Fedora Linux on the GPD Win Max

Hello there again! I’m working to get Fedora Linux up and running on the GPD Win Max this time around.

I’ll be brief; most Linux distros don’t configure the display properly at all, though all hardware functions as intended. I’ve tested Manjaro, Ubuntu and Fedora successfully with all the hardware buttons/sticks/wifi etc performing spectacularly.

It’s mainly the below issue that I’m figuring out now:

I will add a dedicated page on this site when I get everything up and running. I’m not much in the way of automating system changes yet on Fedora, so perhaps in the future either I’ll script this or someone can learn from what I’ve done and build a neat little script to do this.

So far it seems Martin Wimpress is working on scripts that allow Ubuntu respins to work on these GPD Win devices, but I’d love to get it running on Fedora or Manjaro more…especially Fedora, since I deem dnf to be a far more sane package manager, but I digress…

So far I have been following this reddit post on how to get the firmware for the screen loaded as well as get the proper grub parameters for this device. Having not edited grub files in at least a year, I had to relearn that Fedora uses the grub2-mkconfig command.

After changing the grub parameters accordingly for the display resolution and to load the edid firmware file (that I copied from their pasta in the post), I’m now stuck here:
drm.edid_firmware=eDP-1:edid/gpdwinmax.bin: no such file or directory

So I’ll probably have a future blog post here, when I get further! Feel free to comment and thanks for reading my struggles hahaha.

The Pi 4 Laptop and C201 Failures

Back at it again with the new things to tinker with!

This time I nabbed a Raspberry Pi 4 plus a FLIRC Case and various accessories to see if I could replicate a Pi 4 Lapdock project someone did already. Looks pretty much plug and play….

This Pi 4 laptop was meant to hold me over until the Pinebook Pro December Batch ships out. Here’s a shot of the Omars cheap external battery I’ll be using. This one has Power Delivery through USB-C so I know for sure it can power the Pi 4.

Here’s a shot of the Pi 4 in its case on top of the Motorola Lapdock I grabbed for super cheap on eBay.

The Lapdock was once used as a docking station of sorts for the failed Motorola Atrix phone project from Motorola. Fear not, my friends! It lives on through projects!

With the proper connectors (linked above when I mentioned the Pi 4 Lapdock project) you can easily plug in the Pi 4, though this more powerful unit needs power from an external battery due to the improvements over the prior model. The good news is that we’ll be going straight from Micro-HDMI to Micro-HDMI so you likely won’t need an adapter!

After plugging up the connections, and later on powering up the Pi 4……I realize I ended up losing the power adapter for the Motorola Lapdock D: so it looks like I’ll be waiting a while for a replacement to arrive.

…….however…

I took apart a replacement ASUS C201 Chromebook I found on eBay and removed the write-protect screw again…but forgot to plug the trackpad in before I left for home….we’ll see if we can properly enable Developer Mode on this next time and see if we can Libreboot it!

Progress on Librebooted T400 with Advanced Dock 2503

Hello there again!

I had to ditch my permanently-managed Chromebook C201 for a replacement, since there seemed there was nothing I could do. The replacement was $20 and it looks like I’ll actually be able to Libreboot that one!

In other news, I’ll be spinning up a Linode droplet soon to see if I can host a Joplin instance and connect to it with my phones. I also have made progress on the T400 project.

After failing to flash Libreboot roms to the hardware various times, as well as physically damaging another W500 by overextending the motherboard, I ended up buying a pre-Librebooted unit from a friend, with the Atheros wifi card installed, so I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Regarding getting the Advanced Dock 2503 working….it seems a bit hit or miss now

I’ll detail more in the dedicated page for it, but MX Linux was installed and I succesfully got it booted up, but some other problems have come up….

More info on the status of my 2019 projects, here. (also in Projects dropdown “Progress”)

I also posted on a forum my status of this project, here.

I’ll also be receiving a Librem 5 and a Pinebook Pro either by the end of this year, or sometime early next year! Hope you enjoyed this update. Peace!

T400 LB update and Pixelbook Ubuntu idea

Why hello there again!

Some small updates. I’ll eventually post more about the T400 project, as well as link some source and other places I’ve been posting about it. Currently struggling with getting Libreboot to play nicely with an 8GB RAM upgrade, but I’ll likely be running MX Linux on it with NVIDIA drivers to get the Advanced Dock 2503 properly working with some of the cards we have sitting around at work.

Something else I saw recently was that someone got Ubuntu properly working on a Google Pixelbook with some additions from the ChromeOS kernel and some custom scripts to get the backlight keys etc working well. That’d be interesting to try as a daily driver for work, since mostly everyone in our office currently uses Macbooks. As long as I can access a terminal and a web browser, I’d be fine at work…without Google selling my data.

Another thing I saw recently is that Google may be adding support for ePrivacy screens to chromebooks.

That’s all for now! Will report back when I have more to say about the state of the Librebooted T400 and if I ever get the G Suite management off the ASUS C201.

(There are links on the different-colored words in all of my blog posts)

Learning How To Libreboot The C201

Hello there again!

Recently I’ve been working on two projects; working on Librebooting a T400 and W500, as well as Librebooting a spare ASUS C201 Chromebook.

Also working on learning C when I get some free time recently, after reinstalling Arch on my T440p. Fedora Silverblue is really cool and incredibly stable! However, for tinkering more, the ostree system kind of compartmentalizes things using the Toolbox and various other commands. For native installs of applications, I’d need a non-ostree OS again.

I’ve actually not installed Arch from scratch in about two years now, so it will likely be an interesting experience again. Regarding Librebooting the C201, it seems that the device that I got for cheap is stuck under management and won’t allow booting into Developer Mode, so I may actually have to use my CH341A chip to flash it externally. I’ll be looking into the Libreboot documentation for this.

Below is an image of where I removed the write-protect screw on the C201, for a thumbnail.

Once I get either Debian ARM or Parabola installed on the C201, I can start tinkering more with looking into how ARM architecture works. I need to learn C more too! There’s no point in knowing tons about libre software if I can’t modify the code :)

Some other things I’ve seen recently:

• System76 is selling Corebooted laptops now

• AMD hired Coreboot developers

• You can download youtube videos with subtitles using youtube-dl

• Some dude got Arch running fine on the Oryx Pro last year

• MSI will be selling a laptop with dedicated AMD graphics soon