Running Android 5.1 lollipop on my Laptop.

Recently I came to know that you are able to run android-x86 on PC and Laptop. I downloaded the stable version of Android 4.4 Kitkat and tried it but it did not boot to GUI and presented Root Terminal. Then I did some debugging and came to know that for the AMD APU with radeon R2 on my Laptop I should try a test build of Android 5.1 Lollipop.

I am now running live session of Android 5.1 on my Laptop and posting this on Chrome Browser. I could not take a screenshot now in this session but I will post it later.

I downloaded a recent test build and could install it on hard disk on ext4 partition and added following menuentry in grub2 to boot it:

 menuentry 'Android-x86 5.1 on sdaX' --class android-x86 {
    set root='(hd0,gptX)'
    linux /android-2015-08-16/kernel root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=android_x86 quiet SRC=/android-2015-08-16 DATA=/android-2015-08-16/data
    initrd /android-2015-08-16/initrd.img
}

 I could take screenshot by pressing PrtSc key.

Happily running Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf on my Lenovo G50-45.

Update on 21/04/2016: Now more happy running Ubuntu 16.04

I purchased Lenovo G50-45 Laptop in December 2014 and installed Ubuntu 14.04 in dual boot with pre-installed Windows 8.1 as per this post.

When you install any Linux Distribution on a new Hardware it works but not 100% and there were following problems:
1. Screen brightness could not be adjusted.
2. Wifi was erratic.
3. Bluetooth did not work.

Screen Brightness worked after installing Realtek Proprietary Driver but it broke on update in April 2015. I removed the Proprietary Driver and upgraded to Kernel 3.16 through Hardware Enablement Stack which installed the Open Source radeon driver and problem 1 was solved.

Wifi problem was solved creating /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be file as follows:

 echo "options rtl8723be fwlps=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf

 For Bluetooth I had to wait till Ubuntu 14.04.3 was launched with Kernel 3.19 and it worked sometimes but not on every boot (I wonder why?) after adding following ppa and the driver:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/rtlwifi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rtl8723au-bt-dkms rtlwifi-new-dkms linux-firmware

On questioning I came to know that I had to wait for Linux Kernel 4.2 when Realtek drivers are included.

On 9th Sep 2015 I came to know that Linux Kernel 4.2 was included in Ubuntu 15.10 and I downloaded the ISO and tried it on my Laptop as per this post. I updated the ISO for couple of days through zsync and it was booting properly every day.

Yesterday I decided to install Ubuntu 15.10 on my hard drive and found that installer crashed, however, I used the following workaround to run the installer and installed:

sudo -H bash -c 'ubiquity gtk_ui'

I am happy to report that there is no need to add any rtl8723be file for wifi, radeon driver is perfect and Bluetooth is working on installed Wily Werewolf.

Booting daily-live/current wily-desktop-amd64.iso from Grub2 and updating it using zsync.

Yesterday I downloaded Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf Live ISO

wget -c http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-amd64.iso

 and used it booting from Grub2 menu entry as follows:

sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom

and added the following lines:

menuentry "Wily Desktop iso" {
        set isofile="/home/user/wily-desktop-amd64.iso"
        loopback loop (hd0,X)$isofile
        linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz.efi boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
        initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

then I updated grub to add the menuentry:

sudo update-grub

I could boot from the ISO and found that Wily has Linux Kernel 4.2 which has Blue tooth driver for my Laptop and it worked well.

Today I decided to keep the ISO updated and installed zsync and used it to update.

sudo apt-get install zsync -y
zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-amd64.iso.zsync
#################### 100.0% 108.2 kBps DONE   

reading seed file wily-desktop-amd64.iso: **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************Read wily-desktop-amd64.iso. Target 100.0% complete.    
verifying download...checksum matches OK
used 1257062400 local, fetched 0

Since it is less than 24 hours it says " fetched 0"

If you want to use the method please note that the ISO is on /home folder of the user. Put your username replacing user and X in (hd0,X) as your partition no X.

File sharing via Bluetooth between Lenovo G50-45 Ubuntu Laptop and Android device.

I had installed Ubuntu 14.04 on Lenovo G50-45 Laptop as per this post in December 2014 and solved some problems like screen brightness as reported in this post after enabling LTS/HardwareEnablementStack.

This Laptop has Realtek Wireless Network Adoptor which also works as Bluetooth device. Although the Wireless disconnection problem was solved by setting options rtl8723be fwlps=0 in /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf file the Bluetooth did not work.

After Ubuntu 14.04.3 update I got Linux Kernel 3.19 and the Bluetooth could be used after installing the driver as follows:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/rtlwifi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rtl8723au-bt-dkms rtlwifi-new-dkms linux-firmware

I could send file via Bluetooth from the Laptop to Android Device but Android device failed to send the file. This could be corrected after searching for Personal File Sharing on Dash and checking the boxes Receive the files in download folder over Bluetooth and Notify about received files.

Mate Desktop 1.10.2 on Debian Testing.

As written in this post I installed Mate Desktop version 1.8.1 on Debian 8.1 and got hooked to it.

In order to run the latest version I edited the /etc/apt/sources.list file and replaced "jessie" by "stretch". Stretch is the codename of next stable version of Debian which is under testing.

After pointing the sources.list to "stretch" I did apt-get update && upgrade && dist-upgrade.

Debian Stretch with linux kernel 4.1.0 is running fine on Mate Desktop 1.10.2