Posted inInformation Technology

Debian on Nextbook Flexx

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek
Nextbook Flexx

Ah, the continuing saga of trying to get Linux on Nextbook devices. Much additional research turned up Debian having a multi-arch distro. I downloaded the nearly 4 Gig file and followed procedures listed in my earlier post. I was quite pleased to see the thumb drive needed no modifications for Debian installer to boot, however, my pleasure was short lived. Debian has no driver for RTL8723BS SDIO wifi devices. Adding insult to injury, it would not allow the MicroSD card to be an installation target. This was really infuriating since Elementary, which claims to be Ubuntu based worked just fine. I even booted the machine in Windows and nuked the partition table on that card in case the problem was due to previous installation. No dice.

This appears to be the first time I have been directly burned by what so many Linux people complain about. The lack of sending things back up stream. I would have expected Debian to have whatever code the other Debian based distros had with respect to hardware support.

Related posts:

Nextbook Flexx 10.1 from Walmart

Linux on Nextbook Flexx

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.