Hacking Ubuntu 18.04 on a Switch

[Deleted User]

Unity seems perfect for touchscreen devices. I never liked it much on an actual PC.
It's not exactly light though. The Switch should be plenty powerful enough to run it, but still, with no hardware acceleration I'm not surprised it runs slowly.

Ubunru 18 uses gnome

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

I've installed Ubuntu now.
Is there a reason why it crashes/shutdown so often?
Is there a way to prevent that?

 

[cmsj]

Some good progress - got a Launchpad PPA spun up to build mesa/libdrm and the packages deliver a significant boost in GNOME performance, which is great
Also added PPAs for RetroArch (which honestly is useless without a viable input mechanism) and Dolphin.

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I've installed Ubuntu now.
Is there a reason why it crashes/shutdown so often?
Is there a way to prevent that?

I've had a few situations where it seemed to have crashed, but sometimes waking it from the screensaver (which can't be done with the touchscreen, try hitting a volume key) brings it back. I wouldn't say "so often" though.

You probably want to rebuild your rootfs with the changes to the build script I committed ~3 hours ago, then you get 3D acceleration

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Long time ubuntu family distro user, if we get Netflix before Nintendo releases it will be like shitting on their head

It doesn't look like that's going to be easy - Firefox fails to play Netflix videos, probably a lack of DRM support or something.

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

I've had a few situations where it seemed to have crashed, but sometimes waking it from the screensaver (which can't be done with the touchscreen, try hitting a volume key) brings it back. I wouldn't say "so often" though.

You probably want to rebuild your rootfs with the changes to the build script I committed ~3 hours ago, then you get 3D acceleration

Thanks for the info man!
Do I really need to rebuild the whole rootfs or can I install the stuff manually you added?
Right now, I'm connected to my Switch via SSH.
As long as I have my Switch on the original Charger, it doesn't seem to crash
If I can add the stuff you changed without rebuilding the rootfs... what exactly have you changed/installed?

Did you got Sound to work?
It shows "Dummy Output" and I can change the volume... but It doesn't seem to have an effect because I can't hear anything.

 

[cmsj]

Thanks for the info man!
Do I really need to rebuild the whole rootfs or can I install the stuff manually you added?
Right now, I'm connected to my Switch via SSH.
As long as I have my Switch on the original Charger, it doesn't seem to crash
If I can add the stuff you changed without rebuilding the rootfs... what exactly have you changed/installed?

Did you got Sound to work?
It shows "Dummy Output" and I can change the volume... but It doesn't seem to have an effect because I can't hear anything.

I don't think sound is working for anyone on any distro, it probably needs kernel drivers.

If you're SSH'd in, just run:

add-apt-repository ppa:cmsj/nintendoswitch
apt-get upgrade

and you should see drm packages getting upgraded. Then reboot or restart X and check ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log and look for:

[ 21.861] (II) GLX: Initialized DRI2 GL provider for screen 0

that should mean it's working

 

[Fadi5555]

Some good progress - got a Launchpad PPA spun up to build mesa/libdrm and the packages deliver a significant boost in GNOME performance, which is great
Also added PPAs for RetroArch (which honestly is useless without a viable input mechanism) and Dolphin.

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I've had a few situations where it seemed to have crashed, but sometimes waking it from the screensaver (which can't be done with the touchscreen, try hitting a volume key) brings it back. I wouldn't say "so often" though.

You probably want to rebuild your rootfs with the changes to the build script I committed ~3 hours ago, then you get 3D acceleration

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It doesn't look like that's going to be easy - Firefox fails to play Netflix videos, probably a lack of DRM support or something.

Sounds amazing.

Did you mean we can run dolphin emulator in fullspeed? I mean did you bring 3d acceleration? Also if you can implement vulkan it would be amazing especially for enhancing speed in any kind of emulator including ppsspp.

Please can you make a video of running dolphin emu after getting 3d acceleration?
Thanks a lot.

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

I don't think sound is working for anyone on any distro, it probably needs kernel drivers.

If you're SSH'd in, just run:

add-apt-repository ppa:cmsj/nintendoswitch
apt-get upgrade

and you should see drm packages getting upgraded. Then reboot or restart X and check ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log and look for:

[ 21.861] (II) GLX: Initialized DRI2 GL provider for screen 0

that should mean it's working

looks good
Installed Dolphin and Retroarch.

Will install Synergy now to test stuff with Mouse and Keyboard

 

[EclipseSin]

These could be helpful to get the audio to work, i thought they had the audio codec in the dts file but perhaps it isn't complete. I really should set some of this stuff up to debug..

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1024422/rt5639-audio-routing-on-r28/
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/...for-custom-hardware-with-audio-codec-wm8974-/
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1006883/jetson-tx1/i2s1_lrclk-doesn-t-seem-to-work-/

 

[guily6669]

Unity seems perfect for touchscreen devices. I never liked it much on an actual PC.
It's not exactly light though. The Switch should be plenty powerful enough to run it, but still, with no hardware acceleration I'm not surprised it runs slowly.

But didnt FailOverflow have hardware acceleration shown on their Linux video of the Swtich?

 

[Fadi5555]

But didnt FailOverflow have hardware acceleration shown on their Linux video of the Swtich?

You mean this video?


I think yes they have hardware acceleration because the touch is response pretty fast. We have to ask FailOverflow to make sure about it.

 

[guily6669]

yeah from that video... they have it running so damn smooth and about the test in the end (GLX spheres), do you think its getting around max power of the tegra X1 on the Switch clocks?

 

[roothorick]

I don't think sound is working for anyone on any distro, it probably needs kernel drivers.

If you're SSH'd in, just run:

So is sshd in the built image and configured / starting on boot already, or do we have to add it after the fact?

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

 

[renhei]

So did you get Synergy working? If so how well does it work?

 

[xXDungeon_CrawlerXx]

So did you get Synergy working? If so how well does it work?

jup, I got synergy to work.
I installed Synergy on my PC and QuickSynergy on Ubuntu.

 

[cmsj]

So is sshd in the built image and configured / starting on boot already, or do we have to add it after the fact?

Built-in, the username is "switch", password "switch". GNOME also has vino installed, for enabling VNC access from the preferences.

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jup, I got synergy to work.
I installed Synergy on my PC and QuickSynergy on Ubuntu.

Good point about Synergy, I should get that in the image too

 

[ZenPowerBuilder]

Heck yeah. Now we're speaking my language.

Er... Linux distro.

 

[EpicLPer]

I need to get some sleep, but if you want to have a bash: https://github.com/cmsj/nintendo-switch-ubuntu-builder

Please put this in the first post and update it accordingly, this seems awesome!

 

[Xyphoseos]

If I understand I need to download an ubuntu image and I need to use the script in nintendo switch ubuntu builder ?

 

[Cubuss]

How much space is required?