[Epic 4G Android Development] bbelos:
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
/*
* Your warranty is now void.
*
* I am not responsible for bricked devices, dead SD cards,
* thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because the alarm app failed. Please
* do some research if you have any concerns about features included in this ROM
* before flashing it! YOU are choosing to make these modifications, and if
* you point the finger at me for messing up your device, I will laugh at you.
*/

This is recommended for experienced users. This is the Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview compiled from sources for the Epic 4G. With that said, "Preview" is a key word here. Many of the preinstalled apps are non-interactive, and there is pre-populated data for Contacts, Texts, recently used videos, etc. It does give you a good feel for how the system will work together.

Ubuntu Touch is fully intended for newer devices, so it does a good job of pushing our Epic to it's limits. I had to rearrange our partition layout to even allow all (well, most) of the files to fit. After flashing, /system will be ~50megs and /data is ~940megs. Before booting, there will be 20megs free in /data, so if you're quick, you can test out the camera :p

There are files you can delete, such as log files, to reclaim a little bit of storage space. The Ubuntu "system" files are installed at /data/ubuntu. Experienced linux users will recognize the familiar directory structure and will find these log files in /var/log (/data/ubuntu/var/log). The kern.log, syslog, etc are safe to delete, although they will be recreated.

What works:

- Wifi

- Camera (when there is enough storage space)

What doesn't work:

- 3G / Calling

- sdcard access

Pre-installation:

- You will need about 1GB space free on your sdcard (not counting your backup).

- View the release notes.

- You will want to be near a PC when you boot up into Ubuntu Touch (See notes after installation).

Installation:

1. Reboot to recovery.

2. DO A BACKUP!

3. Wipe data/factory reset.

4. Format /system.

5. Flash ubuntu-bootstrap-epicmtd-20130301-slim.zip - 31.23 MB

Note: This zip contains the files that end up in /system. It will immediately reboot to recovery after it installs a kernel with the adjusted partition layout. It will then continue with the flash automatically. After it finishes, it will probably try to reboot, but since the Ubuntu files have not yet been installed, the phone will turn off. Boot back into recovery to continue.

6. Flash quantal-preinstalled-phablet-armhf-20130228-epicmtd.zip - 357.33 MB

Note: This zip contains the files that end up in /data. You cannot flash the zips supplied by Ubuntu, because they will not fit on our device.

7. Flash ubuntu-epicmtd-layout-fix-20130228.zip - 125.73 KB

Note: This zip sets the correct dpi for our device. Thanks to pawitp for this. I could have included it in the previous zip, but oh well, maybe next time.

8. Reboot.

Important steps after booting!!

GENERAL NOTE: At initial boot, and anytime after turning the screen on, give things a little time to settle in. This will greatly reduce the lag and provide a more enjoyable user experience. Don't expect it to be lightning quick, but i find it to be rather tolerable.

AFTER ANY BOOT FROM POWER OFF: The first time you load an app, the gpu driver will crash and the screen will become unresponsive, although the system itself is not entirely dead. Connect to your PC and preform the following commands:

1. adb root

2. adb shell restart

This will reload the UI, and the system will become usable with no further gpu crashes until you reboot. Don't ask me why this happens, i don't know, but it works for me. I hope it works for you too. :)

Restoring back to Android

1. Boot into recovery.

2. Advanced restore -> Boot.

3. Reboot to recovery (to restore previous partition layout)

4. Full restore

5. Reboot.

**For Developers:

After compiling, I manually removed the following files from the zip so that it fits inside the 50meg /system partition:

/system/app

/system/media/bootanimation.zip

/system/media/videos/

/system/media/audio/(ringtones, notifications, & alarms)

I fully believe that the base system zip can be reduced in size even further allowing for further reduction of the /system partition, thus increasing the /data partition size. I have only deleted enough to get started.

Also, the original (current) quantal-preinstalled zip can be found here. I had to customize the updater-script, as well as remove the /home/phablet/Pictures & /home/phablet/Videos directories from the contained tar file so that the extracted files fit inside /data.

Patches:

Download

View