While many of us are enamored with pushing the limits with the latest hardware, there’s still something to be said about those older handhelds. Take the AYN Odin, for example, released in 2022 and powered by the Snapdragon 845. If you’re still holding onto one, it might be time to dust it off as it’s now officially supported by REG Linux.
For the unaware, REG Linux has been around in the custom firmware scene for a few years, aiming to “work as a ‘drop-in’ replacement for batocera.linux while being way lighter and vastly improving performance.” What started as seemingly just as a side project has evolved as the firmware now supports almost 200 devices, at the time of this writing.
Needless to say, we were still rather surprised to see the announcement come via the official AYN Discord. The Odin 2 series quickly turned into community darlings, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 leaving the Snapdragon 845 in the dust. And now we’re onto the Odin 3, even though that’s taken a bit of a back seat to the AYN Thor. Nevertheless, there’s no such thing as having too many firmware choices, so we’re happy to see REG Linux come to the original Odin.
You can find the full announcement below:
It’s exciting to share with you guys that Linux on Odin is a thing now, thanks to the amazing work by the REG team!
If you still have the OG AYN Odin Base and Pro (SD845), now you can install REG Linux and have it boot from your SD card. You can learn more about this custom Linux OS by checking out their official site and wiki site for more questions and resources.
Attached in this post is the .elf file, and a link to the WIP kernel can be found here: Ver. 7.2.8
The wiki provides detailed instructions on how to install it, but if you are familiar with the process, this is the command line to run:
fastboot flash abl abl_signed-odin.elfPlease note: This only works for the Odin M0 model. You can check if your Odin is the right one by going to the About section for your Odin in the Settings menu.
Still missing: HDMI out (is being work on) and samba shares atm are not working but this is system wide and not odin specific. Sound will come up on second boot as the system needs to settle
