Toshiba Click Mini Linux

Prologue

• I prefer the ethos of Linux Mint, rather than some of the decisions made by Canonical, for Ubuntu (ex. Snap).
• Why no Debian? I'm thinking about it. ;)
  
• Why no Arch? It's too much of a messy process - I ain't got the energy for that!

Ultimately and in an ideal World, I'd like the smallest, quickest distro that makes the most of the touchscreen, as well as other functionality of the TCM. Working cameras would be a bonus, though realistically the webcam (OV2722) is most likely to be the one that eventually works. It is now detected in the later kernels, though doesn't seem to initialise properly. The rear camera (Onsemi AR053) shows up very little in searches.

Tested and Installed

Linux Mint

Recommended flavour: Linux Mint MATE

• https://tosh.click/distros/mint
  Linux Mint MATE runs well and consumes little in the way of resources. The "standard" installation does however, have a lot of extraneous files and consumes just under 7GB of storage. At present, I'm running a basic respin using Linuxium but hope to compile a 'lite' version. On my installation, I've removed timeshift (a system backup) and a considerable number of non-Roman fonts.

MXLinux 19.3

• https://tosh.click/distros/mxlinux
  Personally, I can't get on with the interface, primarily due to inconsistent scaling of windows elements and menus.
  Keyboard SD card not detected.

  Bluetooth drivers aren't correctly installed and likely need manual installation.
  The 5.8 kernel doesn't detect the (non-operational) webcam.

  Requires 6.2GB storage minimum

Lubuntu 20.10

• https://tosh.click/files-config/ISO
  

  Kernel 5.8.xx Looking pretty good and a reasonable alternative to Linux Mint Mate.
  As with most other distros, Lubuntu needs the isorespin treatment to add in a 32-bit loader.

  During installation, select the target partition, plus mount /boot/efi on the Windows Boot partition (don't format if you wish to keep Windows!)
  Volume function buttons don't work OOTB; install fnfxd (Toshiba laptop utilities)
  See the Tweaks section for screen sizing - it uses LXQt

  Consumes 5.6GB with a basic installation

Elementary OS 5.1 Stable 20200814

Sound device issue

Kernel 5.4.0-64-generic Boots up easily. Wireless works fine. Touchpad works great. Sound card detection is buggy though is eventually detected. Haven't heard anything yet. ;) Installation process defaults to placing the boot record at disc level, so this needs manually changed to partition 1 (Windows Boot Manager - EFI). During the install there are frequent timeouts on an i2c.designware device - this slows thing down a fair bit.
Quick boot up. Good welcome screen, offering to auto delete trash and temp files. Go to System Settings, Display and change Scaling Factor from LoDPI, to Pixel doubled. Go to Sound Settings and change the volume to 50%, after a few moments the sound device is detected, then readjust. Hotkeys for these don't work though brightness ones do.
Persistent error - "Baytrail Audio Port: AsoC: no backend DAIs enabled .." - so looks as though the sound drivers are incorrect. This is strange in that a 5 series kernel normally has no issues with sound.
5GB when installed.

Fedora Workstation Live 33-1.2

Too heavy on resources

Boots easily and screen gestures work quite well. Tap to click can be chosen in settings. Automated onscreen keyboard is welcomed.
Very heavy on resources however, with Gnome using up a substantial amount of RAM and little left for running programs.
Far too many locales are installed by default, taking up around 500MB of scarce space. Consumes 6GB of storage and a yum update wanted a further 1.1GB to download (this will vary)

Tested only from USB

These have been booted up from USB and generally are 64-bit distros that include a 32-bit EFI. In other words, require the simplest method to boot up.

• Mageia 8 beta 2 Live Gnome x86_64
  Way back, I used Mandrake, then Mandriva as my main desktop Linux OS. This successor looks promising and (limited) screen gestures appear to be operable. Tap to click doesn't work by default but two-finger scrolling does - there's maybe a setting for it. The GUI is a bit 'laggy' though running from USB won't help. Haven't determined the installation space requirements, yet - the ISO is 3.2GB, so it doesn't look promising.

• Netrunner Core 20.01 Ran OK from USB - nothing great.
  It is, however, a small distro at 1.3GB on the USB pendrive.

  Even though it explicitly asks for a /boot/efi partition (mmcblk1p1), it wouldn't write to the target properly.

Command 'grub-install --target=i386-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=debian --force' returned non-zero exit status 1.

grub-install: error: /usr/lib/grub/i386-efi/modinfo.sh doesn't exist. Please specify --target or --directory.
The traceback goes to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/bootloader/main.py lines 285,441 and 444
Likely needs manual intervention, as mentioned for ArchLinux in some forum posts.

• Lubuntu 18.0.4 with Unity
  Screen tearing issues. Sound undetected.

  May be other issues. Probably the older kernel is problematic and requires manually installing drivers.

• Gentoo admincd-amd64-20210120
  No live CD/DVD currently.
  Boots fine to a command line prompt

Rejected

• Deepin Desktop Community 1010 amd64
  No Live preview. Wants 15GB just to install - I don't want a Windows 10 clone!!
• BlissOS
  I thought it might be an interesting diversion, being android in nature. I couldn't get any of the boot options to work, each giving an "Input device failure" (or similar wording). The keyboard worked though I suspect the touchpad was the issue.
• GalliumOS 3.1 Baytrail
  I couldn't get it to boot at all.

Candidates

• Debian live 10.7.0 Gnome
• LMDE (Linux Mint) 4 Cinnamon

---

If you appreciate the information/files provided on this site, then please...

---