Recently I attempted to change my Archos 101 tablet by changing it from Android to Urukdroid, but it was not very successful. While I was able to put Urukdroid on the tablet, it would stall while loading up, forcing me to switch back to Android instead.
The first question that must be addressed is: why? Well, my tablet is only supported by Android up to version 2.3 and slowly had become outdated. While Urukdroid was not much newer, I thought it would be useful to try this on a known working source. Well, supposedly known. That remains to be seen as in the end it didn’t work. Some of the benefits included ext4 support and the ability to utilize “regular” Linux functions with the operating system. Regardless, the system didn’t work.
The first step was installing Archos SDE software. I had already done this when I put Debian on my Archos 101, but for continuity I list it here also. This special developer edition software allows you to choose to boot something else on start up. I headed over to http://www.archos.com/us/support/support_tech/updates_dev.html and downloaded the SDE for my device, which is a gen8 model. You then follow the instructions to flash this to your device.
Similarly, the next step was to head on over to https://code.google.com/p/urukdroid/wiki/EasyInstall and download the latest copy of Urukdroid, which was 1.6. After a quick tutorial from the creators https://code.google.com/p/urukdroid/wiki/Installation#Installation I was well on my way to installing the system. Everything went according to the instructions, however, when I tried to boot the system, it simply hung indefinitely at the boot screen for Urukdroid.
I then attempted to install older versions, 1.5, and 1.0, hoping one of them would work. Unfortunately, neither of these were successful, and I abandoned Urukdroid altogether. That’s okay, because my Debian install worked rather well for the Archos 101.
Linux – keep it simple.