Ubuntu (native) on the Nexus 7

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Last week, a Ubuntu native installer for the Nexus 7 was released, along with
instructions on how to install Ubuntu on the Nexus 7
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/Installation). The plan is that the Nexus 7 will
be the ‘core’ device that Canonical will build their tablet version of Ubuntu
around. Right now, it’s quite experimental – the interface sees no tweaks for
the tablet interface, beyond having an onscreen keyboard available.

The installation instructions I mentioned earlier are explicitly for installing
Ubuntu on your Nexus 7 from an existing Ubuntu 12.10 install on your computer.
Now, I don’t have any Ubuntu installations kicking around, so I can’t vouch for
how well this process works, but there are plenty of videos around the internet
already.

The installer just uses fastboot under a GUI, so we can get away with doing this
from our Mac OS X terminal if we have the .img files required. Well, these can
be acquired from this site (http://hwe.ubuntu.com/uds-r/nexus7/), just select
the appropriate storage size for your Nexus 7 (8GB or 16GB), and we’ll be ready
to begin.

Here be dragons - Warning, this will wipe everything on your Nexus 7!

1. Install fastboot/adb if they’re not already installed. You can use this
simple script to do this - https://github.com/teamblueridge/adb-fastboot-install
2. Connect your Nexus 7 by USB and boot it into fastboot mode
(reboot holding vol - button)
3. If you haven’t unlocked the bootloader on your Nexus 7 already, run fastboot
oem unlock
4. In the terminal, locate your downloaded image files, and execute the
following:

$ fastboot flash boot boot.img
$ fastboot erase userdata
$ fastboot flash userdata rootfs.img
$ fastboot reboot

After that’s all finished, when your Nexus 7 boots it will take a couple of
minutes to finalise the Ubuntu installation, so go make yourself some coffee or
something. When you return, it should have loaded the Ubuntu Unity desktop. It’s
usable with just the touch screen, but the experience isn’t great. You can join
your Wifi network, install LXDE or XFCE or something, and log out and select a
different desktop environment.

The password for the user account is ubuntu, though this wasn’t mentioned
anywhere

[IMAGE: https://blog.omgmog.net/images/ubuntu-ss.jpg]

But what about going back to Android?!

I didn’t keep Ubuntu on my Nexus 7 for very long. It’s not currently a great
tablet experience, so here are the steps to reload Android on there:

1. Download the Android 4.1.2 image for the Nexus 7 -
https://dl.google.com/dl/android/aosp/nakasi-jzo54k-factory-973f190e.tgz
2. Untar the file with tar -zxvf nakasi-jzo54k-factory-973f190e.tgz
3. Open a terminal and cd to the extracted directory
4. Run the flash-all.sh file: sh ./flash-all.sh
5. (Optional) reflash a custom recovery fastboot flash recovery
<custom-recovery>.img

I don’t think Ubuntu is a good fit for the Nexus 7 at the moment. If a nice
tablet interface for Ubuntu is released it might be better, but in the mean time
you’re probably better off keeping Android. There isn’t much else to say.

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Published October 29, 2012

Generated from the original post:
https://blog.omgmog.net/post/ubuntu-native-on-the-nexus-7/


Max Glenister is an interface designer and senior full-stack developer from
Oxfordshire. He writes mostly about front-end development and technology.

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