That is a one year old post that also never got substanciated... and anyways, the entire point is to wipe windows and thus also this "worm".

Stop spreading Windows snakeoil FUD and use Linux :)

The official Ubuntu-Mate 19.10 images for the GPD-Pocket work out of the box for the GPD Win1 as well:
https://ubuntu-mate.org/gpd-pocket/

Only problems I could find are that the touchscreen and SD cards bigger than 8GB aren't working, but that seems to be the case with all more recent stock Linux kernels.

You might still have to downgrade your BIOS though... didn't test that.

Last edited by Julius on 8 Dec 2019 at 1:02 pm UTC

Also found this:
https://github.com/steward-fu/gpdwin

The 4.18.0 Kernel .debs you can download as parts of the utils package work with Ubuntu and allow large SD card usage. Also no touchscreen support on my Ubuntu 18.04 installation with this Kernel though.

But KDE runs very nicely on the GPDWin was well, just made the switch. Less memory required than Gnome3.

Hey Julius,

I see you are still posting on this thread, I recently installed Ubuntu MATE on my GPD WIN 1 and pretty much everything works (even touch screen) great from their official GPD Pocket ISO, except the SD CARD reader. (Currently MATE 19.10)

I'm pretty new to linux and have not been able to update the Kernel to get this to work.

Ive tried online suggestions :
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

and running - uname –sr shows me Linux 5.3.0-29-generic.

if I go down to 4.18.0 Kernel would i lose functionality ?

I'm not quite sure I understand how or where to point this update command to look at a specific kernel that has these sdcard drivers.

any advice or guidance you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Also found this:
https://github.com/steward-fu/gpdwin

The 4.18.0 Kernel .debs you can download as parts of the utils package work with Ubuntu and allow large SD card usage. Also no touchscreen support on my Ubuntu 18.04 installation with this Kernel though.

But KDE runs very nicely on the GPDWin was well, just made the switch. Less memory required than Gnome3.

Hmm, in that case my touchscreen might be broken :( Be careful with the display hinge, when I opened my GPDWin to replace the battery (highly recommended, the default one increases in size after a while) I noticed that it was completely broken and detached internally. I managed to somewhat fix it and loosen the hinge to have less pressure on it, but I guess the touchscreen is gone then...

Not sure if downgrading the Kernel will work, but I would guess yes as version 4.9 LTS is also still in the Ubuntu 19.10 repo. I am still using 18.04 on my GPDWin and there the modified 4.18 Kernel works great. Edit: I am on Mesa 19.2.8 display drivers. Really cutting edge Mesa versions will probably need a newer Kernel otherwise functionality should be pretty much the same.

To install it manually you need to use the "dpkg -i" command. Afterwards you need restart and check in the GRUB boot-menu if the correct kernel for booting is selected. It is likely that the default is the newer one, so if you want to boot into the one with the SD card fix you need to select it before booting.
I guess if everything goes well, you can just uninstall the newer default Kernel or look up how to change the GRUB boot order.

Last edited by Julius on 29 Jan 2020 at 6:00 pm UTC

Thanks Julius,

Ive watched some videos on updating the Kernel (Apologies, I come from a windows background so still early learning)

I still dont understand how to download/obtain the 4.9 LTS Kernel that has the SDCARD drivers and then 'install' them.

I assume I need the '.deb' files and then run the 'sudo dpkg -i kernelfilename.deb'

Then restart and edit GRUB, Is that right ?

So anyway, I looked here:
https://github.com/petrmatula190/gpd-pocket-kernel

But this looks to be the 2018 stuff ?
Should I just run the following :

git clone https://github.com/petrmatula190/gpd-pocket-kernel
cd gpd-pocket-kernel/
chmod +x install-kernel.sh build-kernel.sh
./install-kernel.sh

Then run this :

cd gpd-pocket-kernel/
git pull
./install-kernel.sh

Thanks for your help on this !

No compiling a Kernel might be a bit too complicated.

What I did was download the util.7z from here: https://github.com/steward-fu/gpdwin/releases/tag/v1.0

and extracted the two .deb files in there (linux-image and linux-headers something). Then I used dpkg to install first the headers and then the image (which is the kernel v4.18).

Afterwards restart and select the other kernel in GRUB.

Last edited by Julius on 29 Jan 2020 at 7:18 pm UTC

Hi Julius,

Thanks so much for all your help. After much work I was finally able to get the kernel installed, use Grub to switch to it under advanced settings and get the SDCARD formatted and detected.

Sadly though, it seems that using the 4.18 Kernel blows away the WiFi driver and screen brightness is set to 100% and trying many things in the GUI options does nothing to reduce the brightness.

Also, running updates or scanning for other hardware (using USB to Ethernet for internet) shows no driver for the wifi card.

I may have found a fix for the wifi but no idea what to do with the brightness.

Are you able to explain to me why the SDCARD driver has to be part of the kernel ? I mean, I don't understand why it can be a simple driver update or driver file that Windows would have ? I am not able to find much information about why this specifically and not other hardware devices have software drivers to better educate myself.

Thanks for all your help anyway.

Hmm, that is odd. WiFi and screen brightness work fine here. Maybe you got a newer hardware revision?

Linux is a monolithic Kernel system, meaning basically all drivers must be at least partially in the Kernel. In most cases that is a big advantage and the reason why it just works on so much diverse hardware. In this specific case sadly you see the downside of it.

Technically it is also just a bug that needs fixing. SD cards up to 8GB (32GB?) or so should work fine with the stock kernel.

Last edited by Julius on 30 Jan 2020 at 10:05 am UTC

Thanks for the explanation !

I did manage to get my hands on some 4, 8 & 16GB SD Cards but none of them are detected or at least, nothing seems to happen when I slot them in.

I tried sudo su fdisk -l , with and without the SD Card in the list is the same.

I did find this recent update/feature request
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/gpd-pocket-image-with-gpdwin1/20740

Do you think this will be something that just gets patched into updates ?

Thanks for everything Julius.

Ah, yeah that feature request is from me actually.

When I was on an older stock Kernel the 8GB SD card I had worked, although sometimes it required a few attempts to get recognized. But maybe this got even more broken with later releases or your hardware is indeed slightly different.

Hmm, but maybe check the formatting of these cards. Exfat might not work out of the box.

Sorry to not be of more help for now, but I hope you can enjoy your GPDWin1 with Linux never the less.

Oh Absolutely, I've already been really enjoying it. Thanks to Ubuntu only really taking up around 5GB (compared to Windows 30+) The onboard 64GB is actually pretty good, and since there are a ton of Steam games native to Linux along with Proton & GOG having linux games. Include all the free/cheap itch.io : having a handheld x86 based machine is just amazing. I'm very happy with Linux running on this even if I never get the SD card reader working.

Updating to Ubuntu 22.04 worked fine (which stock 5.15 Kernel), but I decided to try switching it to Manjaro to "SteamDeckify" it. It seems to boot the Manjaro install USB fine, so I will give it a try later today.

This seems to be a nice guide to get the SteamDeck UI to work on Manjaro:

https://gist.github.com/red-dragon65/c7771a9347840fbcf5528f1528769836

EDIT: ehh, I forgot that these Cherry Trail devices seem to have 32bit UEFI which makes installing normal 64bit Manjaro a chore... but I only remembered after wiping the build in emmc etc. and having the install fail :( I guess this will take a bit longer to fix.

Edit2: Ok I guess the easiest way will be to reinstall the Ubuntu Mate for GPDPocket image:
https://ubuntu-mate.org/download/gpd_pocket/
And then follow this guide to get Manjaro installed (Edit doesn't work for me):
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/howto-installation-of-manjaro-on-32bit-efi-64bit-cpu-systems/93848

A bit annoying that I messed this up because I knew previously that this was an issue *face palm*

Edit3: that Manjaro Forum tutorial didn't work, but after installing the Ubuntu Mate version I could over-write the Installatiion via the official Manjaro boot iso by selecting manual partition and there mount the existing fat32 as /boot/efi and the rest mounted as /
Works now, but I still need to look into getting Gamescope and the SteamDeck UI to work.

Last edited by Julius on 17 Apr 2022 at 9:53 pm UTC

Fedora 38 beta installs and runs in the GPD Win 1 out of the box without any issues, quite a surprise after the installation issues I had with other distributions.

I may be a few years late here, but I'd like to note that GloriousEggroll's Nobara Linux and Garuda Linux have both run flawlessly on my OG GPD Win Max and my 7840U GPD Win Mini with no screen issues at the end of 2023. As of the beginning of 2024, My GPD Win Mini is running flawlessly with Nobara Linux and I have Steam set to open in Big Picture Mode once I get to the desktop. Never need to leave Controller mode.

If you're still running the OG GPD Win, I'd recommend a lighter DE release of Garuda.