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elementarythree · 05-08-2019, 11:03 PM

Every few months I come back to this device, after the last round of testing to get more out of it proved hack-y and unfruitful. In some other thread I posted that I actually got linux working straight up on the device, but the included Mali drivers make it more or less useless. I assume Onyx hasn't released the kernel sources and/or unlocked the bootloader?

Every few months I also repeat this advice - The best way to use it as a second screen is to use it like a terminal in the old days and capitalize on it's linux roots. Text only, curses-based editors, monochrome terminfo. Perfectly fine since it can't display colors to begin with anyways and this makes most graphical user interfaces just look bad. I even played nethack on it that way. Doable and termux is reasonably quick and fonts are nice. SoC has enough omph to run applications itself, so you don't even need a computer, just a keyboard. If no webbrowsing is required, (I would not advise letting the thing on a network, it has some serious and old linux-based exploits that make it very easy to hijack it and do things like gain root) 2 GB is plenty. Via USB reverse connection and termux API you can combine it with your PC and script it a little, for example open a .pdf or picture on your computer and have it automatically uploaded and displayed on the reader. It's also possible to run a linux distribution and even an X server directly on it with lots of hacking but there's little point to it, termux & android gives you more. If you get one of those bluetooth to serial dealies or set a usb debug connection up, you could even use it as primary screen in the dumb terminal (or I guess in it's case, smart terminal) sense and forego a monitor on your computer of choice. That's possible with GNU screen. It's HDMI connector is absolutely useless. There's no way to force the right resolution and at this point I believe the hardware simply cannot do it. No idea how they screwed that up.

I've had very conflicted feelings regarding this device (Didn't have such since the Amiga 1200 in the early 90s) but I ended up making my peace with it. It works well as terminal and pdf/picture viewer. It has an advantage over the Dasung since it contains a computer that let's you do some nifty things. It's disadvantage is that it's not really usable as a graphical screen with a computer without some serious downsides, but like I said, I think it works best as terminal.

05-08-2019, 11:03 PM	#656
elementarythree Enthusiast Posts: 26 Karma: 39999 Join Date: Aug 2018 Device: none	Every few months I come back to this device, after the last round of testing to get more out of it proved hack-y and unfruitful. In some other thread I posted that I actually got linux working straight up on the device, but the included Mali drivers make it more or less useless. I assume Onyx hasn't released the kernel sources and/or unlocked the bootloader? Every few months I also repeat this advice - The best way to use it as a second screen is to use it like a terminal in the old days and capitalize on it's linux roots. Text only, curses-based editors, monochrome terminfo. Perfectly fine since it can't display colors to begin with anyways and this makes most graphical user interfaces just look bad. I even played nethack on it that way. Doable and termux is reasonably quick and fonts are nice. SoC has enough omph to run applications itself, so you don't even need a computer, just a keyboard. If no webbrowsing is required, (I would not advise letting the thing on a network, it has some serious and old linux-based exploits that make it very easy to hijack it and do things like gain root) 2 GB is plenty. Via USB reverse connection and termux API you can combine it with your PC and script it a little, for example open a .pdf or picture on your computer and have it automatically uploaded and displayed on the reader. It's also possible to run a linux distribution and even an X server directly on it with lots of hacking but there's little point to it, termux & android gives you more. If you get one of those bluetooth to serial dealies or set a usb debug connection up, you could even use it as primary screen in the dumb terminal (or I guess in it's case, smart terminal) sense and forego a monitor on your computer of choice. That's possible with GNU screen. It's HDMI connector is absolutely useless. There's no way to force the right resolution and at this point I believe the hardware simply cannot do it. No idea how they screwed that up. I've had very conflicted feelings regarding this device (Didn't have such since the Amiga 1200 in the early 90s) but I ended up making my peace with it. It works well as terminal and pdf/picture viewer. It has an advantage over the Dasung since it contains a computer that let's you do some nifty things. It's disadvantage is that it's not really usable as a graphical screen with a computer without some serious downsides, but like I said, I think it works best as terminal.