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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

#61

Post by cbdevidal »

niekkamer wrote: post #45
exe34 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 8GB, which I've had since 2012. Never had a problem - I run a lean Nixos with just xmonad and dmenu, chrome, emacs, and about a dozen open pdfs and video tutorials.

Same here still use my laptop with 8GB DDR4 with Manjaro running. Since I have a desktop I do use rustdesk way more often to just boot into that.

Y’all are embarrassing me with Lubuntu and Chrome on a 2013 Dell with 16GB and an SSD. Not fast enough for all I need to do but covers 80% of my needs. It’s my road laptop and the home desktop handles the rest.

But you’re doing much better than me.

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

#62

Post by nine_k »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #59
roryirvine wrote: post #52

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…

it's probably the "you only notice when it doesn't work" situation, but my experience with firefox on ram limit has been a lot about tabs forgetting the url in them as in, I click "open in new tab", some time later I switch to them... only to get hit with "new tab", even though a moment ago it displayed tab name and I could right click -> bookmark to preemptively copy the address

Try the "Auto tab discard" extension. It allows me to have hundreds of tabs "open" and (in combination with Tree Style Tabs) largely blur the line between "browser sessions" and "bookmarks".

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

#63

Post by cbdevidal »

cf100clunk wrote: post #46

The situation right now with the Doogee U10 tablet: not commonly available. Once the news gets out about epic breakthroughs on commodity hardware and devices, there's unfortunately a likely spike in the purchase cost, even if such devices can be found at all anymore on the usual online sources of new and used goods.

After seeing the headline I immediately checked eBay and they are available to ship to the United States for $80 total.

https://ebay.us/m/fYqBgc

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

#64

Post by not_your_vase »

nine_k wrote: 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.

Can't speak for OP, of course.

Some time ago I got myself a similarly priced x86-64 Windows tablet on Amazon (Celeron N4020 + 4 GB RAM). I installed Linux Mint on it with a slightly customized kernel (some extra quirks were needed).

I connected an old SSD to it with a SATA2USB adapter, and I use it as a home file server and HTPC. It has a micro HDMI output, and it is connected to my TV. During the day it is playing music non-stop, in the evening it is playing some movies. It has no problem with high bitrate full HD movies, the CPU doesn't even break a sweat. I think it could also play 4K content, if I had any.

(Previously I used a Mac Mini with VLC for this for a few years, but I'm happier with my current setup, it's more stable)

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

#65

Post by electroly »

Aurornis wrote: post #16
MasterScrat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings (as in, I'm unsure how to feel) about projects where the code, the README and the HN/Reddit posts are mostly AI-generated. I feel the frustration of reading "slop", but on the other hand the projects that surface do usually bring something useful to the table. Should we simply judge the submission based on its technical merit? Why do I feel annoyed that an otherwise cool project uses typical LLM…

Show HN is (or was) one of my favorite parts of this site. I read a lot of submitted projects. The people who don’t even take 30 seconds to write their own comments aren’t here to share their knowledge or discuss the project. It’s self-advertising. They might be following instructions from the LLM to post it here. There was a project a couple days ago that still had the AI-generated marketing plan in git which instru…

This OP hasn't done any of those things. They are here discussing the project, and it's clear all of their replies are human-written. The AI use is stated up front in the readme. They posted a 12 minute YouTube video demonstrating that the project works, with narration that indicates English is not their first language. The git commit messages are all classic short human messages. It's a genuinely neat project that obviously has no commercial motivation. Their crime appears to be using AI to clean up their non-native English in the README and then reusing some of that README text in the top-level descriptive comment on their Show HN post. Indeed, they should not have done that for their comment, but the rest of these accusations are just soapboxing about AI. You could have written this comment anywhere; it has nothing to do with this post.

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

#66

Post by tech4bot »

cf100clunk wrote: post #46

The situation right now with the Doogee U10 tablet: not commonly available. Once the news gets out about epic breakthroughs on commodity hardware and devices, there's unfortunately a likely spike in the purchase cost, even if such devices can be found at all anymore on the usual online sources of new and used goods.

Yes, that’s a fair concern.

The tablet is from around 2023, with later revisions around 2024. My point was that this kind of older cheap hardware is already out there in people’s drawers.

If a device can boot from SD and the hardware can be documented enough, it becomes a good candidate for reuse instead of becoming e-waste.

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

#67

Post by tech4bot »

nutjob2 wrote: post #60
tech4bot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got it from Amazon DE. The listing said it had an RK3562. There are a few different listings with Android 13/14/15/16. I only bought two, one with Android 15 and one with Android 16, and both turned out to be the same hardware.

Can you post the Amazon DE links? Because none of the listings I see specify that processor. Would like to try this out, but getting an incompatible machine would be a real bummer. Edit: OK, I think the Android 15 is this one: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/DOOGEE-U10-Tablet-WiFi-128GB/dp/B... (Nov/Dec delivery)

I also saw the Android 13 version, but I haven’t tested that one, so I don’t know which hardware revision it uses.

On the units I tested, the board says: RK3562-v1.0 2024.06.28.

This is the listing I used, but it is currently out of stock:

https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0DNMR22SS

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

#68

Post by saghul »

cf100clunk wrote: post #46

The situation right now with the Doogee U10 tablet: not commonly available. Once the news gets out about epic breakthroughs on commodity hardware and devices, there's unfortunately a likely spike in the purchase cost, even if such devices can be found at all anymore on the usual online sources of new and used goods.

I went on Aliexpress and I seem to be able to get it for 73 euro.

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

#69

Post by waweic »

realusername wrote: post #15
NoboruWataya wrote: post #14

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 some experience on this and could make an article if you are interested. The key is to have downstream sources and be very very conservative with the AI, slowly build step by step. You also have to know C and have a spider sense of what's acceptable or not. Another key is to ask for approval before editing any source with a patch of what it intends to do. This way you can judge what it wants to do and ask for…

Please do write an article! I've wanted to get into reusing old android hardware for quite some time now, but never knew where to look for good instructions to get started. Especially PostmarketOS seems very interesting, but rather underdocumented in some places.

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

#70

Post by saghul »

tech4bot wrote: post #2

I reverse-engineered a Doogee U10 (Rockchip RK3562) to boot Debian natively from an SD card. No BSP, no kernel source, no vendor documentation — just a DTB extracted from the stock Android firmware and rebuilt from there. The tablet boots Linux directly from SD without modifying internal Android storage. Remove the card and Android still boots normally. The process is intentionally simple: write the image to an SD ca…

Does that advertised "expandable RAM" also work on Debian? I assume that's just a fancy name for swap, right?
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