Installing Debian
We must consider this device has UEFI, so the bootable pendrive must be created accordingly to it. I followed this procedure and worked great:
You can do something like the following if 604A-00EA is your USB drive and you already have p7zip installed:
$ 7z x ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64.iso -o/media/$USER/604A-00EA/
You’re done if you have only one partition on this USB drive, otherwise you need to flag the partition as bootable e.g. via parted:
# parted /dev/sdX set 1 boot on
Where /dev/sdX would be your USB drive and 1 the partition number that should be used to boot.
The installation process is the same as a computer. Just create your partitions (I just created / and swap) and that was it.
Rotate Screen and pointer (mouse)
One of the needs with this after installing Debian was to rotate the screen, because the tablet has a keyboard and should be used like a «laptop» style the screen was needed to be horizontally configured, rotating the screen caused the mouse pointer to run in funny directions.
A coworker of mine found how to solve this one, she helped me with this article and the configuration required to perform both rotations (screen and pointer). This is the Xorg file under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf (I’ve previously created the dir xorg.conf.d)
Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "fbdev"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Option "Rotate" "CW"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
EndSection
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "pointer"
MatchProduct "ELAN226A6:00 04F3:22A6"
Option "SwapAxes" "1"
Option "InvertY" "1"
EndSection
The match product can be obtained using xinput.
Enable WiFi
Because I’ve installed with a Debian CD iso I hadn’t all the required firmware so there weren’t ethernet card.
I found this driver, but because I hadn’t installed anything I was lacking ‘make’ and ‘sudo’ which are used in (install.sh) so I’ve started doing the first steps of that script manually.
Soon I realized that I only needed to do the initial steps:
echo "options ath10k_core skip_otp=y" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath10k_core.conf sudo cp -r firmware-only/QCA9377 /lib/firmware/ath10k/
Made a reboot and it worked.
Enable pressure Stylus Pen
I did all of this because I was told to enable the «pressure feature» of the «stylus pen» work on Linux.
Debian says:
Well, I’ve tried using «synaptics» but I required certain tools to test the functionality that are only available with «libinput», so I’ve installed libinput and uninstalled synaptics (in that order).
Also it was neccesary to create a file in Xorg in this way (thanks to this post from 2003 and this debian page):
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "ELAN22A6:00 04F3:22A6" # required
MatchIsTouchpad "yes" # required
Driver "wacom" # required
Option "MinSpeed" "0.5"
Option "MaxSpeed" "1.0"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.075"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "2" # multitouch
Option "TapButton3" "3" # multitouch
Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1" # multitouch
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1" # multitouch
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "CoastingSpeed" "8"
Option "CornerCoasting" "1"
Option "CircularScrolling" "1"
Option "CircScrollTrigger" "7"
Option "EdgeMotionUseAlways" "1"
Option "LBCornerButton" "8" # browser "back" btn
Option "RBCornerButton" "9" # browser "forward" btn
EndSection
The Identifier I’ve used was obtained from xinput:
root@debian:~# xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ELAN22A6:00 04F3:22A6 id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ELAN22A6:00 04F3:22A6 Pen id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ITE Tech. Inc. T102 HID Device id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ ITE Tech. Inc. T102 HID Device Touchpad touch id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Intel HID events id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Asus WMI hotkeys id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]
root@debian:~#
Then I’ve installed evemu-tools (for evemu-record) which let me see at low level the interaction of the pen with the touchscreen:
evemu-record | grep PRESSURE
The recent versions of GIMP support pressure devices, you can configure them in Edit > Preferences > Configure Input Devices. Here’s a draw I made with GIMP to test the pressure:
asus transformer mini t102h with debian
Usefull links during this investigation process:
hello,
very interesting device, could u tell me battery duration with your linux setup?
Hi, unfortunately I hadn’t time to test its battery capabilities because the company decided to go with another device 🙁
thx for reply… i hope we will see more devices like this on market… i like it 🙂 what device u moved to?
They picked a chinese brand (I don’t even know the name) which is cheaper and because the T102H is no longer available in Argentina. But I enjoyed the time I had with it.
The company is still looking for devices to test but nothing else has arrived yet to our work team.
Hi Miguel, I recently got an ASUS T103 2 in 1 device for daily continuous notetaking during classes.
However I quickly noticed it was skipping strokes almost every once every paragraph (even under large constant pen pressure) or while making diagrams; it was very frustrating and I had to return it.
So it made me wonder about the quality of the pen or touchscreen and whether it happens to anyone else? Does it skip strokes (leave gaps) under fast handwriting or drawings? Did you use it as a notetaking device (while writing lots of text or drawings)?
I currently have a 2013 HP elitebook 2760p which uses a Wacom digitizer and works flawlessly for taking notes except for the weight and it’s an old device.
Thank you!
Hi Camilo,
Quite weird behavior for such good device, have you been using linux on it?
I’ve tested the T102 and T103 with the same Ubuntu version and both worked pretty well (the project we are currently developing is related to digital signatures) so under Linux that didn’t happen to us.
If you were using Windows on it, maybe it could be a driver or software related issue, you could have tried different software (i.e If you were using One Note, did it happen the same when using GIMP?) or do a driver update.
As I’ve said I only tested it using Linux and I hadn’t any problems, the pen and the screen pressure worked perfectly (quite important for biometrics in digital signatures).
You should give it another try and maybe try a different software, If you were using Linux then it could be a distro/drivers related problem.
Regards.
M.
Thank you for such a thorough reply, the project sounds interesting 🙂
I did use it with Windows and Linux (mint) with the same results and software independent, and I also monitored the pen status with «xev» where it was clear every once in a while it was missing strokes and even under the minimum threshold setting it required quite a bit of pressure to register.
It seems after all it may have been a defective unit, perhaps I will give it another chance,
Thank you!
¡Ah! You’re quite smart! It could happen that a fault device (pen or screen) presented that behavior. ( Hoping you removed any peel on the pen or screen before using it :p )
Glad to have comments in my blog from a person with that amazing background you have (I took a look to your resume on github.io)
If you test it again let me know!
Regards.
M.
Yes I did, Yeah probably faulty device. Thank you for the kind words, I will let you know of my experience once I get a new device 🙂
A couple of days ago I bought a 2 in 1 device «Lenovo Yoga 530» amazing device!!! altought way bigger than the Asus TH103 and you can’t unplug the keyboard but instead do a 360° flip of the screen to convert it to a tablet, the experience writting notes on it (One Note) and drawing is incredible.
Looking forward to hear your opinion if you get the Asus again.
Regards.
M.
Hello I’m new to linux and I just installed Debian onto a t103. The problem is I don’t have an usb adapter so I can’t connect to the repository. Is there a way I can install the firmware offline.
Hi!
So how did you installed it in first place :p
M.
Hello, I’m expecting to purchase a T103, but would like to load Arch.
Any advice?
Sup Dave. I never used Arch, but it should be the same as other distros. My advice would be to be patient with touch and battery capabilities which are usually not easy to set up. It is a great device and if Arch doesn’t work you have Ubuntu and Debian which I’ve tested and both work.
Hi, I have installed Manjaro on T102HA and everything works except the camera and fingerprint reader. I followed some of your ideas and managed to make it a very useful little device. I run Gnome and had to add iio-sensors proxy for autorotation. I setup LVM using the SDcard slot so I have a 8.6G swap,43G root and 138G home partitions. I hope this helps somebody to use this device without Windows 10!
Thanks for your work on the T102HA! Gracias y un abrazo
That’s great Alfredo! Thanks for your useful feedback, now you can enjoy the device with the penguin power 🙂
Cheers!
M.
Hi Mr. Miguel, I find it weird how people can install any linux at all on a T103HAF, when I try to I get some errors that it cant write on the physical device, I formated clean to EXT4 and even like that he will not install, I tried XUBUNTU, LINUX MINT 19.2, and nothing…
I’m I doing something wrong?
Hi Ricardo, you’ve formated the partitions using the Linux installer of your distro?
I’ve never used Xubuntu or Mint but I asume they would give you a graphical step to format and adequate your partitions, are you using that or anything else?
I would recommend trying lubuntu (which I al ready tested and works)
Let me know if I can help.
M.
HI Miguel. I was the guy who didn’t know how to use github in an earlier post. I am now using a T103HAF fulltime with debian buster. however I was wondering if you were ever able to get the camera running.
Hi!
No, the camera wasn’t in my priorities to test so I even didn’t attempted to use it.
Try checking if any video device is getting detected:
ls -ltrh /dev/video*
Good luck!
M.
Hi,
I have installed Kubuntu 18.04.4 LTS , the camera is not working and I can not find video folder under the /dev
has any body managed to install the video?
Thank you