Linux

How to get Pop OS 21.04 up and running on your Intel based OneXPlayer, AMD variants will probably work better yet, but I don't own one to confirm.

First off, before we get into this I'd like to address known issues:

The Vulkan ANV Intel driver seems to have issues causing flickering in games, some games it's barely noticeable and others it's nearly gamebreaking. I have a bug ticket open here https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/5662

There are bugs with using Nautilus or any Nautilus based file mangers such as Nemo that make Drag N Drop and Hold to Right click features not work on Wayland, they do work on X11/Xorg, but using X11 is extremely buggy and not recommended currently. I think this bug might be part of mutter so I opened a ticket here https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2025, there is a bug report open here for nautilus as well https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/1740.

By default Pop OS uses X11 and has Wayland disabled with a configuration file because the Pop Desktop isn't stable using it. You will need to enable Wayland and install gnome-session (The vanilla Gnome desktop) for the best experience. This is likely to change in the future thanks to Nvidia's efforts to finally support Wayland.

X11 has a ton of issues due to the high DPI screen and the unusual need for "Right Portrait" mode to have the screen be displayed correctly and not sideways. Running games on this is usually a hit and miss, but depending on what resolution you try to play games at the screen will have huge borders on the left and right side, AKA a portrait view on a landscape display.

These are the main bugs to report here at the moment, if you take anything from the stuff listed above let it be the fact that you need to use Wayland for the most optimal experience for gaming.

Lets get started shall we!

First we will need to download Pop OS 21.04 available here (I recommend the Nvidia variant just in case you decide to use a eGPU later on, this eliminates the need to deal with the Nvidia drivers because it's available out of the box). https://pop.system76.com/ or for a direct link here https://pop-iso.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/21.04/amd64/nvidia/10/pop-os\_21.04\_amd64\_nvidia\_10.iso

Once you have the ISO file you will need to create a bootable flash drive, I recommend using Etcher available here https://www.balena.io/etcher/ to do this.

After you have completed the drive you can now boot into Pop Os on your OneXPlayer device. You will need to DISABLE secureboot in your bios or else you won't be able to boot the Linux kernel. You press the left orange button and the volume up button while turning the device on to access the bios. Once you manage this you will need to find the security settings and disable secure boot. You will then need to change your boot options to boot from your UEFI boot drive. Upon proper configuration save and exit and you should be able to boot to the "Try Pop OS screen". The screen orientation will be off, no worries we can fix this once it loads.

Once you are booted and are in the installer you can go to the top right of the screen (It's currently sideways so this is fun) to find the settings. Find the display options and change your screen orientation to "Right Portrait" and click apply. After that your screen will be displayed normally (Yay!, but this is only for the installer so we will need to do this once more after we actually have Pop installed).

Continue through the installer like normal and setup your user and password, timezone, and if you want encryption or not. Once it is finished reboot and you will come to the login screen (Which is sideways), login and you will be greeted to the welcome to Pop OS message. We will now want to go to settings and display options to set it to "Portrait Right" again. I would also set your scaling to 200% to make things easier to see. Now, for whatever reason Gnome Display Manager does not have the ability to share a configuration file with the desktop environments so whatever you set now will not apply to your login screen. Meaning if you don't do this next step your login screen will still be sideways. Open up the terminal and use this command to copy the configuration file so the login screen matches your desktop.

sudo cp ~/.config/monitors.xml /var/lib/gdm3/.config/

Now that we have that done it would be a good time to update your system, go ahead and open up the Pop Shop and go to the updates tab, let it does it's thing and reboot.

Next we are going to want to enable Wayland and install the vanilla Gnome desktop since the Pop Desktop doesn't work well with Wayland at the time of this writing. Open up your terminal again and use this command.

sudo gedit /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

This will open the configuation for the Gnome Display Manager that allows you to enable Wayland, by default Pop has this disabled because they don't support it and it is not stable, we are going to be using Gnome so this won't matter to us.

Look for WayLandEnable=false and add a # to make it look like this.

#WayLandEnable=false

Save the file.

Now we will want to install the Vanilla gnome desktop, to do this enter this command into your terminal.

sudo apt install gnome-session

after this finishes reboot.

At your login screen you should see a little gear on the bottom right hand of the screen, click/tap that and select Gnome. You will also see Pop on Wayland and GNOME on Xorg, ignore these.

You will immediately notice that your cursor is messed up and your icons are weird, this is because Pop Desktop is built on top of Gnome and shares a configuration file. To fix this we will want gnome-tweaks to change the settings. The easiest method is to open the terminal and enter this

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

then you can launch this by entering

gnome-tweaks

or you can find it called "tweaks" in your activities/applications menu.

Under the "Appearance category" I recommend setting the theme values to the following:

Applications = Pop-dark

Cusor = Pop

Icons = Pop

and then go to your Window Titlebars category look for Titlebar Buttons and toggle Maximize and Minimize, this will add buttons on your top right Windows to manage your windows.

Now we will need to install your Gamepad driver/module to get that working. To do this it's simple now, open the terminal and enter these commands.

`sudo git clone https://github.com/ruineka/xpad.git /usr/src/xpad-0.4`

`sudo dkms install -m xpad -v 0.4`

The github for this is found here https://github.com/ruineka/xpad

I will edit this later adding pictures and find anything I might need to explain better or I flat out forgot. It sure would be nice if someone with the ability to make an automated script that would do all this sort of stuff for the user in one easy step. :) --Ruineka