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Is it possible to install Replicant on a netbook that had Android-Linux on it when bought new?

Added by Danyl Strype almost 6 years ago

TL;Dr Does anyone know if it's possible to install Replicant on a netbook that had Android-Linux on it when bought new? If so, how do I go about installing it?

I have an Acer Aspire One netbook that I bought about 8 years ago, which originally came dual-booted with Windows XP and Android-Linux. I quickly replace XP with GNU-Linux, and was pleased to discover that Trisquel runs fine on this device, supporting everything including the wifi and the fan. After I installed Trisquel, Android was still there on its own partition, but I no longer knew how to boot into it. The hard drive wasn't very big, and I had found that a touchscreen OS wasn't much use on a non-touchscreen device anyway, so eventually I blew away the partition to free up a few GB of space.

Fast forward a few years, and I find myself living in China, and thinking I now have a lot of uses for a secondary OS that boots up in seconds, requires no login, uses battery life slower (especially with the old battery in this device), and can run the apps that make life as an expat living in China much easier (offline maps, dictionary, maps, Chinese character recognition, QR code reader, comms apps with low hardware demands etc). The lack of a touchscreen would still be a pain, but I figure I could find work arounds. It's definitely worth the effort compared to a) buying an off-the-shelf tracking device here in China, or b) trying to get a Replicant OEM device shipped here.

So what I'm wonder is, could Replicant could work as dual-boot on an AA1 netbook? One that requires no proprietary blobs to run GNU-Linux, including a working mic, cam, wifi, and possibly some bluetooth support and built-in location services? If so, what's the best way to go about installing Replicant on my AA1?


Replies (3)

RE: Is it possible to install Replicant on a netbook that had Android-Linux on it when bought new? - Added by Danyl Strype almost 6 years ago

I'm wondering if this project might be able to help me, but I'm not sure what their philosophy is on making it work on any device (Ubuntu approach) vs. using only free code (Trisquel approach):
www.android-x86.org

I'm thinking about contacting them and asking if they'd be willing to release 100% free code images for devices like my AA1 that ought to be able to run without any proprietary firmware/ drivers.

RE: Is it possible to install Replicant on a netbook that had Android-Linux on it when bought new? - Added by Joonas Kylmälä almost 6 years ago

You would need to port it first for Replicant so better would be probably first try with the Android-x86 project. If that works then we could look into porting it to Replicant.

Have you found if there is any community Android ROMs for the laptop already? And what is the laptop model?

RE: Is it possible to install Replicant on a netbook that had Android-Linux on it when bought new? - Added by Kurtis Hanna almost 5 years ago

There has been some discussion about porting Replicant to Chromebook devices, some of which are netbooks. Currently we only list one of the Chromebook tablets, but there are netbooks with the same SoC that could be ported too: https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Upstream/#Rockchip-devices

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