Give up while you can! The current state of Linux support on some of the Bay Trail or Cherry Trail devices is to an extent, broken (nor has it never been in a satisfactory state).

Installation steps of AOSC OS on these devices are generally identical as with any other AMD64/x86_64 systems, except that:

• Some eMMC-based devices uses /dev/mmcblkNpN for storage devices.
• Extra steps needs to be taken for specific devices.
• Sometimes you simply can't get AOSC OS to work.

Forenotes§

• Any commands listed below starting with a # means that the commands are run as the root user.

Workarounds and Quirks§

This section contains device specific tweaks and workarounds. Use these to your own advantage, if it ain't broken, don't do it.

System locks up after starting to boot with GRUB§

On certain Bay Trail devices it is possible that the device will freeze after starting to boot the Kernel, showing loading initrd.... A workaround is to go to the "boot manager" or "boot device menu" first when you power on your device, then select "AOSC-GRUB" from there.

KMS doesn't work on Dell Venue 8 Pro§

On a Dell Venue 8 Pro, it is possible that enabling KMS (kernel mode settings) will result in a blank screen during the start up process. While you can specify nomodeset in the Kernel parameter to work around this issue, with no KMS available, desktops like Plasma and GNOME will have really bad performance, and the touch screen will not work correctly.

A "proper" way to work around this issue is to edit the /etc/default/grub file, in the lines saying:

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
#GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console

Uncomment the second line shown above, and regenerate your GRUB configuration with:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Slow Mo-o-o-o-tion§

Sounds funny, but not funny when you use your device with slow motion I assume? This issue is very easy to fix, as this is a quirk in Kernel clocksource detection. To work around this issue, edit the /etc/default/grub file, in the line saying:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet rw"

Change it into:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet rw clocksource=tsc hpet=off"

And regenerate your GRUB configuration with:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg