L4T Ubuntu - A fully featured linux on your switch

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L4T Ubuntu
Intro
L4T Ubuntu is a version of Linux based on nvidia's linux for tegra project. It uses a different kernel compared to previous releases which allows it to use features not yet in mainline. Such as audio, docking support and vulkan.

Join our discord: https://discord.gg/53mtKYt

We have a wiki !
To facilitate our work we will only update our wiki from now on in order to avoid multiple outdated references, please refer to the following link instead of this page

https://wiki.switchroot.org/en/Linux/Ubuntu-Install-Guide

Credits

Bylaws,
Langerhans,
Ave,
Natinusala,
CTCaer(most of the hard stuff),
Gavin_Darkglider,
DanielOgorchock(Joycon drivers/joycond),
stary2001 (reboot2payload),
NVIDIA,
Azkali
Everyone else in switchroot - more info on that in the future.
 
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tabzer

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Yeah I did from root. I also updated the kernel and broke something. Lol. I think I'll just be happy that mouse even works without the added touch sense.
 

ChameleonSkin

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Yeah I did from root. I also updated the kernel and broke something. Lol. I think I'll just be happy that mouse even works without the added touch sense.

Does right-click work for you? I could do without multitouch but since the ATM2 doesn't have any hard buttons, I can only use it to move the cursor and left click.
 

tabzer

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Does right-click work for you? I could do without multitouch but since the ATM2 doesn't have any hard buttons, I can only use it to move the cursor and left click.

Yeah. Right click works for me without having to add any special drivers. I have a Magic Mouse 2. It does seem easy to accidentally left click though.
 

ChameleonSkin

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Yeah. Right click works for me without having to add any special drivers. I have a Magic Mouse 2. It does seem easy to accidentally left click though.

Ah - I have the trackpad, not the mouse. That could explain it. The drivers I linked to were specifically for the trackpad (I believe I read bug posts on Github where someone said the drivers weren’t working, and turned out the issue was he was trying to use a Magic Mouse). So unfortunately that’s probably why it doesn’t work for you.
 
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wstlxx

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hi , i wonder if there's a way to reboot to payload like hbmenu app in L4T, then it would be easy to change between switch and ubuntu without injecting bin files anymore
 

ZachyCatGames

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hi , i wonder if there's a way to reboot to payload like hbmenu app in L4T, then it would be easy to change between switch and ubuntu without injecting bin files anymore
r2p has been a thing since 1.5.0, and is pre-configured in the 2.0.0 (and soon 2.0.1) image to reboot to hekate. Just use the regular restart option if you want to use it.
 
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vanrocka90

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what is password used to run sudo ? cant use sudo apt update as its asking for password, ive looked but i cant find a straight forward answer
 

Worldblender

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what is password used to run sudo ? cant use sudo apt update as its asking for password, ive looked but i cant find a straight forward answer
The password you used to create the first user account during the setup process from the first run.
By default, the root account cannot be logged into directly, hence you use sudo with your login password to become root for administrative tasks. On some other Linux distros, you may be able to login as the root account, in which it will have its own password. Thankfully, the latter isn't the case for Ubuntu, so use the password you normally use for login anytime you need to do any administrative tasks.
 
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nex86

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You won't be running pcsx2 (32-bit x86) on arm64.

even if it worked, performance would be horrible since you're emulating A PS2 to X86 and X86 to ARM.
The CPU side of the Tegra X1 isn't much faster than an Atom and pcsx2 already didn't work too well on Atom.

atm I don't expect anything but old PC games from early to max mid 2000s to run.
 
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Espen84

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This is quite interesting. And I could be interested in trying. Just for the possibility to run kodi, as a media center. So I have some questions to who may have given this a go.

1, how is performance in kodi, 1080p video and sound?

2.do usb ports on dock works when docked. (Can I have media on a usb drive)

3, general experience with linux/kodi on switch.

Can someone share their experiences?
 

Gavin_Darkglider

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I actually think this should be enough space if a) you don't intend to install a lot of Linux apps, and b) you don't intend to install a lot of Switch games or roms on your SD card. The allocation might look something like this (these are approximate so I don't have to convert GB to Gib):

total space: 128Gb
hos_data (i.e. switch storage for games & roms): 82Gb
emummc: 30Gb
L4t: 16Gb

The 82Gb is probably an overestimate, but I'd imagine once you do the math this would leave you with about 75Gb or more in hos_data. I've got a 16Gb partition for L4T and have installed a bunch of standard Linux apps on there, and so far I haven't run into any problems with space. If you're planning to use L4T for running Dolphin, Retroarch, or some other emulator, you can put the rom files in hos_data since that is mounted in l4t (as a bonus, if you put them in the Lakka /roms folder location in hos_data, then the same set of rom files can be read from Atmosphere, Lakka, and L4t).

Just keep in mind that Switch games can run from under 1Gb up to 20Gb or more, so you can burn through your available hos_data space pretty fast if you are planning to have more than 1-2 large games on your SD card.
This is completly possible, but the new ubuntu image is going to need a 16gb sdcard, as I included all of the nvidia driver stuff that wasnt included in previous build, and all of the build headers for the hardware.
I am also planning on releasing a light version for people who arent going to want that, but the full version comes first.

I'm wondering if it's possible to add support for the Apple Magic Trackpad 2 (AMT2) in L4T? There are drivers that were created here: https://github.com/robotrovsky/Linux-Magic-Trackpad-2-Driver.



From the readme it looks like this driver was rolled into the 4.20 kernel, but I believe that's much newer than the kernel in L4T. I know my way around Linux but I'm not an expert on device drivers - what would it take to get this working? It looks like the drivers on the site above use dkms to get installed. It's been years since I patched a kernel (like, I haven't done it since before dkms was around), so I don't really understand the process or if this is even possible to do. Alternately, is it possible to get the 4.20 kernel working in L4T so that the drivers are already included?
I have no idea, maybe I will look into it at some point
I am doing the same thing as @ChameleonSkin, and I am following the readme of the repo. However, when I run 'make clean' and 'make' I get this error:

make[1]: *** /lib/modules/4.9.140+/build: No such file or directory. Stop.

When I run update/upgrade, I see errors relating to that directory kind of frequently, and my understanding is that it might be nvidia driver related. I thought it wouldn't be a hindrance but here I am. :(
No idea, see above
I haven’t tried building it yet - I was hoping someone would say it’s easy to update the kernel to 5.4 without breaking anything, in which case the drivers are included. Have you tried running make as root?
L4T is still using 4.9, if you update to mainline, you will loose audio, video, and just about everything else..... part of the reason the ubuntu builds are still on 18.04 ubuntu.

To everyone else, I am uploading 3.0.0 image to testers now, will go live if they find everything works.

This comes with officially supported moonlight-qt support. And perfect, premapped joycons stuff to work with it. And a ton of other fixes. To the people with wifi issues, I will build you a special kernel, with the android pie driver, you can try, might help, some in testing have had issues with it, but those it works for find it to be better.
 

Gavin_Darkglider

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Small issue, Initial setup app doesnt work with kernel with working decoder support. After that, the new update is solid. looking for a simple fix now, so if I can find one, it will be as soon as I can fix, upload, and release.
 
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