Try out Ubuntu on MiniX NEO X7 without flashing

If you ever wanted to just try out Linux on your MiniX NEO X7 and didn’t want to flash it, just follow this tutorial.

As I described in my Blogpost Install Debian on MiniX NEO X7 it is quite a long process to get Debian running on your MiniX. Although it runs very stable, I had it running 24/7 over a few months with no problems or downtimes.

Nevertheless, if you just want to try out Ubuntu without flashing your MiniX, you only need a SD-Card and a special Image. If the SD-Card is inserted, the MiniX will boot Ubuntu, if it’s not, it boots Android. It will also boot if your MiniX is bicked or NAND is empty.

Ian MORRISON (Linuxium) described this on a Google+ Post and also on his site. He also provides the image on Google Drive.

• The image boots an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS desktop with Unity.
• After downloading first extract the image.
• For writing the image to the SD-Card under Windows you can use Win32 Disk Imager.
• For writing the image to the SD-Card under Linux / Mac OSX just use a command line and dd.

dd if=linux-sdcard-minix-neo-x7-v1.24-sdboot.img of=/dev/sdc bs=4M

Further hints from Ian after Ubuntu is running:

• the Linuxium user password is ‘p’ (without the quotes)
• a root password can be set by entering the following in a terminal window

sudo su -

passwd root

• expand the file system to utilise the whole SD card:

echo -e "d\nn\np\n1\n81921\n\nw" | sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p1

• Mali hardware acceleration can be enabled by entering

sudo mv /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/mesa-egl /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/xmesa-egl