Hi there,
my ftd just arrived last week and after some playing around with FydeOS Apps and Linux runtime I decided to brick it and install Debian 12. I have a Rock5b (also RK3588) running with armbian/Debian and Ubuntu from internal SSD since more than one year as my desktop-PC. It’s quite fast. That’s why I decicded to give the ftd a chance.
Installation worked liked described in the Wiki. The boot screen is rotated but Debian desktop is orientated normally and can be rotated manually. The Gnome desktop works well with touchscreen. But Wiki said stylus is not working. And yes, stylus recognition was rotated by 90 degree, unuseable. Also I was not able to turn on Bluetooth nor add deviced in Gnome. bluetooth deamon was installed and running. I remembered 2-3 years ago I had same problems with fedora and Gnome.
BUT: Then I tryed to upgrade Debian to testing/sid to get fresher packages.The How-to you can find on Debian project website. It worked for me wothout problems. Now it seems to be Gnome 46 desktop instead of 42. And it works well! Also the stylus works perfect for example in Xjournal and Bluetooth works too.
I am very happy to have an OSS based productive convertable now.
How about your experience with GNU/Linux on fydetab?
Thanks for the report! This is great!! I was under the impression that one needed a custom kernel for this machine, and this would explain why the installation requires grabbing a binary from Fydetab (not Debian).
Can you confirm that, as you say, one can upgrade Debian as explained in the Debian documentation (e.g., https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting#How_to_upgrade_to_Debian_.28next-stable.29_Testing and https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/upgrading.en.html) which, essentially, boils down to changing the sources list file(s) (e.g., under /etc/apt/sources.list.d), and then running apt update and apt upgrade to upgrade the system?
Most crucially, does this include being able to upgrade the kernel?
Hi,
since Debian 13 trixie is released, I changed /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
But /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fydetab.list I left at bookworm, because there is no trixie yet on fydeos.com.
Kernel is still Linux 6.1.0-1023-rockchip.
There is on issue with Debian 13 regarding bluetooth. Sometimes it is activated correctly, sometimes it is off and cannot be turned on. bluetooth system service is running. BT module seem not to initialized correctly on every boot up. As I can remind on Debian 12 it was always working fine.
Hope for an update.
Thank you very much for the details!!! That is very helpful.