Installing Ubuntu Touch on your rooted Nexus 7

If you haven’t rooted your Nexus 7 yet, you can follow my previous post and do that easily. This guide assumes you have connected your device with your PC and can use ADB to push commands over to your device. If this doesn’t make any sense, read my previous guide.
In this post I am about to write how can you easily install Ubuntu Touch on your Nexus 7. Before we do that, you can read this article on why shouldn’t install Ubuntu Touch: 4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Install Ubuntu Touch on Your Nexus | OMG! Ubuntu!
But since we are dual booting the Ubuntu with Android, the reasons stated above won’t matter!
1. Installing Custom Recovery (Flashing TWRP Multi ROM)
Using adb commands the next you need to do is to flash a version of TWRP recovery which is tweaked for MultiROM support. The file I downloaded was “TWRP_multirom_grouper_20131022.img” from here: [MOD][OCT 22] MultiROM v16a (fix SuperSU for secondary ROMs) – xda-developers, and used following command to flash it.
fastboot flash recovery d:\path-to-recovery\TWRP_multirom_grouper_20131022.img

2. Flash Kernel with kexec-hardboot patch (We are getting closer)
The next thing which is required to dual boot is to flash a Kernel with kexec-hardboot patch and the file varies by the version of Android you have installed on your N7. I flashed, “kernel_kexec_430.zip” (get from above link) from TWRP recovery’s “Flash ZIP” option (not using adb).
3. Download Ubuntu Touch image (The Ubuntu Goodness!)
The final step is to flash the Ubuntu image from MultiROM, so that we can have dual boot. Latest built of Ubuntu Touch can be found here: Index of /ubuntu-touch/daily-preinstalled.
This steps requires to download two files and flashing them together from the Recovery. So I downloaded following two files:
trusty-preinstalled-touch-armel+grouper.zip, and
trusty-preinstalled-touch-armhf.zip.
(grouper is a code name for Nexus 7)
4. Copy the above files to device:
Next thing is to push these two files using adb commands:
adb push D:\path-to-first-file\trusty-preinstalled-touch-armel+grouper.zip /sdcard/
adb push D:\path-to-second-file\trusty-preinstalled-touch-armhf.zip /sdcard/

5. Flashing Ubuntu Touch (take a deep breath):
To flash these two files you will need to goto Recovery -> Advanced -> Multirom -> Flash files. And select both the above files. Flashing it takes a few seconds. And once its done, reboot the device from options.

Congratulations. If you have done everything correctly, you should have a multi boot menu when you reboot the device, from where you can select which OS to boot into. There should be two options, “Internal” which will open Android and other with the name of the file you flashed, which will boot into Ubuntu Touch. You can even rename these from the recovery and multi ROM menu.
Following are some images of Ubuntu Touch on my N7:



4 thoughts on “Installing Ubuntu Touch on your rooted Nexus 7

    1. I am fine. Apologies for answering late. Need to fix the email notifications for new comments. 😛
      As far as installing Ubuntu Touch on your Kindle Fire is concerned, there is a very detailed guide at XDA. If you have a Kindle Fire HD 7″ then follow this guide:
      http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2271909
      Concepts of fastboot and adb shell can be borrowed from my previous guide: http://vineetkumar.me/2013/10/rooting-nexus-7-unlocking-bootloader/
      Give the guide at XDA a thorough read and attempt to install UT on your KFHD only after understanding the risk (and sleepless moments) involved.

    1. I haven’t been able to explore this area. When I was last using Ubuntu Touch it was quite buggy.
      And as of today, Canonical have removed the support for UT for 2012 version of Nexus 7. So you may not be able to get the latest version of UT anymore too.
      I just hope after they finalize UT for 2013 model of N7, someone ports it to our model!

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