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I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

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Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#141

Thank you for this outstanding project! Question: Does the virtual keyboard provide all keys necessary to program bash shell scripts and edit Vim files— such as Ctrl+C and ESC, etc. Thanks again, LRP

Yes, in terminal the keyboard has all the keys. If you check my video you will see it when I open the terminal.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#142
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers and anything electron-based are your enemy. Firefox is actually pretty good in low-memory situations, silently discarding tabs when under memory pressure, but the main benefit comes from being able to run proper adblocking. Chromium-based browsers just can't compete these days. Otherwise, a bog standard Gnome-based Debian Trixie desktop should be pretty doable. I'm currently using an 8 GB machine with 3.7 GB…

... I haven't seen an ad in years, thanks to Brave, which is as of the last time I checked Chromium-based.

I was thinking about Brave too while reading this thread. I’m not on a memory constrained system exactly but Brave seems to be tons snappier due to its as blocking. I wonder too if Brave is a case where you can pull it off and still take advantage of chromium based.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#143
post #23

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

Apparently there is a VIP-edition with 16GB RAM, still under 200$.

https://www.doogee.com/products/u10-vip-edition?variant=4431...

If that would be real RAM, and not only swap I'd feel tempted.

Edit: Never mind, already sold out...(meanwhile, 15 minutes, or so)

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#144

Since it seems AI is pretty good at reverse-engineering stuff like this, is there any educational material on how to use it for that purpose? Seems like it could really help port things like postmarketOS to new devices (and improve support on existing ones)?

I have claude code hooked up to deepseek, I hooked up my spare cheapo android tablet, installed adb and fastbook with my package manager and asked the AI to jailbreak the tablet. It discovered the tablet was running a unisoc t606, found a CVE from a couple years ago, and unlocked the bootloader for me. I was the meat puppet holding the "volume up" button and plugging in the usb cable a bunch of times. Like most of my…

Nice work! A cheap MCU and some careful soldering and you wouldn't even need to be around to hold the volume button.

What sort of token spend did this take?

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#145
post #23

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

I had to read that twice, I first thought you meant 4 GB of _storage_...

Worrying about only having 4GB of RAM.... that's how I know I'm getting old I guess. Kids these days don't know they're born.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#146
post #23

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

With partial 3D acceleration, I guess web browsing is a bad experience

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#147
post #23

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

I originally ran Slackware 2.0 with 32 MB on a Pentium 75 Mhz.

So the software does exist, plus for the TUI and CLI folks, that would be plenty of space.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#148
post #23

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

>What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM.

I find this question rather sad.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#149
post #23

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

Apparently there is a VIP-edition with 16GB RAM, still under 200$. https://www.doogee.com/products/u10-vip-edition?variant=4431... If that would be real RAM, and not only swap I'd feel tempted. Edit: Never mind, already sold out...(meanwhile, 15 minutes, or so)

Is not real. RK3562 supports maximum 8GB.

Re: I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

#150
post #23

Booting into Debian with most devices fully functional is great. What I'd like to know is what software runs adequately under it in 4 GB RAM. Web browsing should definitely be possible, but I suppose it's limited to very few tabs. Some very lightweight DE could likely make it more usable. Running something like WezTerm + tmux as the DE could be even more economical, leaving some room for e.g. development tools.

With partial 3D acceleration, I guess web browsing is a bad experience

Only when it comes to videos or something that it requires to use the CPU instand of the GPU, but overall works good.
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