Ubuntu on Chuwi Vi 10

UPDATE (26/04/16):

Installation on a USB 3.0 drive: It fails on grub normal installation. So I boot again with the first USB drive and type c at GRUB and use instructions listed below to boot the USB 3.0 recent installed Ubuntu. After that I got my WIFI dongle (my built-in WIFI card is still not working) and follow this GRUB instructions:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-efi-ia32
sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Find the line starting GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and add intel_idle.max_cstate=0 before quiet splash”.

sudo update-grub

Now I just need the USB 3.0 to boot my system, without changing (for now) my Windows installation.

UPDATE (22-24/04/16):

I forgot to write how to boot on USB-EFI. With the device off, you need to press POWER + VOLUME_UP + VOLUME_DOWN and keep both volume buttons after it turned on, until you see the screen with selection buttons.

Now that Ubuntu 16.04 was released I’ll try to make a stable version of it.

I got touch screen working with this driver. I’m planning to submit a pull request with Chuwi Vi 10 driver extracted from my Windows 10 driver to their firmware repository.

UPDATE (19/12/15):

Intel video acceleration on Ubuntu 15.10 USB drive works out of the box. To test it:

$ /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

In Ubuntu 16.04 (which is in testing now but will be LTS) video acceleration do not work all times.

I’m writing this post to summarize all stuff I’ve been trying on my Chuwi Vi 10 tablet to work with Ubuntu.

Here is some aspects of it:

To boot I made an Ubuntu 14.04 (I tested 15.10 and it boot too) USB drive with Rufus on Windows. The boot need to be made with GPT but I didn’t have time to have an working USB drive created on Ubuntu yet. After created, I put bootia32.efi file at /EFI/boot/ Ubuntu USB drive directory.

If you have no graphics after grub, you can type e in grub menu to edit the line starting on linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi..., remove quite splash and add nomodeset reboot=pci,force in the end.

Using the option Try Ubuntu you would be able to install like in any other computer.

After installation, you need to boot from USB drive again and compile Grub inside your installation, to do so you need any USB dongle for WIFI connection. You can find this instructions here. When Grub starts, type c to enter command line and type:

linux (hd2,gpt5)/boot/vmlinuz-3.13-xxxx root=/dev/mmcblk0p5 video=VGA-1:1368x768e reboot=pci,force
initrd (hd2,gpt5)/boot/initrd-3.13-xxxx
boot

After booting you need to install some stuff, and clone Grub repository to compile it:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install git bison libopts25 libselinux1-dev autogen m4 autoconf help2man libopts25-dev flex libfont-freetype-perl automake autotools-dev libfreetype6-dev texinfo ia32_libs build_essential

The package ia32_libs maybe a problem because, apparently, it is not anymore on Ubuntu 14.04. To install it try:

$ sudo -i
# cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d
# echo "deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring main restricted universe multiverse" >ia32-libs-raring.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get install ia32-libs

Then get the Grub source:

$ git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/grub.git

Now build it:

$ cd grub
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --with-platform=efi --target=i386 --program-prefix=""
$ make

And install to efi:

$ cd grub-core
$ sudo ../grub-install -d . --efi-directory /boot/efi/ --target=i386

This will create a directory, ‘grub’, in your EFI partition. We want to copy the grubia32.efi from there to the location Ubuntu created during installation:

$ cd /boot/efi/EFI
$ sudo cp grub/grubia32.efi ubuntu/grubx64.efi

After this command you should be able to boot directly to your new Ubuntu installation.

I’ll (hope to) continue to update this with improvements. I have a Dell Venue 8 Pro working with some Kernel 4.x which already have better support for Atom processors. So the idea is to have a newer Ubuntu (probably 15.10 which were already released, or a testing version) in order to get at least basic stuff working.

Some other sources:

• http://techtablets.com/chuwi-vi10/review/
• http://forum.xda-developers.com/windows-8-rt/general/chuwi-vi10-dual-boot-win-8-1-android-4-4-t3112954

• ← Previous Post
• Next Post →