[MeMO Pad 7 General] Totty:
Greetings,

i did go through dual-booting linux on our device kind of process and spend a bit of time, trying to figure out the correct steps.

Was not easy, for a newbie like me, i dont know much about linux itself, most of the inscrutions are written in "foreing language" for me, so here is more of a detailed guide.

This guide is only for installation on the SDCARD, i did not try out internal storage

!!! Im not responsible for anything that happens during/using these steps, you and only you are responsible to what happens, use with caution !!!

Requirements:

Unlocked bootloader: https://xdaforums.com/t/bootloader-0-3-0-me176c-boot-for-asus-memo-pad-7-me176c-x.3780225/

Installed TWRP: https://xdaforums.com/t/recovery-20...p-3-3-1-for-asus-memo-pad-7-me176c-x.3745190/

Both of these guides are made step by step, so there should be no questions about this

First of all, go to https://images.postmarketos.org/bpo/v22.12/asus-me176c/ , there are 3 different types of UI, the kernel itself should be the same, but i dont know for sure myself

Phosh - very well working on our device, missing a bit of RAM to launch firefox stable for example

Plasma-mobile - i found this one was very hardware heavy, it takes quite alot of more storage aswell, i do not recommend this for our device

Sxmo - this one did boot up just fine, but i wasnt able to get more testing as my hardware inputs were not recognized by the software, i do not recommend this one

There are multiple software version, i did try only the latest one

Possible to try out the lower (outdated) versions yourself

After downloading these files, you should have 2 of the .xz archives, unpack them somewhere, i did put them into the same folder, but thats just my own preference

After unpacking them, you should have

XXX-asus-me176c-bootpart.img

XXX-asus-me176c.img

XXX are reference to date of the build

To have ourself things easier, we will rename both of these build and leave only the "asus-me176c.img/asus-me176c-bootpart.img", you can leave them named as theyre, but it will take you a bit more time in the terminal

After that, we will move one of our images (the non-bootpart one) to the internal storage of the device.

Make sure, to have enough space available. I have the 8GB version and it was kind of struggle for me to install the plasma-mobile version.

I did also try moving that file to USB-OTG and SDCARD, but i had some problems with USB-OTG in TWRP and SDCARD gets wiped when you install the OS.

So, please, use internal storage for the file, the OS IS NOT GOING TO GET INSTALLED ON YOUR INTERNAL STORAGE IN THIS WAY, WE ARE GOING TO INSTALL IT ON A SDCARD.

After moving our file to the internal memory, we will go and reboot our tablet to fastboot mode

when powered off, press volume down + power on, release power when screen lights up

in the custom bootloader menu, using volume keys (power one does not work), we select Fastboot (power down to move and power up to select)

Our phone should boot into fastboot mode, we go and connect our phone to the computer

after connecting the phone, we go to the folder where our xxx asus-bootpart.img is located, go ahead and SHIFT+RIGHTCLICK on empy space in the folder, select Open a terminal/powershell window here

in the terminal/powershell we type in command " fastboot flash APD asus-me176c.img "

let the command process, after its done, go and type in " fastboot reboot-bootloader "

our phone gets rebooted into the bootloader, with volume keys once again, select RECOVERY

when our device gets booted to TWRP, go to Mount -> Tick ESP

anywhere on your PC, open up the default text editor, paste in:

title postmarketOS

volume 80868086-8086-8086-8086-000000000007

linux /vmlinuz-edge

initrd /intel-ucode.img

initrd /initramfs

# Comment this out to get more output on screen while booting

options console=null

this text is only used for the latest version of the OS, for lower versions, please follow https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/ASUS_MeMO_Pad_7_(asus-me176c)

select the file type as "every files" instead of text document

name it pmos.conf and save it anywhere you like

at your computer, download MiniDiskPartition tool, or other partition tool

partition your sdcard using the selected tool

i have 32GB sdcard, i did partition my sdcard roughly 8GB with FAT32 for file sharing between android/linux/windows and the rest with EXT4 for the Linux itself

i believe the partition size for Linux doesnt matter aslong as its over 4GB, the installation itself should resize the partition on sdcard itself, depending on how it needs, BUT im still not 100% how this works

connect your phone to the computer

in TWRP go to MOUNT and tick ESP

in the folder where you saved the pmos.conf, open up a terminal (once again SHIFT+RIGHTLICK and open terminal/powershell here)

type in " adb push pmos.conf /esp/loader/entries/ " , press enter

in TWRP go to Advanced and go to Terminal

type in " df "

then you should see your partitions, we are looking for one that belongs to /external_sd/ , usually dev/block/mmcblkX0Y (X and Y are not specified), it should have it written at the end

mine was " /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 " YOURS CAN BE DIFFERENT! in the original guide, they specify, it can be also SDXY (XY belongs to any number)

after we find our partition that belongs to /external_sd/ , we go into the terminal in TWRP and type in:

dd if=/PATHTOYOURIMGFILE/ of=/PATHTOYOUREXTERNALSDCARDPARTITION/ bs=4m

i did have the IMG file in my internal storage, therefore my command was:

dd if=/sdcard/asus-me176c.img of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 bs=4m

make sure to use the bs=4m instead of bs=4M (as specified in the original guide), otherwise you will get "illegal number" error

after this, you should wait! The file is 1,6 - 2,4 GB, it takes time

your result should appear in the terminal

if your installation was succesfull, you can go in TWRP to REBOOT and select BOOTLOADER

you should have postmarketOS option available in the bootloader boot options, select it

you should boot your postmarketOS now

if you didnt, you probably didnt follow the guide correctly, read the steps once again

if you couldnt install the postmarketOS and youre sure you did follow the steps correctly, contact me on XDA (preferably make a comment under this thread)

Original thread:

ASUS MeMO Pad 7 (asus-me176c) - postmarketOS Wiki

wiki.postmarketos.org