Author Topic: Working UBports (Ubuntu Touch) Focal for the Gemini PDA by NotKit  (Read 6168 times)

AnotherLinuxUser

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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.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2025, 02:25:55 pm by AnotherLinuxUser »

hzykiss

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Re: Working UBports (Ubuntu Touch) Focal for the Gemini PDA by NotKit
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2025, 08:49:10 am »
Hello, I've recently been considering trying out UBports, but I'm not sure where to start. Could you provide a more detailed explanation of the specific steps involved? Here's my understanding so far:
1. I need to first flash my device to Android 8.1 (boot1) + Gemian (boot2).
2. Download and extract the files to obtain ubuntu.img and boot.img.
3. The ubuntu.img needs to be placed in the root directory of Gemian.
4. Execute the following command in Gemian: `cat boot.img > /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot3`.
5. Finally, restart the device to boot from boot3.
 ;D

Is this correct? Can it be flashed to the boot1 partition? Can I keep only UBports if I don't need Android and Gemian?
Looking forward to your reply.