yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
Currently; the only real reason to be using Ubuntu on the Nexus 7 would probably be for developers, and people who are just curious. Pretty sure the developer part was stated somewhere on Ubuntu's site, but I can't find the wording, although the Installation page states "In case anything happens while developing"

As for the slowness, I'm not exactly sure on the state of acceleration (the driver exists but doesn't work?), but I'm sure it will and can be improved upon, in time.

So yeah, while you can run Ubuntu on your Nexus 7 now, don't expect to have the world's greatest experience with it, for now. In time though, I'm sure it will be a better experience to where you can use it as a daily driver :) (well, I guess you could use it now for a daily driver, depending on what you do really :p)
[Nexus 7 General] devilsrogue:
I wonder what we can strip out of the kernel and interface to make it faster? Im really interested in using this permanently, much more useful than android to me
[Nexus 7 General] farmerbb:
I'll definitely be installing this once it gets a little bit more mature (i.e. when graphics acceleration and Bluetooth support are added). Seems promising, especially since Ubuntu's viewing the Nexus 7 as a reference device.

I can see myself getting the LG Nexus 4, moving all my Android apps from my 7 onto that, then using the 7 as a sort of mini-PC with Ubuntu :D Best of both worlds.
[Nexus 7 General] zulu99:
Have sameone tried the free version of DroidMote Server for Ubuntu ARM edition on the nexus 7 with ubuntu installed ?

I compiled this for generic armv7 cpu but i tested it only on MK802 with native ubuntu inside.

you can download the free version from http://www.videomap.it/forum

for those who is not aware, droidmote simulate with your android phone a real mouse, keyboard, gamepad and multitouch touchpad

in this case you can have ful control of Ubuntu with your android phone.

try the version compiled for lubuntu, should work.
[Nexus 7 General] chizang:
hi xda

Hi xda,

I led the team that developed Ubuntu Core for the Nexus 7.

This poster got it right. The whole point of enabling Ubuntu on the Nexus 7 is to start a multi-year process to slim down the core OS and make it lean and mean. I call it "Ubuntu Pilates". :) As stated by our founder Mark Shuttleworth:

This was mentioned on our blog too.

I'm not sure how people here started assuming that 3D acceleration doesn't exist, but we do indeed have 3D acceleration using the Nvidia Tegra 3 drivers for Xorg, otherwise Unity wouldn't run. That being said, we are of course aware that the user experience isn't optimal. And again, that is the entire point of what we are doing -- to set a performance baseline for ourselves on a piece of reference hardware, and see how much we can improve our core OS. Hopefully we can engage some community support around our efforts too, and it would be really great if the XDA community and the Ubuntu community worked together to build a great OS.

For now, please check out our wiki, and if you have questions or bug reports, we'd love to hear them too. Most Ubuntu developers aren't regular XDA readers (I myself only found this forum recently).

I would post links to our wiki and bug tracker, but the XDA forum software doesn't allow me to do so since I am a new user.

Thanks,

Alex Chiang
[Nexus 7 General] coversnail:
Just so its here, this is the bug tracker: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-nexus7
[Nexus 7 General] Sensation-al!:
I flash ROMs near constantly, but this is clearly different. I have no issues with fastboot but I'm wondering, if I wanted to revert to android could I just restore a nandroid backup? Ik it wipes the SD so I would have to save it elsewhere but... would that be enough to return to android?
[Nexus 7 General] nikmash232:
What do you guys think about running sublime text 2 on the tablet? I'm interested in using this for class for C programming
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
Ah, I only came to the conclusion that 3D acceleration didn't work since I wasn't able to run glxinfo or glxgears, but perhaps the reason for both those programs to not work was related to something else (they both complained about some RGB thing, but different errors)

Also, Source Code notes seem to be up (not sure if they were before or not): https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/SourceCode

Along with the other URL's for Installation, Known Issues, and etc.: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7
[Nexus 7 General] chizang:
Right. Most ARM platforms implement some variant of GLES, not pure GL. Tegra implements GLES2.

Try `apt-get install glmark2-es2`. We get around 200FPS on some benchmarks... overall score of 171.

As for the other links, thanks for posting them. We were working over the weekend. Also, there's the Ask Ubuntu 'mobile' tag which we will monitor and is our preferred forum for answering questions. I would link to it here, but am still blocked.

cheers,

/ac
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
Ah cool; I'll have to go visit that forum at some point :)

Is the right site: http://askubuntu.com/questions , and users would ask a question, and just tag it with "mobile", and then other users and Ubuntu developers could try to help out with that question?

As for being link-blocked, I think you need 10 posts or something along those lines. I can't recall the exact requirement though.
[Nexus 7 General] transformador:
Wow, it is fast with lxde! When you first fo into it, you will be shocked by how it looks, but you can set the icon size, overall font size, docks, and panells, now it looks great on my device

How can i upload pics to xda?
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
The Manage Attachments button towards the bottom if your editing or creating a post (non-quick reply). Either that or use the
[Nexus 7 General] xopher.hunter:
I want to run this so bad but I would love a dual boot option
[Nexus 7 General] Miracle.vl63:
Looks really cool ;)

And I have some questions :

Is there any way of doing this on Windows? Does it work with Ubuntu on VM?

To revert back to android, can I just flash the nandroid backup?

Also, when there are any updates, how could I update it? Would it also wipe the data out?

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Nexus 7 General] :
You can do it on Windows via fastboot, just do fastboot flash boot boot.img and fastboot flash userdata rootfs.img

As for updates, it's done inside Ubuntu, via software update, in the same manner as desktop version of the OS.
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
Yes. There was a post somewhere with the links and the commands, but basically you would just download the two files (a boot and root-filesystem img) for your device (8GB or 16GB; no 32GB variant yet) and then flash them via fastboot.

Not entirely sure. Ubuntu does repartition the entire internal store differently I believe, and I don't quite know how nandroid backups restore. But on that note, do have the nandroid backup somewhere else other than on the tablet's internal storage :)

If anything you might just have to reflash the factory image, and then do the nandroid backup.

When updating on Ubuntu, it has a built-in update manager. I believe it also auto-checks for updates daily by default.

Edit: Idarzoid kinda beat me to it :p
[Nexus 7 General] mk92595:
Waiting on a dual boot method.
[Nexus 7 General] superchilpil:
Doubt it will happen anytime soon
[Nexus 7 General] :
I am liking it so far... Not a daily driver though. IMO a keyboard and mouse or at least just a mouse is required to make it useful. I think the Ui needs st be blown up twice the size in order to make it large enough for touch. As mentioned before LXDE is pretty fast on this thing...
[Nexus 7 General] azoller1:
Would it be possible to build a kernel or aosp. rom? Is there enough space?

Sent from my stock LG Spectrum Using LTE 4G on Verizon
[Nexus 7 General] HiddenSanctum:
Has anyone tested the battery life of Ubuntu running on the Nexus 7?
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
Ah, so anything that would rely specifically on pure GL wouldn't work, but if it relied on GLES, it would?

Runescape wouldn't let me use OpenGL, and OpenArena crashed at start due to not being to create a GL subsystem or something along those lines.

Also I still noticed that under Details in System Settings, the graphics driver is marked as Unknown. And when trying to do graphics tests from System Testing, the system hard-locked and rebooted after the color bars/static test.
[Nexus 7 General] rebel1699:
Pitting this on my Nexus 7 tonight. Whether I like it or not, thanks for all the hard work. It will be nice to put all my otg toys to good use. Is this moving to a point of being able to develop android on an android device itself? The doors tbat would open.......amazing.

Skyrocket on AOKP by R4ins
[Nexus 7 General] nikmash232:
Can you post your settings?

---------- Post added at 08:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:29 PM ----------

Also how do you get an on screen keyboard on lxde?
[Nexus 7 General] desiresiscool:
Do you think any genius developer will get Windows 8 to work
[Nexus 7 General] truthkillszz:
im sure it is possible to get windows 8 rt working but if im correct that is closed source so porting windows 8 rt would be illegal
[Nexus 7 General] steevp:
Did you ever get Plasma Active installed?

If so how did it run?
[Nexus 7 General] jefftheworld:
Sadly, that won't be making it to arm-Linux devices any time soon, but I'm excited to see if X11 forwarding will work in that regard!
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
I thought I also heard that porting Samsung stuff like Touchwiz to other devices was illegal too (not sure if it's true or not), yet someone did it :p
[Nexus 7 General] superchilpil:
No, if it's based on an open source platform it can be ported without any legal issues
[Nexus 7 General] Dennelly:
I might give this a shot later on and see how it runs
[Nexus 7 General] RubenA:
I been playing with ubuntu on my 8G N7 all day and now that i am trying to restore android to it i have discovered that i cant get back into fastboot mode. adb is not recognizing the N7 anymore and any combination of volume and power buttons is not helping either. Any ideas?

UPDATE: tried volume down and power it worked this time not sure why it didnt before i am assuming N7 was stuck in suspend and not fully off. anyway thanks guys.
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
How exactly did you install Ubuntu? Did you use the commands posted earlier, which said to only erase the userdata and boot partitions? Or did you use the installer from Ubuntu itself?

I did both, and my fastboot still exists.
[Nexus 7 General] chizang:
That's right. You can also just see all the questions tagged with mobile as well.

askubuntu.com/questions/tagged/mobile

cheers,

/ac
[Nexus 7 General] RubenA:
I used the Ubuntu installer, im running 12.04. On my terminal when i run adb devices no devices appear.
[Nexus 7 General] CJHolderUK:
If you wish to talk about Windows RT make a new thread. This thread is for Ubuntu discussion only.

Thanks.
[Nexus 7 General] CJHolderUK:
If I may ask you a question, how does Ubuntu on the desktop and Ubuntu on ARM differ? Will software coded for the desktop version work on the ARM version and vice versa?

I have only tried a few applications like gimp and they seem to work.
[Nexus 7 General] RubenA:
Thank you will do.
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
To name a scenario; Google's Chrome browser does not work on Ubuntu ARM, saying something along the lines of "wrong architecture". The .deb is 32-bit, and Ubuntu on the Nexus 7 is also 32-bit, which means it must be a i386/ARM thing (that Chrome distribution being only for i386 systems, whereas we have ARM).

There must be a somewhat easy way to code for many types of architectures though, either that or Ubuntu on ARM is a lot more popular than I thought :p

As for the actual base Ubuntu experience itself and its differences to the desktop version: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/KnownIssues#Differences_from_Stock_12.10
[Nexus 7 General] breakingspell:
Well, i gave it a shot, and decided i didn't like it. Good thing i had Titanium Backup send my stuff to Dropbox, i knew i'd be going right back to Android, and didn't bother fooling with MTP for a backup. Maybe in a month or so when they've got some kinks worked out (or make Unity less resource-intensive), i'll try it again
[Nexus 7 General] shotgunfool:
Does anyone have an issue with sound? on first boot, trying the volume rocker i heard sound being produced, but now after a reboot, i have no sound coming from my nexus at all.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks

Ignore this please, managed to fix this
[Nexus 7 General] bpye:
You can test hardware acceleration with es2_info and es2gears. glmark2-es2 also works.
[Nexus 7 General] :
Depends on the programming language somewhat. Applications written in C or C++ will need to be recompiled. That's probably why Google Chrome for i386 might not work on ARM. Applications like shotwell ( maybe even gimp) are written using python which does not need to be recompiled.

Ubuntu being an operating system has many components in C and C++ so they were recompiled for ARM hardware.
[Nexus 7 General] bpye:
You can install chromium-browser from the Ubuntu repos, you can enable touch input in chrome://flags to make it work a little better.
[Nexus 7 General] SilverHedgehog:
when did legality ever stop anyone? besides, when wp7 was ported to hd2, microsoft didn't give a ****.
[Nexus 7 General] AFAinHD:
This is a valid point.

But u should really keep windows out of this thread. This is an open source thread, let's keep it that way. :)
[Nexus 7 General] ninjordan:
People are saying that it runs better with gnome or kde, but I'm having a nightmare of a time trying to get one of them installed. I can't find them on the ubuntu software center and I can't get to the terminal from the dashboard. The on screen keyboard wont come up when I'm on the dashboard so I can't search. I've been trying to get some kind of remote access set up but I can't seem to manage that easier. I don't have an OTG cable yet so I can't just plug in a keyboard. Are the rest of you not having this problem?
[Nexus 7 General] Turbotab:
Interesting, This could make a very low power, portable File / Web Server.
[Nexus 7 General] bpye:
The Rasberry Pi is better suited to that.
[Nexus 7 General] espionage724:
Software Center should be docked by default, so you shouldn't have to go through Dash to find it. Gnome is labeled as gnome-shell I believe in Software Center. Also OSK doesn't seem to work for me from within Dash either.
[Nexus 7 General] Turbotab:
True, but I like the portable, battery included aspect of a N7 web server, just for the geek factor.
[Nexus 7 General] bpye:
Nothing to stop you hooking a LiPo battery to the Rasberry Pi, you'd need a power regulator too, shouldn't cost more than maybe £10-15 though for the lot.
[Nexus 7 General] ninjordan:
Actually I finally did manage to search in the dashboard (I ended up just turning it off and on several times until the keyboard decided to pop up. I brought up terminal and installed LXDE and it's been mostly smooth sailing since then. LXDE runs a lot smoother.
[Nexus 7 General] superchilpil:
Because the hd2 was a windows phone! So porting windows to it was legal

They tried that with the og evo and they forced all porting to stop

If Microsoft wouldn't give a **** then you port it and get yourself banned from xda ;)
[Nexus 7 General] devilsrogue:
How can I create a swap partition on this? I think it would make it more snappy. I want like 1gb for swap
[Nexus 7 General] steevp:
Since it's flash memory that has limited writes you might want to try zram instead

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/KnownIssues#Low_memory

If you still want to use swap, though, you can probably use the system or cache partitions (they are unused by ubuntu currently)

sudo mkswap /dev/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/APP
sudo swapon /dev/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/APP
(I have not tried this)

Or just make a swap file:

dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1M count=128
mkswap swapfile
sudo swapon swapfile
[Nexus 7 General] devilsrogue:
That worked. I just made the swap file. It runs better now.
[Nexus 7 General] mprattmd:
Video playback

Anyone have luck with playing back a video?

Ir recognized my USB storage, and started to play in VLC, but just a black screen

Any thoughts?
[Nexus 7 General] chizang:
"Desktop" is a misleading term, as it can mean many things. "Architecture" is the more proper term. The size (32 bit or 64 bit) is a property of the architecture, not something interesting on its own. Therefore, you can have 32-bit x86 programs, 64-bit x86 programs, 32-bit ARM programs, and 64-bit ARM programs.

You are correct in that programs compiled for x86 will not run on ARM CPUs. You must find programs that were compiled for ARM in order to run them on Ubuntu on the Nexus 7.

[side note, it is *usually* possible to write the same source code once, and then compile multiple (separate) times for different architectures. indeed, this is how the vast majority of Ubuntu code is built. we have one code base and compile it once per architecture, then provide all the different builds for our users]

The good news is that many programs have already been compiled for ARM. You can find them by searching the Ubuntu Software Center, which we shipped in the image. To use the USC, open the dash (the button with the ubuntu logo in the upper left of the launcher on the left), then search for "software". You will see an icon for "Ubuntu Software Center". Launch that (it's slow, we know ;) and you will see a list of the thousands of ARM apps available.

In general, if you see random software on the web for download, it will be unlikely that it would work on Ubuntu on the Nexus 7. And before I get asked, no, you cannot run Android applications on Ubuntu on the Nexus 7 either.

Hope this helps.

/ac
[Nexus 7 General] SilverHedgehog:
i'm sure if that actually happened, there would've been a lot of noise. however all i get while searching are xda threads asking if it's possible.
[Nexus 7 General] Gogolo2:
hi

would someone like to try running thebrain on n7? Id be happy to know if it runs. thx.

http://www.thebrain.com/products/thebrain/download/
[Nexus 7 General] Glod:
Man i really tried to like this, install was super easy, very nice full web experience (without flash working for me), I've seen people post on other sites that it is slow but to me it was rather snappy. I was impressed with the on screen keyboard but not impressed with its limited gestures. Its just so hard to manage apps and stuff and the battery drains so quickly (at least from my experience) that i couldn't see a reason to continue using this after a couple days. I haven't put anything custom on my Nexus 7 since really the first weeks of owning it so it was fun to do this and i hope more fun stuff to play with comes to the n7.
[Nexus 7 General] MegaKegHead:
Hi Mr. Alex Chiang,

I'm a long time Ubuntu user (8.04).

I'm dying to load up 12.10 on my N7.

I've used Xubuntu for years and would like to load it.

Will there be an opportunity for Xubuntu in the future or straight up Ubuntu?

Thanks for your great work!

Mega
[Nexus 7 General] MegaKegHead:
Hi!

It's true but, Xubuntu has a much smaller footprint.

Ubuntu with Xubuntu is just an overlay.

Mega
[Nexus 7 General] Valynor:
Would someone with Ubuntu installed on the N7 please try if it's possible to get the MMORPG Ryzom running on the tablet?

http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/ryzom/wiki/OfficialRyzomClientLinux

http://www.ryzom.com/en/

Thanks!
[Nexus 7 General] ganick:
oh man this was huge:good:
[Nexus 7 General] I Am Marino:
I wonder how well pure XFCE would run.
[Nexus 7 General] MegaKegHead:
Hi!

I've looked at the installer and wondering if I can actually load Tiny core via the usb dongle.

Also, does anyone know if the Ubuntu iso is rolling daily via automatic updates?

IMHO this is a major major coup.

Mega
[Nexus 7 General] hummer010:
This is pretty cool. I'm not ready to give up android on my N7 yet, so I'd really like to see a dual-boot. On my HP Touchpad I was able to triple boot webos, android and ubuntu.
[Nexus 7 General] brainard52:
I'm curious how long they've been working on this. I sent them an email about something like this a few weeks back. I wonder if I had anything to do with it. I know I'll be getting a GN7 now.
[Nexus 7 General] emk2z:
Omg finally my dreams are gonna be realized.

Monitor......check

Keyboard...check

Mouse........check

Other USB..check

Running a full blown PC OS...processing

We'll get rid of you ol'black box
[Nexus 7 General] cammykool:
Is it stable yet?
[Nexus 7 General] ontoptherock:
is it stable yet lol, no its a work in progress. Like the developer said earlier they are using the N7 as a reference device to get the core OS slimmed down and running better.
[Nexus 7 General] Chaw Rash:
Can we run any Ubuntu based app on this??
[Nexus 7 General] I Am Marino:
Rather would see Ubuntu on the N10, I think JB works better on the smaller form factor but I do love seeing so much development.

-Brought to you by Marino's Galaxy Nexus-
[Nexus 7 General] Lokifish Marz:
If there is interest I will try to get my hands on the cheapest N7 I can find. Money is tight so it may take some time and I need to get my hands on a Gnex first to aid in Nexus Q development. I apply what I know from Webtop+ and Ubuntop development to build a lighter/faster release with as many features as possible.
[Nexus 7 General] Duncaen:
I'm trying to boot it from an Filesystem in a file on /storage/sdcard0 at the moment i can boot it bot get stuck in an low graphic screen. I think my root file system is bad.

I'm using this boot command line to boot it.

boot=local root=/dev/mmcblk0p9 rootfstype=ext4 loop=/media/ubuntu.ext4 loopfstype=ext4 ro console=tty1 fbcon=rotate:1 debug
[Nexus 7 General] timfimjim:
I am going to watch this closely.

In an ideal world, I'd dual-boot my nexus 7 with android and ubuntu.

I do love android, and having a n7 means I need my computer much less, but some programs I need only run on windows / mac / linux. If I could have linux AND android, well that would be perfect.
[Nexus 7 General] MegaKegHead:
Hi!

As a long time Ubuntu user (8.04) I'm looking forward to your skills!

Please keep us updated!

Mega
[Nexus 7 General] MegaKegHead:
Hi!

Does libreoffice work?

How about gnumeric and abiword?

Mega
[Nexus 7 General] Konflict1471:
Do ya reckon the installer will soon be available for Windows 8?

Of course, one it becomes more stable, and more developed.
[Nexus 7 General] jefftheworld:
It's possible to see Windows RT but not Windows 8. Even Windows RT is quite a long shot as it's not open source and a port would require an insane amount of binary reverse engineering. Even if Windows RT became massively popular I doubt it would draw a team together to go through all that trouble (both technical and legal).

It is theoretically possible, don't listen to all those jerkwads that say it's impossible, but it's just not likely to happen.
[Nexus 7 General] rebel1699:
He wasnt asking if Windows 8 would be ported to the Nexus 7. He was asking if the installer would ever be available on Win 8. I guess they could, but just manually doing through fastboot on Windows works fine for now.

Skyrocket on AOKP by R4ins
[Nexus 7 General] cryingfreeman22:
Will be possible give this to Galaxy Note 2(with hdmi dock)?
[Nexus 7 General] booda3000:
I thought that the Ubuntu Nexus build was only intended to minimize the resource consumption of Ubuntu.

Us Nexus 7 owners will be able to benefit from the development that occurs.

Why do we feel a sense of entitlement from these devs?
[Nexus 7 General] xopher.hunter:
Bump
[Nexus 7 General] veeman:
Guys check out MultiROM in the original development section. :good:

Sent from my Nexus 7