Is there an ETA for Ubuntu to be able to install on this device?
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Iām curious to understand why Ubuntu 18 (is that correct?) was stated in the literature as the latest supported version.
In the docs I read about setting up OS thereās no download link for Ubuntu package, it says ācoming soonā.
Seems to be NO Ubuntu is available yet.
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Have you tried running it off the USB or the card?
How do I do that?
Reading the how to page doesnāt list that. (Unless I missed it)
Google is your friend here on ācreate a bootable Ubuntu on a USB or flash drive.ā Assuming you are already running Ubuntu on a laptop or box, by default it comes with a tool to create bootable Ubuntu drives on flash cards or USB sticks. If not these should point you in the right direction:
Good luck and let me know how it goes.
Thanks for the info, I was expecting something special for the LinkStar - do you know how I can run it from the eMMC on the LinkStar?
Hey Tripp. We are all blazing a trail here with this new device and the things that can be done with it. Some of these things may ābrickā your device, as in it remains useless and unbootable from that point forward, (or if you are lucky, need to jump through a lot of hoops to recover). That being said, know the risks you take while trying these things out. The first key question is, why do you want Ubuntu installed? What use case or every day life problems are you trying to solve? If you are good with the answers, then proceed but know there are risks involved and they are yours to assume, not me or anyone elseās.
In premise however, this should work. The advantage of running it on a bootable Flash Card or USB would be to test if and how Ubuntu (or any other Linux flavor) works on it. If it does not, dismount or shut down and reboot the device, no harm done. Assuming the it is working properly, it would sense alternate drive on the device and at the same time will allow you to install directly from the bootable Flash Card or USB. If you are familiar with Ubuntu you should be familiar with this. Also, make sure you have a key board, mouse, and monitor hooked up, preferably wired (not wireless), and working on the Android software it shipped with. This way you do not have to worry about wireless drivers flaking out on you during your initial tests.
Although I would take the route I outlined above, there are plenty of examples similar out there like running Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi, and the LinksStar-H68K is a lot more powerful and has the specs to handle it. For a similar use-case with installation on a Raspberry Pi, see below:
Do your homework. Good luck and let me what you decide and if it works.
Thanks for the great response and the details.
My primary goal of running a linux OS is to run PFSense and portainer so I can run some of the tools I want to like PiHole among other things. The reason I want Ubuntu is it was the selling point SeedStudio used to cause me to buy it and their documentation is sadly lacking right now.
So setting up Ubuntu isnāt the issue itās getting it running on the LinkStar that is an unknown to me and like you mentioned I donāt want to brick my new toy. On my Pi Iām using the RPi memory card imager so you click click click and you have a working/usable Pi. For the LinkStar Google has no useful links for this install specifically (just points back to SeedStudio which says ācoming soonā).
Iāll take a look at the guide for the Pi you linked to and try it out when I get back home from a trip next week.
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Hey! Having the same issue. Would really like to stick ubuntu on this thing, but no glory. Tried via sd card and sideloading via devtool as described. If anyone has any luck please share!
Forward progress! They released an img for Ubuntu - Install Operating System - Seeed Wiki
It works and their instructions to install worked, ish. I havenāt played with it too much but immediately I found an issue with the networking. Only hardware eth0 and eth1 work. Eth2 and eth3 and wlan0 donāt show up in āifconfigā command so I havenāt been able to make wireless work. Iāve reached out to support to ask for some assistance.
I followed the (thankfully very detailed) installation instructions on the Wiki. (Thanks for the great docs.) Installing OpenWRT on SD was super easyā¦ Installing it on eMMC was easy enough (other than needing to dust off a Windows machine) but didnāt work! It rebooted like it said it would in the docs, but itās not listening on 192.168.100.1, and there are no activity lights on the LEDs when I reboot. I can reboot with the SD card installed, and it will boot, but booting off of eMMC is going to be way more reliable, and I donāt want to get the whole configuration set up and then have to redo it once I get eMMC working.
What can I do to diagnose whatās wrong? Re-flashing it is quite a pain with the ancient windows machine, but it just being DOA with Ubuntu on it is kind of sad. 
Let me know how to get this working to spec!
Super cool box. I just wish it came in a 5gbps version too!
Thanks!
-Ian
I flashed Ubuntu onto the eMMC without issue. It did seem to take a few hard boot cycles to come alive but now boots normally.
Interesting! Iāll try hard booting it a few more timesā¦
Are there any activity lights on the device when it boots? That was one noticeable difference between the working boot cycle with the microSD, and the non-working boot cycle with the flashed OS. In the microSD working case, the lights blink. In the eMMC non-working case, they do not.
And just to confirm, the correct image to instal lis openwrt-rockchip-R22.11.18_opc-h68k-d-squashfs-sysupgrade.img, yes? (Interestingly when I try to open this image through a disk image mounting tool, it says itās corrupted, but the flash installer reported success installing it.)
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Confirmed. openwrt-rockchip-R22.11.18_opc-h68k-d-squashfs-sysupgrade.img is the correct image. Although an image update or access to a Git repo for new images would be niceā¦
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Thank you for the confirmation!
I am thinking I should just build the img myself from source, so I know I have a valid img file. But the code tab on Sourceforge (https://git.code.sf.net/p/linkstar-h68k-os/code) seems to be empty. Can someone at Seeed point us to a git repo?
Thanks!
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hello, we donāt develop source code, so that repository is not valid
I tried re-erasing the flash, and re-flashing the same image. This time the install still said it was ok, but the device didnāt reboot. It also showed it still in maskrom mode. I waited a while and then unplugged it (from USB-C. Power cable was never connected.) When it came back up it was still in Maskrom mode. (The first install it rebooted, but still didnāt come up in OpenWRT.)
How can I troubleshoot this? Is it a hardware problem?
Regarding the source code, I donāt mind that Seeed doesnāt have it in Sourceforge, but since itās based on a GPL codebase, shouldnāt the OS be available to us? Doesnāt have to be from Sourceforge, but wherever?
Iāve reinstalled a third time and will leave it connected for a good long while to see if it reboots, but since it didnāt last time, Iām thinking it may not.
Also, a note for your wiki: On en_US Windows, the buttons you show in Chinese are properly localized into English, so you may want to put a windows box into en_US and make new images for the docs. That said, itās useful having the zh_CN version there in case someone does it on an unsupported locale and gets the buttons in Chinese.
I attempted re-flashing the device a few times nowā¦ And still the same behavior: It never leaves Maskrom mode, and doesnāt reboot/wonāt boot off the eMMC.
Iām a little disappointed not to have heard anything back from Seeed after two weeks.
Also disappointing that it ships with kind of a broken Android build on it by default. Why not just ship it with OpenWRT as the default OS? Does anyone actually want to run that Android clone OS on it?