OESF Portables Forum
Model Specific Forums => Gemini PDA => Gemini PDA - Linux => Topic started by: AnotherLinuxUser on April 17, 2025, 02:13:19 pm
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I recently gave NotKit's UBports (Ubuntu Touch) port for the Gemini PDA and it works pretty well. It is Halium 9-based. For those who are looking for a newer Linux-based distribution to run on the Gemini PDA and/or helpful sources that could lead to something like Droidian being ported, here's the link:
https://gitlab.com/ubports/porting/community-ports/android9/planet-geminipda/planet-geminipda
The instructions on the Gitlab repo assumes that the installation is being done from Linux (such as Gemian) from the Gemini PDA. The actual vendor image with the UBports root filesystem doesn't need to be directly written to any partition; only the boot image file.
The 'ubuntu.img' file has to be placed at the root of the Gemian partition, so, the path to the file should look like: '/ubuntu.img'
Do note that the 'ubuntu.img.zstd' from the 'artifacts.zip' file has to be decompressed to in order to get the 'ubuntu.img' file.
As mentioned in the instructions, to boot UBports from "Boot 3" does the following command need to be executed:
cat boot.img > /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot3
Note: The port requires the Android 8.1 firmware to be installed already. Elevated permissions are required to write the 'boot.img' file and to move the 'ubuntu.img' to '/ubuntu.img'
After testing, I can confirm that the Gemini PDA runs UBports quite well.