Linux on the HP Stream tablets

[jonahhw]

I've been trying to install Linux on my Stream 7 recently, and I'd like to share what I've been up to. Since there used to be a fairly active thread on here (which has since been locked from inactivity, it seems), I figured I'd try to get a conversation going again. I've been trying to install Arch based distros, since those are what I use everywhere else. I've tried Manjaro, Endeavour, and Arch itself, but I've had a problem with each one. However, Manjaro seems promising as I'll explain more below. Here are the steps I've taken for each distro (based heavily on ShayBox's instructions in the other thread)​:

For all of them:
Format USB drive to be only one FAT32 partition (no msdos partition table; I'd already flashed an ISO on using dd so I just used gparted to reformat the whole thing as FAT32)
An Arch/derivative distro as below (via UNetbootin) + EFI folder from Fedora Workstation x86_64-33-1.2

Power + volume down, F9 to choose boot device, Boot from efi file (EFI/boot/BOOTIA32.EFI), c for a command line

Using Arch 2021.04.01-x86_64 or EndeavourOS 2021.02.03-x86_64, it didn't boot. When I follow a slightly modified version of ShayBox's instructions, it tries to mount /dev/disk/by-label/(whatever I put after archisolabel) but the problem is that /dev/disk/by-label doesn't exist in the versions I'm using. I'm sure there's a way to get those distros working, but I don't know it.

That leaves Manjaro. I tried KDE, Gnome (minimal), and XFCE, and they all had their own problems. Gnome didn't want to boot into the DE, KDE went to the DE but didn't accept any input, and XFCE worked perfectly, except that the installer wouldn't work because there's less than one GB of ram. That being said, Manjaro XFCE (21.0-210318-linux510) was the most promising so I ran these commands after I got into grub from Fedora's bootia32.efi:
grub> set root=(hd0)
grub> linux /boot/vmlinuz-x86_64 archisobasedir=boot
grub> initrd /boot/intel_ucode.img
grub> initrd /boot/initramfs-x86_64.img
grub> boot

Since the latest version of Manjaro XFCE managed to boot properly but couldn't install, I decided to try installing the classic Arch way. Unfortunately the first version I tried didn't work (I'm guessing that the packages were too out of date), but it worked with 21.0-210318-linux510. I first connected to wifi and partitioned the drive using gparted (I added a main ext4 partition, a swap partition, and a fat32 boot partition). I then used ctrl+alt+F2 to switch into one of the terminals, then logged in with username root and password manjaro. I then ran:
# pacman-mirrors --geoip && pacman -Syyu to make the downloads work
# pacman -S arch-install-scripts to gain access to the installation tools
At this point, I think I'm ready to follow the instrictions on the Arch Wiki starting with mounting the file system, (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide#Mount_the_file_systems) with (in my case) `mount /dev/mmcblk1p1 /mnt` then `swapon /dev/mmblk1p2`. Then it's `pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware [whatever other packages you want]` and I haven't really gone past that point yet. I'm hoping that the rest of the install will go well, but I ran out of battery and now I have to leave it for the night and restart in the morning. If you're trying this yourself, make sure to go back to ShayBox's instructions when you reach the grub install section to make sure that the 32bit efi support is installed.

One thing to add about Manjaro is that wifi and bluetooth work out of the box. I'm not sure if it will be the same for Arch though.

If anyone has anything they'd like to share about getting Linux to work on the stream tablets, I guess this is as good a place as any to post it. I'll edit this post when I have any updates.

Update: I got a bit further in the installation process on my second attempt, but eventually failed. I think that's more to do with my not understanding how to install arch than the stream 7 itself, though. I'll learn more about the Arch installation process and come back to it later.

Update 2: I've given up on Arch based distros for the time being and I managed to install Mint (version 20.1-xfce-64bit) pretty easily (using Kyle_b's instructions for Ubuntu  19.04). Everything seems to work out of the box, including touch scrolling.