Installing MX on a windows Tablet? {Solved}

[Krissharm]

Following this guide
http://www.linuxium.com.au/how-tos

Do you think there would be much value installing linux on a windows tablet?
Atom based one.

Or am I wasting my time?

Edit: I think it wont work. All efforts have so far been fruitless.

[Richard]

If you can get it to run, I'm sure it would be an improvement.

[clicktician]

Screenshot.jpg

I just installed MX 17.1 on a brand new 10.1 inch HP X2 210 G2 windows tablet over the weekend. It's commonly called a 2 in 1.

It has an Atom x5-Z8350 with 4 cores at a max speed of 1.92 Ghz. 4GB of ram (see attached screen shot). 120 GB of mmc storage. Detachable keyboard. A multi-touch screen, and a pen. It came with Windows 10, but I bought it with the intention of wiping it and installing MX.
I knew Win 10 would be unusably slow for me, but I booted it up for curiosity. Cortana started yakking at me, telling me she's always listening, and asking for personal information because she wanted to send my details to HP, Microsoft and McAfee to set up accounts for me. Uh... Nope. It was very sluggish, but I think that's because I'm used to I'm used to snappy Linux laptops. Anyway, GParted promptly got rid of Miss Cortana, and all the people she wanted to "share" me with.

Bluetooth (HID and audio), touch screen, pen, keyboard, HDMI monitor, USB audio & network adapters, Wireless 802.11ac, USB network tethering to my cell phone, Thunderbolt 3 dock (USB sticks, audio in/out, and Gig Ethernet - tho HDMI requires displayport which I'm not dinking with)... 90% of everything is working great, but I admit it took some tinkering.

It is much, much more responsive than the Win 10 it came with.

It has a couple of glitches that I'm still working to solve:

1) Audio is an Intel SST Audio / Realtek RT5640 variant, and while MX has the intel firmware already, it didn't have the requisite Alsa UCM files. I found those on the inter-webs and installed them. When I run MX and Antix from a USB stick (with the firmware and UCM files), it correctly recognizes the card as bytcr-rt5640. Audio is mono and comes only from the left speaker. Headphones don't work at all. But the same files installed on the tablet itself -- MX doesn't identify the card as bytcr-rt5640, and built-in audio doesn't work at all. (Tho, of course I still have bluetooth, USB, and Thunderbolt audio to play with).

2) Power management is wonky. It always thinks it's plugged in. It can't sense the battery so it can't display the charge state. Conky battery info is blank. So, I have no idea how much battery I have, and MX power management is obviously not conserving battery when it should.

These problems are inconvenient, but they're not crippling. The battery is the most annoying, but I'm confident I'll get them solved with the help of the MX forum.

[clicktician]

UPDATE: I just installed the 4.15.9-antix kernel, and the tablet now magically recognizes the bytcr-rt5640 internal audio card. I now have stereo audio.
The only prob remaining is the battery indicator.

[Krissharm]

Sorry I have posted three times and the post seems to disappear!

[Krissharm]

You appear to have had a great deal of success. It's a shame the battery issue can't be resolved, that seems to be the only issue.
Do you have a pop up keyboard configured?
My target device is far lower spec than yours. It's actually a response tablet. It's an atom cpu and only 1gb of ram. I might be pushing it with mx17. But really it currently runs windows 10 so mx should be far more responsive.
Did you save your windows setup?
I have mx on p4 currently I would hope the atom is faster than that.

[clicktician]

Haven't config'd an on-screen keyboard. Tho, that would be handy if I ever use it with the keyboard detached.

I did not back up windows before nuking it. I thought about it, but only because if I ever had to send it back for warranty work, they'd expect to find it with Win 10 on it.

MX17 would be tight on 1GB of ram. Have you thought of Antix17? I installed that on a tiny 2GB Sony Vaio that has a small atom. It runs surprisingly well. I started with Antix-core and worked from there removing and adding what I needed on a larger laptop until I got the installation tuned. Then I just installed it from the snapshot'd USB. It has an SSD, so it has fast swap space. Tho, I never seem to fill it up.

I use it for VNC access over SSH to a large machine, so it kinda serves as a graphical terminal. Nothing too heavy.

BTW: I, too have a Lenovo X220 and it's my fave linux laptop of all time (and I have owned many)! I remember buying it new and wiping Windows off of it before I'd even booted it. I was so nervous. But it ran every distro I put on it like a champ. I don't think there's been a more versatile laptop from Lenovo since then.

[rokytnji.1]

I can run on screen keyboard on my M&A companion atom touchscreen netbooks using Antix 17. They did not come with Windows 10- though or any Windows.

My Dell XPS touchscreen Netbookcan also run on screen keyboard on antix quite well also. But it is dual core cpu. Not atom. It had no hard drive with it when I bought it.

If you can get it to run, I'm sure it would be an improvement.

Yeah. ^^^^^^^ What he said.

Edit. Forgot to mention. Touchscreen mouse pointer picked by default by the kernel. Works right out of the box. Even the wacom pen on the xps works out of the box.
Sound has never been a issue for me.

Reading your link. I'd just do this to my usb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpI_a4xPKdM

See. I think antix is not only for old gear

Code: Select all

$ inxi -b
System:
  Host: biker Kernel: 4.15.9-antix.1-amd64-smp x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: IceWM 1.4.2 
  Distro: antiX-17_x64-full Heather Heyer 24 October 2017 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Latitude E4310 v: 0001 serial: N/A 
  Mobo: Dell model: 0T6M8G v: A01 serial: N/A BIOS: Dell v: A03 date: 07/08/2010 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 48.8 Wh condition: 40.3/48.8 Wh (82%) 
CPU:
  Dual Core: Intel Core i5 M 520 type: MT MCP speed: 1582 MHz min/max: 1199/2400 MHz 
Graphics:
  Card-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller driver: i915 v: kernel 
  Display Server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: intel resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ironlake Mobile v: 2.1 Mesa 13.0.6 
Network:
  Card-1: Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e 
  Card-2: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 driver: iwlwifi 
Drives:
  HDD Total Size: 55.90 GiB used: 23.85 GiB (42.7%) 
Info:
  Processes: 155 Uptime: 12:39 Memory: 7.72 GiB used: 788.3 MiB (10.0%) Shell: bash 
  inxi: 2.9.08 

[Krissharm]

All brilliant advice
Thanks so much all - i'll have to keep you posted!

Perhaps I should consider antix. On the R51, the main holdup seems to be the CPU, the ram is not usually full, plus it has an ssd (I dont think I could go back to platters!) so even if it swaps its not slow. So I figured the atom would be quicker so the restriction would be the memory.

Yes, the x220 is my favorite laptop - the form, the style, the ease, the keyboard. It is actually an ex corporate machine, but thankfully spent most of its life in a doc by the condition! I have considered getting another, just in case this breaks and they become impossible to find. I can't really think of a machine to replace it.

[rokytnji.1]

the main holdup seems to be the CPU

Yep. My IBM T23 P3 non sse2 CPU is being left in the computer world dust. But I shoehorned antix on it and got Stevos palemoon nonsse2 browser to run on it with only cpu spiking out at 50%. Video struggles on that savage graphics chip. Which xorg is leaving in the dust. CPU maxes out with any video watching.

https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic ... n-ibm-t23/

I have been one of the hardware testers for Anti over the years. I got a lot of old gear also.