Android on LX1

Forget it. I mean there are a lot of posts on how to do it. But the latest version is this and it's marked as deprecated.

No wonder. It's a 2.2 made in 2011. Hardly exciting, and even less for a Latitude X1 owner. First problem: it's not able to run ipw2200, so no wifi.

There's only a handful apps coming with the system, and I could not make myself try and plug the cable to see if there's more. Reason for my laziness? It's slow on LX1.

Maybe if someone made a port of 2.3, or 4.0 (wishful thinking) it'd be good. But other than that it's just not very usable. 

A couple of photos from the operation.

Having access to another Windows machine I use Universal USB Installer by Pen Drive Linux. Amazing little app with so many options for installation of various different systems on your stick, your head will spin. Makes the process really easy:

Boot screen somewhat similar to lots of things ;)

After having first three options failed, I chose Debug mode and found out that the mount will not work for I have linux partitions with filesystem which apparently android doesn't like and is waiting for and "exit" or in non debug mode any key.

After that apart from mentioned before ipw2200, everything else was more or less recognized.

Waiting in anticipation...

And there it is :) Boo... no service ;)

I liked the fact that it showed me correctly what my battery status is and when it will die (in my case in 8 minutes ;) But if you look at this dialog you'll notice that the lowest choice ends below the limits, and frankly there's no easy way to move there, which in case of longer menus is a problem, simply because you won't see those hidden choices.

In case you wanted to try it's good to know which keys mimic the android buttons on mobiles:
 MENU -> menu key
 BACK -> Esc key
 HOME -> windows key

 Last one, some info:

Sorry for the quality of the photos, made with my mobile :P

Having written all of this I'd like to thank people involved in creating ports to other devices, keep up the good work folks! Users of small old laptops, like mine, are counting on you!

My disk has died...

Yeah, sad but true, the nice device I've fitted in my LX1 had for some reason ceased to be. And it could not be revived. Anyway, the entire process of getting a replacement was pretty painless even though a bit time consuming (mostly because of the wait.) I just had to file a form on the supplier page, and send the disk in it's original packaging (!). Reminder for future: Never toss any of those away while your device is still under warranty. They then send it to the producer and some time later I got a brand new SDD. Not having enough time to fiddle with gentoo I've decided to give two other systems a go. Ubuntu (Gnome is way too slow for my machine! I thought KDE was resource consuming, but gnome even in 2D just stalls it). KUbuntu (for some reason Ubuntu isn't able to correctly map my keyboard. It acts as if I had no shift keys! And I've found painfully quickly how big of a problem it is when I tried to type: "/". I could maybe live without shif upper-case actions - caps sorts it, or even without "@", but pipe and slashes are a no go!). Then I tried to get the preview Windows 8 version on, but it refused to install simply because of this bug. I'm not a huge fan of windows anyway so I dropped it. The good thing I've learned during that process is making a USB installation. More on this soon.