Reply To: Running Linux on the EZBook 2?

[Michael]

Chris G wrote:

Drives will be the main hurdle, I installed Remix OS for PC on the C drive and have it as a dual boot test. Remix boots and works fine, but no drivers for WIFI, sound, and the touchpad. So can’t do much with it, I don’t have time to mess about with drivers so will wait until someone that does come with fixes. Please let me know if your unit has the USB port power issue like mine (Can’t power USB hard drivers) Despite my so-so review, I’m enjoying it. Nice screen, good battery life and one of the more fluid Z8300’s I’ve used to dated and I’ve seen a few!

Fair enough you don’t want to mess with drivers on Linux. Worst-case scenario for me: I’ll just run Windows on this laptop.

Remix OS in particular is a closed-source x86 port of Android which uses an ARM port of an ancient Linux kernel so not ideal for driver support. Wifi will probably require drivers from the repos since Broadcom is not ideal for Linux but I’m fairly confident it will work (there’s also ndiswrapper if it doesn’t work). Touchpad I believe just uses the ps/2 mouse drivers so that’s probably a configuration issue (I should be able to at least get basic cursor movement, left and right click working). No idea about the speakers. Not sure what audio chipset it uses so I’ll find out when it arrives. A little irritating how secretive Chinese manufacturers are about the detailed specs.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an external hard drive to test with. I keep all my files on my home file server (with a decent upload connection) so I don’t use much storage. Normally, I’d just upgrade the SSD but in this case it uses eMMC so if I am hard-pressed on storage, I’ll buy a sd card or an external SSD.