary
[Nextbook Flexx 10.1"] (http://nextbookusa.com/productdetail.php?product_id=26)
Hardware
- CPU: **Intel Atom Bay Trail Z3735F**
- Video: **Intel HD Graphics (Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display)**
- Screen: **10.1" - I2C HID v1.00 Device [FTSC1000:00 2808:1015] on i2c-FTSC1000:00**
- WiFi: **Realtek RTL8723BS Wireless LAN 80211n SDIO Network Adapter**
- Disks: **mmcblk0: mmc0:0001 NCard 28.9 GiB**
- RAM: **LPDDR3 1067 2GB (on-board)**
- BT: **Realtek RTL8723BS_BT**
[Full System Hardware Info] (https://github.com/burzumishi/linux-baytrail-flexx10/wiki/Sytem-Hardware)
Project Status
- Boot Standard Kernel {OK}
- Detect hard drives {OK}
- Shutdown {OK}
- Reboot {OK}
- Hibernation */!*
- Sleep / Suspend */!*
- Battery monitor {i}
- Xorg & XWayland {OK}
- OpenGL {OK}
- Resize-and-Rotate(randr) {i}
- Screen backlight {i}
- Light sensor */!*
- Switch to External Screen (HDMI) {OK}
- Mouse
- Built-in (Touchpad) {OK}
- Built-in (Touchscreen) {i}
- Bluetooth {i} {i}
- Wireless/Wifi {i}
- Keyboard's Hotkeys [?]
- Wireless/Wifi {OK}
- Keyboard's Hotkeys {i}
- Sound {i}
- MicroSD card reader {OK}
- Built-in camera {X}
- Accelerometers {X}
Legend : {OK} = OK ; {X} = Unsupported(No Driver) ; */!* = Error (Couldn't get it working); [?] = Unknown, Not Test; [-] = Not-applicable; {i} = Configuration Required; X-( = Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware
Repositories
**[Linux Kernel] (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git)**
**[Linux Firmware] (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git)**
**[Power Management] (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux-pm.git)**
**[Sound ASoC] (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/broonie/sound.git)**
**[WiFi ] (https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs)**
**[Bluetooth] (https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723bs_bt)**
**[Sound UCM] (https://github.com/plbossart/UCM.git)**
**[Battery] (https://github.com/Icenowy/axpd.git)**
Installation
* Requirements
* Important Notes
* BIOS Access
* To Turn "Fast Startup" On or Off in System Settings
* Create USB Media
* Booting the Live Image
* Installing Linux
* First boot
Requirements
A BayTrail tablet.
An USB storage medium to boot from.
Optional: A storage medium (USB, SD-Card etc.) big enough to back up the Windows installation. I used a USB hard drive.
Rufus: http://rufus.akeo.ie
For linux, use dd or move everything to a properly labeled fat32 partition.
Important Notes
{i} The following information and procedures are mostly extracted from the T100TA and Odys wintab 10.1 and adappted to the Flexx10. The T100TA has an hardware similar to that one of the Flexx10, informations and procedures regarding these two models can be usefully shared.
{i} Before installing Linux, Secure Boot needs to be disabled. Also, if dual-booting with Windows 8 it is recommended to disable its fast boot feature.
{i} Although the Debian Jessie (stable) installer includes all the needed modules and core changes to install and boot on this machine, it is advisable to install Debian Stretch (testing) and keep it up to date due to a lot of components still unsupported. If you really want to install Debian Jessie (stable) at least you can use the backport repository to install the latest kernels and firmwares when available.
{i} Another choice is any close to upstream distro (the Arch family will be supported here).
{i} In order to install with any netboot image, by using the internet (e.g. with a netinst image), the wifi has to be enabled. See the steps described in the WiFi section, prepare the needed firmware (see also the d-i manual Loading Missing Firmware) and reproduce the steps using a shell during the installation procedure.
{i} The Flexx 10.1 is a mixed mode EFI system (i.e. a 64-bit CPU combined with a 32-bit EFI) without any legacy BIOS mode. By default, any i386 installer images should boot on this machine via UEFI and let you install a complete 32-bit (i386) system. If you use the multi-arch amd64/i386 netinst or DVD image, you will also be able to install in 64-bit mode. You might expect slightly better performance that way in exchange for ram uasge. Multi-arch DVD images must be modified before booting.
BIOS Access
-
To disable Secure Boot press F2 when the laptop is starting. You should get a BIOS-alike configuration application where Secure Boot may be disabled (Security tab).
NOTE: that on Flex 10 you have to press "Fn + F2" to get the "F2" functionality, not some desktop config button. NOTE: Press "PowerOn + Volume Down" five seconds for boot menu.
-
You have to go to pc settings via the charms bar ( bar on the right that pops up on desktop ) then General -> advanced startup-> restart. it will boot up into a blue screen with some options, select troubleshoot, then there should be a bios or uefi restart option, wording differs slightly based on hardware.
Or just open a cmd prompt and type: shutdown.exe /r /o
That will restart into the blue screen with options.
To Turn "Fast Startup" On or Off in System Settings
-
Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click on the Power Options icon.
-
Click/tap on the Choose what the power buttons do link on the left side. (see screenshot below)
-
Click/tap on the Change settings that are currently unavailable link at the top. (see screenshot below)
-
If prompted by UAC, then click/tap on Yes.
-
Do step 6 or step 7 below for what you would like to do.
-
To Turn On "Fast Startup" (Hybrid Boot) for a "Hybrid Shutdown"
NOTE: This is the default setting.
A) Under Shutdown settings, check the Turn on fast startup box, and click/tap on the Save changes button. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: If the Turn on fast startup setting is not listed, then you will need to close the System Settings window,enable hibernate, then start back at step 1 again.
B) The Shut down Power option will now perform as a hybrid shut down when used. C) Go to step 8 below.
- To Turn Off "Fast Startup" for a "Full Shutdown"
A) Under Shutdown settings, uncheck the Turn on fast startup box, and click/tap on the Save changes button. (see screenshot below step 6A)
NOTE: If the Turn on fast startup setting is not listed, then hibernate has been disabled that removed this setting and also disabled fast startup.
B) The Shut down Power option will now perform as a normal full shut down when used. C) Go to step 8 below.
- You can now close the Power Options window if you like.
Installing Debian
Use Rufus with GPT Partition Table layout and formated with FAT32 to create a USB install disk.
Copy "grubia32.efi" in "D:\efi\grub"
NOTE: Do not overwrite "grubx64.efi" or "grub.efi"!
Now, insert the USB stick and reboot to the firmware (BIOS). You can do this in Windows by holding shift when pressing “restart”, then touching Troubleshoot → Advanced Options → UEFI Firmware Settings → Restart.
Once there, disable SecureBoot, then visit the boot options, and ensure the USB stick is the first in the list.
Press F10 to save settings, and after a few seconds you will be in the GRUB bootloader.
Then press F10 to boot. You should get all the way to the Installation or Desktop.
The partitioning scheme you choose is up to you — but you will need to preserve the EFI partition, so don’t just partition the entire disk for Linux.
In addition to the EFI partition, I prefer separate /, /home and /boot mount points; but that is up to you. You could squish down the Windows partition and created the additional partition(s), or just delete the Windows partition altogether if you don’t need it (not recommended).
When done, you need to modify the grub configuration or Linux won’t boot yet ;(
In a terminal run lsblk -f. This should get you an idea on how to proceed. Your install will be located in the mmcblk0 block device (most likely).
The usally mmcblk0p1 usally is the efi partition (fat32) that your grub installation is located and its size is no more than 512 (uefi limitation). Another partition that you will need to remember is the root of your linux installation. This is usually ext4 (or whatever you chose in the previous installation). If you removed windows mmcblk0p2 will probably be your ext4 root.
You’ll need to provide Grub with the path to your kernel and initrd to boot:
For the root of your installation run blkid /dev/mmcblk0p2 for this example. This will print the UUID (and other information we do not need). Copy the UUID and in the /boot/efi/grub/grub.cfg search for the various menuentries. You will need to replace the uuid with the one you copied in the lines :
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root foobarlinux ... root="foobar" ...
(Note: in the second line, you might have something like root=/dev/foobar. Replace that with root=UUID=youruuid)
linux (hd1,gpt5)/boot/vmlinuz-3.13-xxxx root=/dev/mmcblk0p5 quiet intel_pstates=disabled
Installing Arch based distros
You will need another machine or have an external usb network card. Following is installation with another arch machine on a usb.
Configure paritioning with an efi fat32 partition no more thatn 256M (just to be safe) and commit however much space you want for the root and format the root to f2fs for better 4k access/ latency.
The "root=/dev/mmcblk0p5" will also depend on the partition you installed to. It will be your root partition. Unfortunately this can’t be auto-completed, so if you can’t remember your partition setup, you’ll need to try by trial and error.
If you mount the usb installation's root in /mnt, mount the efi partition in /mnt/boot.
Install arch-install-scripts do a standard pacstrap in the with pacstrap *where you mounted it* base base-devel git grub *somenetworkmanager*
Chroot into it sudo arch-chroot /*where you mounted it*. Edit /etc/default/grub to use UUIDs
initrd (hd1,gpt5)/boot/initrd-3.13-xxxx
Install grub with grub-install --target=i386-efi --no-nvram --efi-directory *where you mounted the efi dir* *path to usb efi block device* and make a configuration for grub with grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Do the usual stuff (locale-gen, set the time, ...) and install from the aur the rtl8723bs-dkms-git package for wifi. Then boot with:
boot
Note: as with any installation, grub may (or not) crap itself and not use the right UUIDs
System Configuration
Once the system has booted sucessfully, it needs some tweaking:
* WiFi
* Kernel
* Bootloader
* Power Management
* Status, Intel Crystal Cove PMIC
* Screen brightness
* CPU C-states issue with the internal eMMC
* Touchscreen
* Audio
* microSD Card Reader
* Built-in camera
WiFi
The wifi device is an on-board SDIO device Realtek R8723BS, firmware and module required.
Grab the latest sources from git or download the zip file from: [@hadess git] (https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs)
Once downloaded build it:
apt-get install build-essential
cd rtl8723bs
make
make install
depmod -a
stop network-manager
modprobe r8723bs
start network-manager
If you need to build wifi again you can use the script:
kernel/install_rtl8723bs_debian.sh
NOTE: Wifi and a network conection are required to continue!
Kernel
wip check issues #7
kernel/kernel_git.sh
Once you have downloaded the kernel copy the configuration file from:
cp kernel/config-4.8.0-rc2+ /your/kernel/source/.config
cd source
make menuconfig
make INSTALL_MOD_STRIP=1 -j4 deb-pkg
Be patient this task takes about 3 or 4 hours, when it's finished you will get the debian package files:
../linux-firmware-image-4.4.0-rc8+_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb
../linux-headers-4.4.0-rc8+_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb
../linux-image-4.4.0-rc8+_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb
../linux-image-4.4.0-rc8+-dbg_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb
../linux-libc-dev_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb
Install all packages except "dbg":
dpkg -i linux-firmware-image-4.4.0-rc8+_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb linux-headers-4.4.0-rc8+_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb linux-image-4.4.0-rc8+_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb linux-libc-dev_4.4.0-rc8+-1_amd64.deb
NOTE: REBUILD WIFI MODULE!
Bootloader (GRUB)
In order to boot up your system properly, it's needed to update GRUB's bootloader files and config:
# apt-get install grub-efi-ia32-bin
# grub-install --target i386-efi
We want to copy the "grubia32.efi" from there to the location Debian created during installation:
# cd /boot/efi/EFI
# sudo cp grub/grubia32.efi debian/grubia32.efi
This should be enough to allow you to boot from the “debian” option in your EFI firmware.
Before you boot, let’s add the default command line options to Grub.
Open "/etc/default/grub" in a text editor:
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
And edit the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT exactly as we did before. When done, hit Ctrl-o to save then Ctrl-x to exit. Then, to update Grub:
sudo update-grub
Congratulations! you should now be able to boot/reboot directly to Debian!
GRUB will not boot until you save the devices boot order from UEFI BIOS, this may be a bug in the BIOS firmware.
Power Management
Status, Intel Crystal Cove PMIC
The power management integrated circuit (PMIC) of the Intel Baytrail is called Crystal Cove. Full support for this PMIC is not yet available with kernel linux 4.x, so suspend to ram, hibernation and screen brightness controll does not work fine.
Suspend to RAM does not work and sends the machine into a state from which one can only recover by forcing the shutdown. Hibernation partially works as it, like the suspend, requires to force the shutdown and at the following boot the system recovers from the hibernation but with some glitches.
Screen brightness
Because the Crystal Cove PMIC is not yet fully supported the brightness level of the screen cannot be adjusted and it is locked at the maximum value. Some patches are discussed in this discussion.
However xrandr allows to change the brightness of the screen with a software only modification:
$ man xrandr
[...]
--brightness brightness
Multiply the gamma values on the crtc currently attached to the output to specified floating value.
Useful for overly bright or overly dim outputs. However, this is a software only modification, if
your hardware has support to actually change the brightness, you will probably prefer to use xbacklight.
meaning that it does not dim the backlight and therefore it does not reduce power consumption. The syntax is:
$ xrandr --output <OUTPUT> --brightness <VALUE>
where the can be found with:
$ xrandr | grep -w connected | cut -d" " -f1
and the should be something between 0 and 1. For example:
$ xrandr --output DSI1 --brightness 0.8
The script brightness_ctl.Stretch_flexx10.sh makes use of the command above to progressively reduce the screen brightness.
Check this post for further suggestions and instruction. Please be aware that using this workaround can impact on the battery duration, but it is better than lose data.
Touchscreen
Intel Graphics using i915 driver, X.org works without patching.
The accelerometers are not supported yet, therefore the screen can only be manually rotated using xrandr. However the touchscreen inputs also have to be manually adjusted with xinput to be coherent with the rotations.
For an example see the script ts_rotate.Stretch_flex10.sh.
The accelerometers work as of at least linux-image-4.3.0-rc3-amd64.
The touchscreen is identified as FTSC1000:
$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ FTSC1000:00 2808:1015 id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SINO WEALTH USB KEYBOARD id=8 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ gpio-keys id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ SINO WEALTH USB KEYBOARD id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
Intel SST Audio (RT5640)
The device is an Intel SST Audio / Realtek RT5640. The firmware can be installed from "sound/firmware" directory:
Wip check issues/7
# apt-get install firmware-intel-sound
# /lib/firmware/intel/fw_sst_0f28.bin /lib/firmware/intel/fw_sst_0f28.bin.orig
# cp sound/firmware/fw_sst_0f28_ssp0.bin /lib/firmware/intel/fw_sst_0f28.bin
However a manual configuration of the device is still required. It is possible to do it using alsactl (available in the package alsa-utils) and a proper configuration file. Download and apply the configuration file in this way:
# cp asound.state /var/lib/alsa/
# alsactl restore
# sh set-alsa-bytcr-rt5640.sh
Clone UCM repository and install the files:
[Sound UCM] (https://github.com/plbossart/UCM.git)
Then restart Pulseaudio:
pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio --start
This will enable your sound card.
Please be aware that there are reports indicating that in some cases the sound can be distorted and the speakers can be even damaged if the volume is high. Be careful in doing tests. Headphones work too but switching from the speaker is not automatic, it can be done using the audio manager of the DE or a dedicated application like pavucontrol.
Use the firmware and the alsa configuration files available here.
If you're still getting firmware errors maybe something is not properly configured or patched, firmware errores will increase your kernel boot time.
microSD Card Reader
It's working.
Built-in camera (I2C)
The model should be "OV2680". There is no driver avaliable for Linux.
Manufacturer: [OVT] (http://www.ovt.com/products/sensor.php?id=140)
Documentation
I would like to thank these sites, as they were very useful because of similarities between both devices:
http://www.jfwhome.com/2014/03/07/perfect-ubuntu-or-other-linux-on-the-asus-transformer-book-t100/
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=201040&p=1052609
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=204172
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/T100TA
https://sturmflut.github.io/linux/ubuntu/2015/02/04/installing-ubuntu-on-baytrail-tablets-version-2/
AUTHORS
2015-2016 **Antonio Cao** ([@burzumishi] (https://github.com/burzumishi)) under the **'GNU GPL v2 LICENSE'**.