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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

#71

Post by realusername »

waweic wrote: post #69
realusername wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I will then, didn't know it would be interesting for other people.

As for PostmarketOS, I've built my own tooling scripts around it to make it easier to build patches, debug hex variables, switch between downstream/mainline and rebuilding everything with a single command. (Unrelased yet though).

I find their tooling okay for a release for end-users but a bit clunky for debugging.

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

#72

Post by Rohansi »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #55
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.

having many tabs is perfectly fine - it's having many *youtube* tabs is troublesome main trouble to me has been caused by unity games - those are the big ram devourers, even most basic 2D ones (I still don't understand how that happens, why such regression since KSP days) and plenty of 2D games work perfectly fine (devs really overestimate minimal requirements)

> main trouble to me has been caused by unity games

Generally it's probably just bad optimization. But that only gets you so far because Unity's asset streaming is designed to work with level-based games. It will only let you unload assets if you package them per-level and then swap them in and out at load screens between levels. Absolutely useless for games like KSP.

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

#73

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

Rohansi wrote: post #72
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having many tabs is perfectly fine - it's having many *youtube* tabs is troublesome main trouble to me has been caused by unity games - those are the big ram devourers, even most basic 2D ones (I still don't understand how that happens, why such regression since KSP days) and plenty of 2D games work perfectly fine (devs really overestimate minimal requirements)

> main trouble to me has been caused by unity games Generally it's probably just bad optimization. But that only gets you so far because Unity's asset streaming is designed to work with level-based games. It will only let you unload assets if you package them per-level and then swap them in and out at load screens between levels. Absolutely useless for games like KSP.

> Absolutely useless for games like KSP.

and yet KSP flies fine, while visual novels crash

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

#74

Post by srean »

nine_k wrote: post #62
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Far better than bookmarks.

Bookmarks do not store click history, the trajectory you took to arrive at the page. With tabs, the contexts is a backbutton away.

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

#76

Post by tech4bot »

saghul wrote: post #70
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?

Yes, is swap that expandable RAM.

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

#77

Post by tech4bot »

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…

I’d be interested in that.

I completely agree, this is not the place to let AI blindly edit kernel code. The useful approach is to use it conservatively: understand the error, compare against downstream sources, propose a small patch, review it, test it, and then move one step further.

I’d be happy to work together on an article or guidance document, where to start, how to approach debugging, what to never let AI touch blindly, and how to build confidence step by step. That could help others avoid a lot of mistakes and maybe give a second chance to other devices.

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

#78

Post by regularfry »

Interesting. I don't have the hardware to test it, but:

- Bookworm rather than Trixie looks like a conscious choice. Does 13 (either via apt upgrade or direct installation) not work?

- What's the performance of this hardware like? I've got an old Samsung tablet that's not rootable and it's really creaking on recent android. I'd much rather something like this, but I don't want to swap one too-slow thing for another.

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

#79

Post by tech4bot »

regularfry wrote: post #78

Interesting. I don't have the hardware to test it, but: - Bookworm rather than Trixie looks like a conscious choice. Does 13 (either via apt upgrade or direct installation) not work? - What's the performance of this hardware like? I've got an old Samsung tablet that's not rootable and it's really creaking on recent android. I'd much rather something like this, but I don't want to swap one too-slow thing for another.

Bookworm was a conservative choice. I haven’t properly tested Trixie yet, so I don’t know. In theory the rootfs should be swappable.

Performance is usable, especially compared to stock Android, because there is less background bloat. It’s fine for terminal work, light browsing, VS Code, and small experiments.

If you want you can check my video: https://youtu.be/DbX13_mahKc

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

#80

Post by fwip »

roryirvine wrote: post #52
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.

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…

Seconding ad-blocking. I have a low-end phone (4GB ram, and a mediatek processor from 2018), and setting up DNS-based ad-blocking made a lot of sites go from unusable to usable.
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