Puppy on Tablets

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
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rokytnji
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#76 Post by rokytnji »

Ok. I kinda get it now. It is that screwed up bios that checks if a approved operating system is present 1st to boot into. In your case Android. Before it will let a keystroke combo let you switch operating systems on the fly.

That was my plan on my ChromeOS Acer C710 chromebook. Hence the 64 gig ssd install
I attempted before things went south. I wanted enough gigs (the chromebook only comes with a 16gig ssd) to dual boot chromeos and Bohdi. Since Bohdi made a touchpad friendly
kernel.

But. that road is on hold for a year or so. I am waiting for the linux kernel to catch up on these chromebook. Mine is dual core intel instead of arm. I know of one user on the forum
here who states he got puppy going on his c710 but not a lot of detailed info on how that was done. So I basically ignore posts like that.

When I make something work. I document it step by step online like this
http://antix.freeforums.org/antix-11-ee ... t3104.html

But, these chromebook and android devices are lacking such detailed how to do
within a certain user posts "I got Puppy to boot on my c710". Or. " I got this or that to work on my Android device".

Lots of flotsam and jetsom out on the internet lately.
Last edited by rokytnji on Fri 24 Oct 2014, 21:25, edited 1 time in total.

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vtpup
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#77 Post by vtpup »

Hi gcmartin,

While what you say is certainly possible, no, that wasn't my aim.

I wasn't looking to run a server on another puppy computer for access through the tablet.

I just wanted to run Puppy on this tablet. The method for running Linux on Android these days is generally to run an instance of Linux on the tablet under (or beside) Android. That is run headless. Then you use Android to connect to that headless OS via VNC or RDP.

So to do that, the Linux is running a server and Android is running a client. That gives you a Linux desktop in the client, but all the Android touch controls work in the client. The Linux OS does not know it is receiving touch commands at all. It thinks it's a mouse and keyboard -- the actual touch behavior is controlled and translated by the Android client before sending it to the Linux OS.

Now, my problem earlier was that I couldn't get the Android cilents I tried to connect to the Linux server on the pad itself. In other words, for various reasons, they wouldn't handshake on 127.0.0.1 (localhost). Finally I found an Android client that worked, listed earlier in this thread.

To test the Linux OS, before I got the client working, I actually used an external computer to connect to the Linux OS on the tablet. This was done through the LAN, eg. running an RDP cllient in Puppy (Racy) that accessed a server at 192.168.1.111:3389 -- which was the IP of the tablet and the port for RDP.

By doing that I could see that the Linux install was actually running, despite the fact that I couldn't get a tablet client to work. So one part of the troubleshooting was solved. Linux worked and the server was running and accessible. Then I knew it was just a client problem on the tablet, and I tried out a lot of clients before finding one that worked.

Now there's no reason you couldn't do what you say, which is going in the opposite direction. Running an RDP -- or VNC -- server on a remote machine and accessing it with the tablet. That's straightforward and what the RDP clients are designed to do. Again, the particular client handles translation of touch commands so the remote computer does not actually have to be touch enabled. Usually the client has a variety of input styles you can choose from -- some mimic a touchpad mouse, some mimic the flick pan method of Android, etc.

btw, when I accessed the Linux OS on the tablet from my laptop, everything acted normally. I did not need touch drivers at all. The laptop's touchpad acted normally as did the keyboard and the screen worked exactly as it would if running normal Debian on the notebook computer.

One major difference between Android and regular Linux OS's became very apparent. Android only shows one running program on the screen at a time. While Linux desktops show multiple windows and programs. Thus window handling is very different. Android handles multiple programs by showing a special screen with the running program as minimized icons. you pick one and it opens to take over the whole screen.

Hope this info makes things clearer
[color=darkblue]Acer Aspire 5349-2635 laptop Tahrpup.[/color]
[color=blue]Acer R11 and C720 Chromebks Bionicpup64[/color]
[color=olive]Acer Iconia A1-830 tablet no pup[/color]
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vtpup
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#78 Post by vtpup »

Roky, agreed, it is difficult to get good information about these more consumer oriented devices. Older style computers were designed to be generalists -- they could be configured to do a lot of different things. But that generally required some learning and knowledge to achieve. The latest round of devices are designed to minimize learning and knowledge, restrict capabilities, and funnel users into dependency and single source purchases. Technical knowledge is considered a negative (alterations void warranties).

There is no reason why an unbrickable computer can't be built, for instance. We used to have these chips called ROMs -- remember them? Actual Hardware. They didn't change, and could always boot the machine to it's initial operating state. That was a primitive state that the "disk operating system" took over from. Now everything is NAND and the software OS is crammed into it. That software is now even called a "ROM". The separation of functions and hardware vs software blurring is responsible for the ability of large companies to restrict what users can do, and attempts to force them into a single source purchasing mode.

In order to get control of your computer (they were once called "personal computers" --remember?) a user must now resort to possibly destructive hacking of the device. A technical user is marginalized, and most people are removed from the pool of learning about technology on their own machines. Interpreted BASIC was available on all early PCs, it was universal. True it lacked a lot, compared to modern compiled languages, but it gave a very wide audience a start in programming. Now people only buy apps from company stores, or expect hackers to guide them through destructive techniques with counter apps, voiding warranties and often bricking a device they paid good money for.

Anyway, Roky,,, specifics for how I created my setup with Debian are all outlined in command by command detail in the source links I gave earlier in this thread. Sorry about the OT rant.

The main link is:

http://wdowiak.me/special-features/debi ... index.html
[color=darkblue]Acer Aspire 5349-2635 laptop Tahrpup.[/color]
[color=blue]Acer R11 and C720 Chromebks Bionicpup64[/color]
[color=olive]Acer Iconia A1-830 tablet no pup[/color]
[color=orange]www.sredmond.com[/color]

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vtpup
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#79 Post by vtpup »

Roky, out of curiosity I searched for links for installing Linux on the C710, and the few I found didn't look accurate -- they talked about GRUB -- is Grub actually available on the C710?

Because I'm looking at buying a C720 to test, I also looked up instructions for installing Linux on that model. These instructions seemed much more specific and accurate (for that model):
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/76 ... chromebook

I don't know if the c710 is similar to the c720. But perhaps that is a help?

EDIT: After reading this thread, I'm sure you've already researched all the issues and possibilities for the c710:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... =986019934
[color=darkblue]Acer Aspire 5349-2635 laptop Tahrpup.[/color]
[color=blue]Acer R11 and C720 Chromebks Bionicpup64[/color]
[color=olive]Acer Iconia A1-830 tablet no pup[/color]
[color=orange]www.sredmond.com[/color]

rokytnji
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#80 Post by rokytnji »

Make sure /dev/sdb is actually your flash drive! If it's your harddrive kiss your data goodbye.
What you gotta love. ChromeOS is not Linux. There is no terminal to do a

Code: Select all

fdisk -l
or

Code: Select all

parted -l
or

Code: Select all

blkid
to check. ChromeOS does not use bash . It's online terminal crosh is a joke. I know because I hit "help" and "man" and read a whole lot of nothing.

So how does one check the dev name on Chromebook?

http://www.omgchrome.com/format-sd-card-usb-chromebook/
http://www.howtogeek.com/170648/10-comm ... osh-shell/

See, saying a whole lot of nothing to a dumbed down audience. I covered things like that
in my "Tits on a Bull" rant about how any kind of document that speaks of instructions
on dealing with a chromebook or android device.

You kind of get a attitude when you hear , "only certain devices will interface with a chromebook (eg: hard drives) and may brick your chromebook".

And here I thought Kingston SSD Now drives were pretty damn standard netbook drives.
Some work some don't.

All I know is that the bios on Chromebooks look for a approved drive 1st, then a approved operating system next. If I had the know how. I'd replace the bios on that
POS in a heat beat. Like I said. I have the wrong attitude now for this kind of stuff.

On another off topic that twists my garters. I have been reading on how clueless
yuppie rubes comment on how 32 bit support should be dropped in Linux since
Windows dropped 32bit support. My Netbooks are 32bit atom processors. My p4 IBM M41 is 32 bit. My IBM T23 P3 is 32 bit.

I am thinking of just installing Windows XP SP3 on all of them out of spite and sell them.
The Hispanics in my area love a cheap XP computer. Or move on to FreeBSD or PCBSD (they still do 32 bit). Maybe I am just being cranky. :roll: [/code]

rokytnji
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#81 Post by rokytnji »

Roky, out of curiosity I searched for links for installing Linux on the C710, and the few I found didn't look accurate -- they talked about GRUB -- is Grub actually available on the C710?

Because I'm looking at buying a C720 to test, I also looked up instructions for installing Linux on that model. These instructions seemed much more specific and accurate (for that model):
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/76 ... chromebook
The Bohdi developer has left. Another has stepped up to try and take up the slack but from what I read. Just a lot of atta boy posts. Non saying "hey man, i'll lend a hand".

But that was some time ago. Maybe things changed. I have not checked.

I will not dance with Ubuntu Unity on any of my gear. Icewm, Fluxbox, or XFCE is my preferred dance partners. JWM is like dancing with my sister. Not as much fun for me.
But I'll do it. Edit: I know I can install another Window manager and log into it.
But I am a minimalist at heart on certain things.

Touchpad support is a sticking point with Chromebooks and the Kernel 3.17 is just starting to get a handle on it. I do not want to run a finger mouse on my chromebook.
Just the way it is. I am patient and not in a hurry yet since I have other resources.

As far as having grub on a Chromebook. I sure as hell have not seen one on mine.

Edit again: Curiosity bit me since I posted. I am downloading the Fatdog iso first.
Then I'll try developer mode to boot off usb. I'll dd on my linux laptop. At least I am comfy there. I am nervous because last time my bios screwed up and it took some work to unbrick it last time I tried to go into developer mode. Here is hoping my unbrick bios steps worked OK and that all bios functions will work.

I don't know know if you ever dealt with a corrupted bios. It can be scary.
We will see this weekend. If it works out. Maybe you will see me post in the fatdog thread.

3rd Edit: Like I thought. My bios lets me go so far before it quits cooperating. I enabled legacy usb boot in crosh as root. But ctrl+l
would not give me the legacy boot screen on reboot, in developer mode. So I could hit the ESC key and pick USB. Maybe because this is a refurbished unit from Acer that I got for 90 bucks plus shipping.

So no fatdog for me.

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Ted Dog
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#82 Post by Ted Dog »

would that be kirk and his.version of fatdog?

rokytnji
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#83 Post by rokytnji »

Ted Dog wrote:would that be kirk and his.version of fatdog?
Yeah. That one.

peterw
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Comments on Puppy, etc on Chromebook

#84 Post by peterw »

Hi

Just following up and commenting on Chromebooks and Puppy and other distributions.

Some of the more recent Chromebooks have Intel processors and with them you can use Puppies. Mine is the Acer C720. After making a backup of the Chrome OS, I have carried out the process to get it into developer mode. It has the sea bios which appears to detect bootable media so that after Ctrl + l and esc you get a list of the bootable media - hard drive/sdd and usb if you have one plugged in. Selecting 1, 2, 3, etc selects one. This bit is faultless for me.

Puppies are not very demanding on ram and do not normally need the addition of mem=1950m in the kernel line to get the machine to boot. I use Grub4dos as the boot loader on my machines.

When playing about installing more heavyweight OS's I have found it often necessary to use Unetbootin to get the usb prepared so that I can add the mem=1950m in the boot process. Using the dd method does not always work and does not give an easy way of getting the mem=1950m instruction.

I have tried the fatdog designed for the C720 and that works well. I was very impressed with Bodhi. I have successfully tried various OS's and they all seem to work but unless they have the touch pad additions like Bodhi and the special Fatdog then you need a usb external mouse.

I have heard that the touch pad changes are in the 3.17 kernel but it was not in 3.17.1 When I tried the Fedora Beta 4 it had an slightly updated kernel and the touch pad was responding. Mageia seems to have 3.17.2 and I will give that a go. I am waiting for a Puppy with the latest kernel.

Regards

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#85 Post by vtpup »

I'm now experimenting with using the tablet (under Android) to control another computer running various OS's via VNC. A particular interest has been to control a headless linux board running a CNC milling machine. And really ideal would be if that board was running LinuxCNC under Puppy linux of some sort. I've detailed where I am with this in the Cutting Edge/Engineering forum here. Not quite running a CNC Puppy yet, but the tablet does seem able to control the LinuxCNC program on another computer running a modified puppy-like Debian or Ubuntu install.

The biggest obstacle so far to Puppy CNC is in getting a Puppy running an RTAI real time linux kernel, which in turn can run LinuxCNC.

Anyway, though I'd update the "Puppy on Tablets thread here -- close, but not quite there yet in running Puppy on an x86 tablet, or controlling a Puppy CNC application.
[color=darkblue]Acer Aspire 5349-2635 laptop Tahrpup.[/color]
[color=blue]Acer R11 and C720 Chromebks Bionicpup64[/color]
[color=olive]Acer Iconia A1-830 tablet no pup[/color]
[color=orange]www.sredmond.com[/color]

amigo
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#86 Post by amigo »

CNC under Puppy? Better have that machine in a deep bunker somewhere. Use something much lighter and dedicated to only that. Just getting Puppy to run headless will boggle you for a couple of years...

wboz
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#87 Post by wboz »

Just checked up on the documentation for Chromebooks, below.

I'm mostly familiar with the Acer models because I have a C710. Excellent computer BTW, very simple device and many swappable components. Terrible screen though. That model can boot from USB from within developer mode. I don't know what will HAPPEN when you boot a puppy USB, possibly not much ... I'd really love to know if you try it. :D

The C720 will do the same but also has a new feature called Legacy BIOS. The documentation on this site is sparse but I BELIEVE the inclusion of SeaBIOS means that you can get around the stock Chromebook BIOS which only supports ChromeOS and has no idea what other OS are saying to it. I don't actually have any idea why ChromeOS requires a non-standard BIOS ... I also think that on earlier chromebooks it was POSSIBLE to entirely reflash the BIOS to seabios, but that had some hazards obviously and is probably why they included a secondary bios! The site also notes you can break SeaBIOS and provides instructions to repair it.

Wasn't sure what sort of Chromebook you have but there are links for many of them. If it's Intel chip you ought to be able to have some success if you persist (and are careful). But honestly, I bought a Chromebook with the specific desire to have a "backup" OS (Ubuntu or Lubuntu ... the latter a suggestion if you hate Unity of course!) if I didn't like Chrome, but after a few weeks I realized nothing was going to run faster than the stock OS and I never tried anything else ... :)

Still cannot figure out how to post a real link ... sorry!
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/dev ... egacy-Boot

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#88 Post by wboz »

Another thought I have is that we'd probably increase the chance of success running Puppy on a Windows tablet. I must admit I have no idea if cheap tablets have a user-enterable BIOS that allows you to select a USB for boot.

Obviously I am no expert. But I like to minimize difficulties. That's all.

Here is the best thing I was able to find in 15 minutes of searching. At least I was able to determine that yes, there is a BIOS and yes you can boot from it. http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/Encore-Tab ... d-p/579484 So I learned something.

Seems like many of the tablet-specific hardware and software needs (touchscreen, keyboard, gestures) are not yet part of any puppy. I know there are some distros starting to roll out touch support; Ubuntu obviously but also KDE and Gnome. So that implies to me that ... at some point not toooo far in the future ... a talented developer can appropriate those bits for a Pup :D

That said, I feel like a lot of Linux UI is frankly not well set up for touch interactions. Sure a browser window is fine, but the rest of it not so much. Part of what I love about Puppy is it's able to be very compact and fast. If any Touch UI available would be 500MB RAM to run, then already it's eating into the appeal of Puppy for me. I'm going to do some more research to see what's going on in this space ... I really have limited interest in tablets (had one, nice, just not for me) but I'm still curious now :D

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#89 Post by edoc »

wboz wrote:Another thought I have is that we'd probably increase the chance of success running Puppy on a Windows tablet.
Here's the problem - monopolistic-Microsoft rearing it's ugly head again.

Because the $B MS corporation is incapable of releasing a non bug-ridden security-porous OS they demanded that hardware manufacturers install UEFI in the BIOS and to provide no way to bypass it - security was their excuse - excluding Linux from the hardware was their probable goal (or at least one cause of cackling in corporate headquarters).

As of now there is no modern tablet that can be booted to Linux due to this predatory monopolistic thuggery.
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#90 Post by edoc »

OK, on further research, there is an exception:
http://www.ekoore.com/web/en/product/t ... ons-7.html

Italian manufacturer.

Android 4.2, MS windows 8 Metro (giggle), & Ubuntu 13.4.

And, wait for it, only $700. USD
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#91 Post by vtpup »

amigo wrote:CNC under Puppy? Better have that machine in a deep bunker somewhere...
Explain please? I've run LinuxCNC on my mill via Ubuntu and Debian.

The main hangup for Puppy is getting a version compiled on a RTAI kernel version compatible with LinuxCNC. Why a bunker?
Just getting Puppy to run headless will boggle you for a couple of years...
Uh, years ago I ran a 1998 era Thinkpad laptop with a broken screen as a headless server under Puppy 4.10. No big deal -- running a TightVNC server and a VNC client on another machine to control it. Worked fine, and had its own built in UPS, being a laptop.

Unless you have an incredibly slow connection to ibiblio, downloading and installing a VNC pet doesn't take errr uhhh couple of years..... :shock:
[color=darkblue]Acer Aspire 5349-2635 laptop Tahrpup.[/color]
[color=blue]Acer R11 and C720 Chromebks Bionicpup64[/color]
[color=olive]Acer Iconia A1-830 tablet no pup[/color]
[color=orange]www.sredmond.com[/color]

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#92 Post by amigo »

A deep bunker because puppy is so unpredictable -you shouldn't trust it to behave while controlling dangerous machinery. Headless, well if there is a single pet which enables that, then great, as long as it works. I would doubt that it would work on various puppy versions -just as with any thing puppy.

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#93 Post by edoc »

According to this article

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/ ... -1162825/2

OpenSUSE 12.2 runs well on an Acer Iconia W500
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#94 Post by edoc »

Here's Linux on an Acer W700 w/solution to pairing Bluetooth keyboard & other devices:

http://community.acer.com/t5/Windows-Ta ... td-p/47489

NOTE: The W700 doesn't have an SD card slot - the W500 does.
Last edited by edoc on Fri 28 Nov 2014, 02:23, edited 1 time in total.
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#95 Post by vtpup »

Amigo, i don't find The puppies I've run to be "unpredictable", or my CNC mill to be "dangerous machinery".

But then I routinely use a chainsaw, wood splitter welding torch, homemade bandsaw mill, table saw, router, 1951 John Deere Model M tractor logging on a mountain in the snow, and being a fallible human being and in far less predictable environments at the time, I guess mine is a relative judgement..

Generally speaking I don't put my hands on the milling table with the power on. I'd say the possibility that I've written faulty G-code is far more likely to break a bit in the miller or ruin a part, than the operating system going crazy.

I'd say the most dangerous machine in my shop is the bench grinder, followed by the drill press. I use a whole lot of caution with those.
[color=darkblue]Acer Aspire 5349-2635 laptop Tahrpup.[/color]
[color=blue]Acer R11 and C720 Chromebks Bionicpup64[/color]
[color=olive]Acer Iconia A1-830 tablet no pup[/color]
[color=orange]www.sredmond.com[/color]

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