[Sugar-devel] Sugar on a $100 tablet!

[Ruben Rodríguez]

2013/9/11 George Hunt <georgejhunt at gmail.com>:
> I have a nexus, and I'm anxious to learn how to swap out OS, reload stuff,
> etc.

The first step is to install Ubuntu on it, you can follow this howto:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/Installation

But I recommend following the procedure to install Multirom to have
dual boot instead:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2011403
The only downside is that it seems to interfere with Android system
updates, so you need to upgrade your Android rom manually after that.

Backup and be patient, it takes some time.

When you have ubuntu running on the nexus, activate the
on-scren-keyboard (small icon on the top bar), open the terminal,
install ssh and connect to it. Become root and run this script:
http://ubuntu.activitycentral.com/install_sugar_on_nexus_7.sh

This will set some configs, install a bunch of packages including
Sugar, and install some activities as well.

There are some bugs (mainly in the journal) I'm working in, but it is
already pretty usable. Please report your findings! :)

> Does Ubuntu talk directly to the hardware?

Yes. The first part of the procedure installs ubuntu in the android
storage space (a file containing a disk image with ubuntu inside). The
bootloader then is able to run it instead of android by using kexec.
This means there is no emulation, you use Ubuntu as if it was
installed on the machine by itself, and no Android software runs
alongside it.

> If so, how much variation is there in the hardware? If most tablets are based on arm SOC's, this might
> work across many hardware platforms.

There is a lot of variation between SOC's, in particular you will have
to fight with the graphics support, the bootloader, the power
management...
A recent Linus rant on the topic:https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/9/9/562
"I hope that ARM SoC hardware designers all die in some incredibly
painful accident"

In any case with more or less effort we can make sugar work on any
machine that already runs GNU/Linux. In the case of the nexus I
understand Canonical and Google partnered to make it work as a
development exercise. But new arm devices running
standard-non-android-distros appear every day, and several platforms
are already becoming popular, so it is a path worth exploring.

-- 
Rubén Rodríguez
Activity Central: http://activitycentral.com

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