I am considering to order an MNT Pocket Reform. It seems the MNT Pocket Reform is supposed to support other Linux distributions besides the pre-installed Debian. However, I did not find any detailed information about the support for other distributions - Arch Linux support for MNT Pocket Reform seems to indicate that quite some manual work is needed.
I’d be interested in particular in Ubuntu. Is Ubuntu arm64 desktop supposed to just work?
Hi,
we don’t have an easy straight-forward way to deploy non-Debian Linux distros on MNT (Pocket) Reform yet, as the following issues are unsolved and need to be done manually at the moment:
reform-hw-setup that does some post-boot hardware fixups, which is not strictly necessary though.reform2-lpc-dkms package. It provides the means for battery percentage/status reporting and the poweroff command. You can probably install this on Ubuntu, but this is also untested.This seems similar to Raspberry Pi or Librem 5, which also have their own repositories for the Linux kernel.
In NixOS - a non-derived Linux distribution - one can source the kernel from such external repository.
I’m pretty sure somebody who actually owns an MNT has NixOS running.
Maybe the kernel setup for my - currently not working - Librem 5 can serve as inspiration:
boot = {
initrd = {
includeDefaultModules = false;
kernelModules = [ "bq25890_charger" "dwc3" "imx_dcss" "imx_sdma" "mtdblock" "ofpart" "phy_fsl_imx8mq_usb" "snvs_pwrkey" "spi_nor" "tps6598x" "xhci_hcd" "usbcore" "usb_storage" "uas" "xhci_plat_hcd" ];
};
kernelParams = [ "console=tty0" "ignore_loglevel" ];
kernelPackages = let
linux_librem5_pkg = { fetchgit, buildLinux, ... } @ args:
buildLinux (args // rec {
defconfig = "librem5_defconfig";
version = "6.6.32-librem5";
modDirVersion = version;
src = fetchgit {
# git ls-remote https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux.git | grep latest
url = "https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux.git";
rev = "870167351553569338eeba27f3e1abd9ce4a05be";
hash = "sha256-YNrQ1MljcCctreGHsijetX33p1kDnjOIKw++91zmvHk=";
};
kernelPatches = [];
#extraMeta.branch = "pureos/latest";
} // (args.argsOverride or {}));
linux_librem5 = pkgs.callPackage linux_librem5_pkg{};
in
pkgs.recurseIntoAttrs (pkgs.linuxPackagesFor linux_librem5);
loader = {
generic-extlinux-compatible.enable = true;
grub.enable = false;
};
};
Great - thanks a lot for the quick and thourough information! 
Yes, it’s not ideal. 
On top of what Lukas said, there is also the tweaks that we do in our initramfs and it’s important to boot with the correct kernel cmdline which differs depending on the CPU module.
If somebody wants to get Ubuntu running on the Reform I can help them do so.
At the risk of going off-topic, my impression is that user choice takes a slightly different form on Reform. Instead of lots of different flavours of essentially the same thing (linux distros) the focus seems to be a smaller number of niche operating systems.
Obviously it comes with factory installed linux because that is the mainstream system that most of us will be familiar with and can get up and running straight away. For those more adventurous there are off-the-peg images available for 9Front and Genode/Sculpt.
A more complete list of different operating systems on Reform (including linux flavours) is here.
Thanks for the pointer! A probably stupid question: That thread talks about the non-Pocket Reform. Is there a different w.r.t. operating system support betweent the non-Pocket and the Pocket Reform?
Not really as compatibility is mostly related to the modules, not the form factor.
One has to perform the same tricks regardless of the module. That is, integrate the kernel/devicetree changes from MNT in the OS of your choice.
Would it be possible for you to add devuan in the future? I prefer openrc over systemd, due to less bloat, but also speed and trustworthiness as well.
Hi @shockwave, if you want to see Devuan support, then please send patches. I can answer any question you have about how to do it. As a start, you could try replacing the debian mirrors by the devuan mirrors in the mkimage.sh script and see what happens. This will still pull packages from the MNT repo and those packages might or might not be compatible with devuan. If they are not, your next step is creating your own devuan mirror. Feel free to start a new thread to ask me anything about the reform-system-image, reform-tools and reform-debian-packages repos. Or mail me privately to josch@debian.org in case you are more comfortable with that. Thanks!
There are a few problems with your suggestion, one I have no idea how to do this, second, mnt-reform-tools depends on systemd alas…
Also, I am very new to using arm64 computers, I wouldn’t have a chance. This all feels overwhelming to be honest.
Even if there was a migration guide on dev1galaxy.org it still would be a problem for the mnt-reform-tools problem.
You have three and a half options to solve this:
debian/control and run dpkg-buildpackage to build a package that does not Depends on systemdsystemd and install it on your system to satisfy the dependency by running equivs-build against a control file that looks like this:Package: systemd
Version: 0.0~dummy
Architecture: all
reform-tools_1.64_arm64.changes in the same directorydpkg --force-depends -iWhere is this at these days? Is it likely that I’ll be able to install Ubunto on my Reform Next when it gets to me?
I’m just getting my Linux legs under me (switching from MacOS after 38 years) and I’ve been using Ubuntu on my classroom computers, learning how to get stuff working. I’d love to be able to apply my experience to a Reform Next.
(It looks like LMDE might be a relatively painless transition, though? I’d love thoughts on this.)
+1 to this. What is what remains as of today to get full mainline support? Is there a page for tracking? From my understanding, the “only” gap missing is full mainline support and the stuff that MNT reform tools do, that as far as I know, already has mantainers in some distros…
It could be cool to have a page with a list of supported or semi supported distros.
I originally started this thread and I now own a Pocket Reform. I am running the Debian distribution that came with it and I am quite happy with it. It is great to have a Linux distribution that is supported by the vendor and this great community. So I am happy with the status quo and IMHO I don’t see why I would switch to a different distribution. But maybe that is just me.
That’s totally fair—and honestly, it’s great to hear you’re having a good experience with Debian on the Pocket Reform. Having vendor support and a solid community behind your current setup is a big plus, especially on a device like this where hardware compatibility can be a bit more niche.
Debian is rock-solid, and for many use cases—especially if you value stability and long-term support—it just makes sense to stick with it. At the end of the day, the best distro is the one that works for you. No need to switch if your current setup does everything you need it to.
That said, it’s also fun to see what others are doing with different distros, whether for learning, experimentation, or chasing a specific feature. Personally, I am very deep in the world of atomic-distros, such as Fedora Silverblue. Other people may like to use NixOS. Debian is fine, though.
If you can build your own custom kernel with the MNT patches, then that’s likely.
The patches against the Linux kernel which are not yet upstream are tracked here with one directory per kernel version: linux · main · Reform / reform-debian-packages · GitLab
If you have the skillset, please help to upstream the patches that remain.
It has a maintainer in Debian and since reform-tools is in Debian, it is now also part of downstream distributions like Ubuntu: Ubuntu – Details of package reform-tools in plucky
If you like, feel free to create such a post and then I can mark it as “wiki” to allow collaboration. Would you like to maintain something like that?
You might want to switch to Debian stable once Trixie is out. 
Please note, that the MNT Reform default system images do run Debian unstable which has no long-term support. If you have a look at past forum threads, you might also see that stability might not be an attribute that everybody would agree on being descriptive for Debian unstable. 
We try to fix problems quickly but before a problem can be fixed it needs somebody to run into it and sometimes more than one person runs into it before we can fix it. See for example the screen issues that Pocket Reform users recently had after upgrading to 6.14.
Hey there 
Since Debian doesn’t support all packages for the hyprland compositor ecosystem (even on Trixie), I’ll try my luck switching to NixOS after doing some testing.
I hope I’ll be able to add some experiences (and hopefully also some code) so the community can learn and profit from my struggles 
Cheers, Triss
When I receive my machine, I would not mind to maintain something like that.