Game dev friendly ubuntu respin for baytrail atoms

[jonza]

I need to install linux for a crappy windows baytrail tablet. I need something small and quiet to work at night and on the road. To get these crapppy things working comfortably with wifi, BT and aucio working, I need to compile a custom kernel, modify the iso with some efi files from fedora, and get the ram usage way down. It's a lot of work so I think I should make it available to other people with similar needs. With tweaks I got mostly full featured ubuntu 16.04 running with ~60mb some time ago. 18.04 is more ram hungry, but there are gains to be made that were not possible in 16.04.

Any suggestions of open source tools, apps and features that a game dev would need in linux?

This should work with most of those super cheap 100-200e baytrail/cherrytrail tablets and laptops. Even with the 4gig ones that have 512mb of ram!

[MrmediamanX]

and here I am using a GPD pocket 2 for on the go dev-ing.

[grindalf]

@MrmediamanX how do you find the win2? I have the win1 and have always been a little disappointed with the buttons and the heat sink and now my battery is expanding and will only charge to 70%. apart from that its a great little tool
(sorry for derailing the thread)

[jonza]

and here I am using a GPD pocket 2 for on the go dev-ing.

This would work great in your GPD pocket 2

You wouldn't want to compile anything complicated with a baytrail atom, but it's not that hard to actually make it in to something useful. With this I'm teaching my self a new basic dialect: Bacon - BASIC to C converter,http://www.basic-converter.org/. Rewriting my scripts in BaCon will also cut down some more bloat and make things more future-proof... no more unreliable network-managers, just netplan and systemd-networkd and gui tool to add more wi-fi networks to netplan. Google Calendar interface on my always on my desktop without the need to install 100-300mb of bloat from dependencies of a full blown calendar app.

These cheap crapputers are actually really good with the right OS and tools if you just want to continue working where you otherwise couldn't, most of the asset work can just as easily be done with negligible amount of cpu power.

By the way, my most powerful PC at the moment has a second generation mobile i3 -- Your Pocket 2 has around twice the cpu power

[jonza]

@MrmediamanX how do you find the win2? I have the win1 and have always been a little disappointed with the buttons and the heat sink and now my battery is expanding and will only charge to 70%. apart from that its a great little tool
(sorry for derailing the thread)

Original GPD win is a cherrytrail machine, so this should be great for that. It doesn't need 32-bit uefi hack, but stuff like screen rotations, touchscreen and kernel patches for bluetooth and headphone jack are propably same as other small cherry trail devices...

If your battery is already bloating, you really need to stop using or charging it, recycle and replace it asap. If the battery punctures open, it will aggressively catch fire and burn stuff.

[jonza]

(sorry for derailing the thread)

No derailing in my opinion. Hardware problems are always in the heart of these kinds of projects. Look at the shit I'm doing this for:



Screen is cracked, but it's otherwise ok, so no need to toss it if I can get it to serve some useful purpose. First I'm removing the usb keyboard from that terrible looking pink case and replacing it with the bluetooth keyboard. Need to keep the usb port mostly free for charging. I'm going to mount the tablet little higher to make it tiny bit less ugly. Then I'm going to add some stickers to make people think It's ugly on purpose .

Battery of GPD win looks pretty generic, so you could probably just stick any battery you can fit in there. Even a phone battery should work fine. Even a lot lower capacity battery is better than a burned down house. DON'T use the bulged battery.

Here's one solution:
https://boards.dingoonity.org/gpd-windows-devices/alternate-battery-for-gpd-win-for-less-than-$20-shipped/

I don't recommend carelessly using more than 1 cells in parallel. Thruth be told, I would probably stick 4 in there with duct tape and try to keep overheating in control by underclocking or cpu frequency scaling, maybe turn off a core or two.

[MrmediamanX]

@MrmediamanX how do you find the win2? I have the win1 and have always been a little disappointed with the buttons and the heat sink and now my battery is expanding and will only charge to 70%. apart from that its a great little tool
(sorry for derailing the thread)

if your referring to the gpd win, it's best to get the gpd win 2. I use the gpd pocket2 note book[high end],it's stupid small but work's well for dev-ing on the go...the things a little beast,I also grabbed the fold out keyboard/trackpad just to be shmancy.
you can generally just order it.