Discussion:
Debian on an ASUS Chromebook C202XA?
(too old to reply)
Matti Palmström
2020-09-01 14:30:01 UTC
Permalink
Hello everyone.

Just saw a good price on an ASUS Chromebook C202XA that runs on a Media Tek
MT8173C. Does anyone know if it's possible to install Debian to a
chromebook like that? I'm googling as I write this but I can't really find
anything about it.

Regards
/M
Arnd Bergmann
2020-09-01 15:40:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by Matti Palmström
Hello everyone.
Just saw a good price on an ASUS Chromebook C202XA that runs on a Media Tek MT8173C. Does anyone know if it's possible to install Debian to a chromebook like that? I'm googling as I write this but I can't really find anything about it.
Normal user space should work as it does on any Arm platform. I assume
this uses google's
"Hana" mainboard design like Acer R13 and some Lenovo Chromes, which
was only added
with Linux-5.8 and presumably won't work in the standard Debian
kernel. I think you can just
use the original ChromeOS kernel though.

The biggest problem is likely going to be the GPU, as there are no
open source drivers for
PowerVR.

Arnd
Milan P. Stanić
2020-09-01 16:50:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Arnd Bergmann
Post by Matti Palmström
Hello everyone.
Just saw a good price on an ASUS Chromebook C202XA that runs on a Media Tek MT8173C. Does anyone know if it's possible to install Debian to a chromebook like that? I'm googling as I write this but I can't really find anything about it.
Normal user space should work as it does on any Arm platform. I assume
this uses google's
"Hana" mainboard design like Acer R13 and some Lenovo Chromes, which
was only added
with Linux-5.8 and presumably won't work in the standard Debian
kernel. I think you can just
use the original ChromeOS kernel though.
I use oak-elm Acer R13 which is also mediatek MT8173 (though don't see
'c' at the end) with Alpine linux userspace and kernel from
https://gitlab.collabora.com/eballetbo/linux/-/commits/topic/chromeos/somewhat-stable-next
made by Enric Balletbo i Serra (and some other developers).

Enric told me that he use Acer R13 (elm-oak) with Debian userspace, so I
think/hope this board could also work.

Some things doesn't still work, i.w. suspend-to-ram/resume, dmidecode,
sensors-detect and maybe something else which I didn't tried.

When I bought this chromebook (Acer R13) I installed Debian on it with
chromeos kernels and it worked fine but I switched to alpine for other
reasons.
Post by Arnd Bergmann
The biggest problem is likely going to be the GPU, as there are no
open source drivers for
PowerVR.
Yes, looks like there is no chances to get this working, though
mediatek-drm is quite usable for 'normal' work.
Post by Arnd Bergmann
Arnd
Andrei POPESCU
2020-09-02 08:50:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by Milan P. Stanić
Post by Arnd Bergmann
Post by Matti Palmström
Hello everyone.
Just saw a good price on an ASUS Chromebook C202XA that runs on a
Media Tek MT8173C. Does anyone know if it's possible to install
Debian to a chromebook like that? I'm googling as I write this but
I can't really find anything about it.
I'm using Debian buster on an Acer Chromebook R13 with the kernel from
archlinuxarm.org.

https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/mediatek/acer-chromebook-r13
Post by Milan P. Stanić
Post by Arnd Bergmann
Normal user space should work as it does on any Arm platform. I assume
this uses google's
"Hana" mainboard design like Acer R13 and some Lenovo Chromes, which
was only added
with Linux-5.8 and presumably won't work in the standard Debian
kernel. I think you can just
use the original ChromeOS kernel though.
I use oak-elm Acer R13 which is also mediatek MT8173 (though don't see
'c' at the end) with Alpine linux userspace and kernel from
https://gitlab.collabora.com/eballetbo/linux/-/commits/topic/chromeos/somewhat-stable-next
made by Enric Balletbo i Serra (and some other developers).
Are there any compilation / installation instructions for this? As per
the installation instructions from archlinuxarm.org the installation
appears to be quite finicky.
Post by Milan P. Stanić
Enric told me that he use Acer R13 (elm-oak) with Debian userspace, so I
think/hope this board could also work.
Some things doesn't still work, i.w. suspend-to-ram/resume, dmidecode,
sensors-detect and maybe something else which I didn't tried.
I would be glad to get something newer than 3.18 working ;)
Post by Milan P. Stanić
When I bought this chromebook (Acer R13) I installed Debian on it with
chromeos kernels and it worked fine but I switched to alpine for other
reasons.
Post by Arnd Bergmann
The biggest problem is likely going to be the GPU, as there are no
open source drivers for
PowerVR.
Yes, looks like there is no chances to get this working, though
mediatek-drm is quite usable for 'normal' work.
Yep.

Kind regards,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
Milan P. Stanić
2020-09-02 13:50:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Andrei POPESCU
Post by Milan P. Stanić
Post by Arnd Bergmann
Post by Matti Palmström
Hello everyone.
Just saw a good price on an ASUS Chromebook C202XA that runs on a
Media Tek MT8173C. Does anyone know if it's possible to install
Debian to a chromebook like that? I'm googling as I write this but
I can't really find anything about it.
I'm using Debian buster on an Acer Chromebook R13 with the kernel from
archlinuxarm.org.
https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/mediatek/acer-chromebook-r13
Yes, also I used kernels from Arch linux arm, but rebuild it locally to
tweak some options and drivers and add some patches for about four years
(from time I've bought R13 chromebook). For all this time I cross
compiled it on Debian, native at beginning and later in Debian LXC. Worked well.

Nowadays I build it native in Alpine.
Post by Andrei POPESCU
Post by Milan P. Stanić
Post by Arnd Bergmann
Normal user space should work as it does on any Arm platform. I assume
this uses google's
"Hana" mainboard design like Acer R13 and some Lenovo Chromes, which
was only added
with Linux-5.8 and presumably won't work in the standard Debian
kernel. I think you can just
use the original ChromeOS kernel though.
I use oak-elm Acer R13 which is also mediatek MT8173 (though don't see
'c' at the end) with Alpine linux userspace and kernel from
https://gitlab.collabora.com/eballetbo/linux/-/commits/topic/chromeos/somewhat-stable-next
made by Enric Balletbo i Serra (and some other developers).
Are there any compilation / installation instructions for this? As per
the installation instructions from archlinuxarm.org the installation
appears to be quite finicky.
It is not complicated to build new kernel, just look in Arch alarm
PKGBUILD file in PKGBUILDs/core/linux-oak/PKGBUILD.

Enric have some scripts and short guides for installing Debian here
https://github.com/eballetbo/chromebooks

You can also post me private mail and I can send you my kernel .config
and kernel.its file, and my simple hacky script which I use to build
kernels from Enric's site above.

Also there is #linux-mediatek IRC channel on freenode with very low
traffic, if you are interested to join.
Post by Andrei POPESCU
Post by Milan P. Stanić
Enric told me that he use Acer R13 (elm-oak) with Debian userspace, so I
think/hope this board could also work.
Some things doesn't still work, i.w. suspend-to-ram/resume, dmidecode,
sensors-detect and maybe something else which I didn't tried.
I would be glad to get something newer than 3.18 working ;)
Understand you fully :) that is why started to hack and search.

Have to add that I had some success with mainline kernel 5.8 to boot it
but it didn't worked well. 5.9 looks more promising because Enric
upstreamed some patches for drivers.
Post by Andrei POPESCU
Post by Milan P. Stanić
When I bought this chromebook (Acer R13) I installed Debian on it with
chromeos kernels and it worked fine but I switched to alpine for other
reasons.
Post by Arnd Bergmann
The biggest problem is likely going to be the GPU, as there are no
open source drivers for
PowerVR.
Yes, looks like there is no chances to get this working, though
mediatek-drm is quite usable for 'normal' work.
Yep.
Kind regards,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
Andrei POPESCU
2020-09-02 14:30:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Milan P. Stanić
Enric have some scripts and short guides for installing Debian here
https://github.com/eballetbo/chromebooks
This looks like a good start. Will take a while until I get to it though
as I have more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.

Thank you,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
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