Onda V975W tablet guide: installing Ubuntu / Mint Linux on Intel Atom Bay Trail tablet

Discussion in 'Tablets and Notebooks' started by Justin, Dec 11, 2014.

  1. Justin

    Justin Administrator
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    #1 Justin, Dec 11, 2014
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2014
    Easy way to install Ubuntu Linux on a Intel Atom Bay Trail tablet. I'll use Onda V975W as an example in this guide.

    This guide requires:
    • Intel Bay Trail tablet
    • Special OTG USB hub with external power (I'm using Dual Micro USB Host OTG Hub Adapter - US$4.49)
    • USB keyboard
    • USB memory stick
    Live USB / Install Instructions
    • Download latest Ubuntu 64bit (or Mint, Arch Linux)
    • Download Rufus tool
    • Download bootia32.efi (click "view raw" to download)
    • Open Rufus, select Ubuntu image, USB drive letter, Fat32, GPT for EUFI and click Start.
    • Rufus will create a bootable USB flash stick.
      Though it won't boot, since we made 64bit stick, but Intel Atom Bay Trail is shipped only with 32bit bootloader and Linux i386 32bit doesn't support EFI booting.
    • So we need a workaround. Copy custom bootia32.efi to X:\EFI\BOOT to fix 32bit EFI Shell incompatibility issue.
    • We have a bootable USB stick now!

    Connect Stick, keyboard and power to tablet with USB adapter hub.
    Restart tablet, F7 for boot menu or Del for BIOS (you may need to turn of secure boot in BIOS first).
    Select USB stick option from boot menu.

    [​IMG]

    And that's it. Select Try Ubuntu, it will boot to Live OS without any issues.

    [​IMG]

    Exactly the same for Mint. Should work with many other Debian distributions too.

    [​IMG]

    WiFi, Bluetooth, Touchscreen needs extra drivers.
    https://wiki.gnome.org/BastienNocera/Ondav975w

    [​IMG]
     
    Rajiv likes this.
  2. Ficr

    Ficr New Member

    Dec 20, 2014
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    I have a black screen right after booting USB Stick on Teclast X98.
     
  3. Justin

    Justin Administrator
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    Try to force different resolution.

    press e on try ubuntu and replace splash with this
    Code:
    video=VGA-1:1024x768e reboot=pci,force
    or different resolution.
     
  4. perkinna

    perkinna New Member

    Feb 4, 2015
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    I have tried on a C9J8 Teclast x98 Air 3G. I get about 40sec of blank screen but it boots after that, maybe just need to wait a bit longer?

    Also the C9J8 appears to be 64bit UEFI so don't need the 32bit EFI work around.

    However I can't get boot to complete. It appears to me that the USB port gets cut off which disables the USB drive and the USB keyboard. I end up getting dropped into a Busybox prompt (initramfs unable to find a medium containing a live file system) and I cant get past that point.
     
  5. Justin

    Justin Administrator
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    With Onda V975W I had problem, that it simply did not provide power to USB at some stages of booting (I noticed this only with linux boots), but USB hub with external power solved the problem.

    You could try to boot microSD, or create a bootable partition inside internal SSD too.
     
  6. Original

    Original Moderator

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  7. Justin

    Justin Administrator
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    By the way, just remembered, stupid issue with Linux is that you can boot it the wrong way.
    For example, boot BIOS on EFI only tablet, boot x64 on x86 EFI.. and it always will fail to boot because of that.
     
  8. Jhanzeb

    Jhanzeb New Member

    Mar 11, 2015
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    very informative
     
  9. mikevaleriano

    mikevaleriano New Member

    Mar 13, 2015
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  10. Jhanzeb

    Jhanzeb New Member

    Mar 11, 2015
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    what u prefer win 8 or ubanto on onda tab?
     
  11. Justin

    Justin Administrator
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    This is just demo to show possibility of such install. Though Linux is far away from usable on such devices. Linux does not have touch friendly UI, does not support half of Intel's CPU and GPU features. So it's not even worth comparing to Windows yet.
     
  12. Jhanzeb

    Jhanzeb New Member

    Mar 11, 2015
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    thanks Justin
     
  13. Glauber Lobo

    Glauber Lobo New Member

    Mar 24, 2015
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    Is ok to Thinkpad 8 Lenovo ?
     
  14. confrey

    confrey New Member

    May 23, 2015
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    hi everybody, I'm trying to use a similar tablet, a Teclast X98 Air II, it provides power supply on OTG, so with a USB hub I can use at same time a USB keyboard and a USB Mint live stick, but it doesn't boot... at boot, I get a long serie of lens about mmc0 ad another device errors or warnings, after 70~90 sec it stops and all finish into a busybox shell.... I can't know what to do, a first idea is after the inird image, it doesn't recognize the live's device, but I don't know how to instruct it about... any help, ideas... please :)

    bye all
     
  15. Original

    Original Moderator

    Jan 17, 2015
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    What exact version of linux do you have? And x86 or x64?
    Teclast uses different BIOS/boot than Onda, so you can't use this guide exactly.
     
  16. confrey

    confrey New Member

    May 23, 2015
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    thanks for the fast response, I tried with Linux MInt 17.1 and archlinux, both x64 (arch iso is dual), the Teclast seems to have a x64 bootloader, because it boots without problems, excepting of what I wrote above; I can't find many docs about... if you can help me to understand whtat the problem is, I'll appreciate very much

    thanks

    bye
     
  17. Original

    Original Moderator

    Jan 17, 2015
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    I would recommend to start from Ubuntu, cuz it's easiest to boot and is proven to work on Teclast.
    You may have to change boot resolution too.
     
  18. confrey

    confrey New Member

    May 23, 2015
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    #18 confrey, May 23, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: May 27, 2015
    I'll try, thanks
    --- Double Post Merged, May 23, 2015, Original Post Date: May 23, 2015 ---
    I tried booting bntu 15.04, I get the same problem , I made two photos of log messages :
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
    I don't know what to do at this point; I know I'm offtopic about argument of this guide, I try to post here hoping someone with enough experience/knowledge may help me about

    thanks
     
    aresyordanov likes this.
  19. Justin

    Justin Administrator
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    Seems like a GPU problem.
     
  20. argrig

    argrig New Member

    Aug 12, 2015
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    Hi,
    I have lauched ubuntu 14.04 installer using your instructions on Onda v820w. I am using ubuntu's mini.iso to continue installation over internet.
    Problem is that partitioning program can not see internal 32G ssd. Only USB stick is detected. So I can't do repartition. Please, help !
     

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