Installing PrimeOS - Multiboot with Windows (10) and Linux (Ubuntu MATE) on Toshiba Dynabook R734/K Laptop

Who want to run Android apps/games on our large desktop or laptop screen? Me! Previously, I had installed BlissOS, one of “Android on PC” (Android-x86) OS on my Toshiba Dynabook R734/K laptop. Now I found a better Android PC OS in my opinion, it is PrimeOS.

Licosha — PrimeOS is an Android-x86 Operating System (OS) designed for computers like laptop or desktop allowing us to run a full-fledged Android OS with it’s fast collections of games and applications in a desktop computer User Interface (UI).

While PrimeOS is a general purposes Android PC OS for everyday life just like on our Android phone we can use on our PC, it is claimed as optimized for gaming making running Android games on PC a breeze experience with optimized systems and helpfull built-in tools.

But on this post, I will share not about just installing PrimeOS normally, but to install it alongside existed Windows 10 and Ubuntu MATE (Linux) on my Dynabook R734/K laptop.

PrimeOS Android PC OS info

name	PrimeOS
official website	primeos.in
OS base	Android / Android-x86
description	PrimeOS is optimized, stable and smooth Android PC for both games and applications. With PrimeOS, you can achieve the same gaming experience as a smartphone or console gaming.

PrimeOS Android PC OS features highlight

PrimeOS unmaximized window of Android Settings on my Dynabook R734/K laptop

PrimeOS desktop overview on my Dynabook R734/K laptop

Quoted from it’s official website:

Unrivalled Experience: Easy to install, become a gamer at warp speed.
Superior Performance: Stronger and smoother gameplay experience,use Multi-instances to play with friends.
New Prime OS 0.5.0: Play mobile games on PC with powerful PrimeOS.
Keyboard Control: One click to open keyboard mapping, get a real PC-like gaming experience by personalisingthe controls on your device.
Desktop Interface: Taskbar, Start Menu, Multiple Apps at one time. Experience Android like any other desktop OS.

Steps installing PrimeOS – multiboot with Windows and Linux (Example on Dynabook R734/K laptop)

PrimeOS version: 2.1.0 (iso type)
installed OS: Ubuntu MATE 20 & Windows 10
bootloader: GRUB
device: Toshiba Dynabook R734/K

Steps:

Download the PrimeOS iso file from it’s official website: primeos.in/download/ and make an installation or bootable media of it, for example using Rufus (recommended) or Ventoy.
Prepare a new empty partition on our laptop’s hard drive where the PrimeOS will be installed. For example we can use built-in tool on Windows “Disk Info” to easily split and make a new partiton on our hard drive, usually the partition for an Android-x86 OS should have a size around ±40 GB or more recommended. Give the new partition a proper label like “PrimeOS” or something like that so we can easily distinguish it.
It’s a good idea to disconnect all external devices especially storage devices before hand to ease the installation process (avoiding formatting/erasing wrong storage/disk).
Enter Dynabook R734/K “Boot Menu” (BIOS menu): Restart laptop, then when the power LED turned on (but the screen not turned on yet), repeatedly press the F12 key until it entered the boot menu/BIOS menu.
The installation media drive should be detected in the Boot Menu list, we can just select it to directly boot into it. Alternatively, we can adjust the boot menu to prioritize the installation media so it can boot it automatically if the installation media is detected when we restart the laptop by setting it:
1. On the Boot Menu main menu, choose “Enter Setup”.
2. On the side menu, choose “Advanced”, scroll down and choose → “Change Boot Order”.
3. For example here I use a USB storage stick where the PrimeOS has been burned using Rufus is in, so make “USB Memory” at the top of the “Boot Priority Options”. Don’t forget to click “OK”.
4. On the side menu, choose “Exit” → “Exit Saving Changes”.
Now we are on the PrimeOS installation media boot menu, select “Installation — Install PRIMEOS to hard disk” to begin installing PrimeOS.
Next, the installation wizard of PrimeOS will appear. The first one is we choose the partition where PrimeOS will be installed in it. Then on the “Choose Filesystem” window, the best one will be ext4. But, Since my PC hard disk is still partitioned in MBR (BIOS boot mode), here I use ntfs instead.
On the GRUB bootloader installation choice, I choose “Skip” since my PC has already using GRUB bootloader and I will add the PrimeOS boot entry to the GRUB bootloader later manually.
The installation wizard will begin creating the system directory of the PrimeOS, since I’m choosed ntfs as the partition format, it is actually creating system.img with size of 3507384 <abbr title="kilo Bytes">kB</abbr>, rounded around 3.5 GB, but I like to round it more to count is as 4 GB.
Again because I am choosed ntfs as the partition format, this time we will be creating another disk image where the userdata will reside, a.k.a the data.img. For data.img size, the partition size I am using to install this PrimeOS is 32 GB and the PrimeOS system.img created is 4 GB rounded up roughly, I want to use all the left space on the partition as much as possible, then it is means the space left is 32GB - 4GB = 28GB. But I want to take extra measures just in case by substract it by 2 GB, so I only want to use 26 GB instead. So for the data.img size I want in MB is 26 * 1024 = 26624.
After the data.img has been created, we won’t boot the newly installed PrimeOS yet, but we will add it first to the installed GRUB bootloader, in my case alongside installed Ubuntu MATE and Windows 10. Reboot my laptop back to BIOS Boot Menu (see step 4 above), unplug the installation media, reorder the boot priority back to prioritize hard drive (see step 5 above), then reboot to a Linux OS (in my case Ubuntu MATE).

Adding PrimeOS boot entry to GRUB

OS used: Ubuntu MATE
app used: Grub Customizer

Steps:

Launch Grub Customizer app.
Click “Paper plus” icon on the toolbar of Grub Customizer to add new boot entry to the GRUB.
On the “Name” input, fill it with proper name, like “PrimeOS 2.1.0”.
On the “Type” select, choose “Other”.
Next, on the “Boot sequence” textarea, fill it with the boot script which I got originally from the Android-x86 project (this PrimeOS based on) with a little bit adjustments:
```
set root='(hd0,3)'
linux /android-2.1.0/kernel quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.selinux=permissive acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode SRC=/android-2.1.0
initrd /android-2.1.0/initrd.img
```
- 0: It is the hard disk position where the PrimeOS installed, in my case I only have one hard disk, 0 means it is the first/main hard disk.
- 3: It is the partition number where the PrimeOS installed.
- android-2.1.0: The directory created at the root of the partition when PrimeOS is installed, where the PrimeOS files resides. We can get this value easily by browsing to the partition where the PrimeOS installed using a file manager.
Click “OK”, then click “Save” on the Grub Customizer toolbar to save the boot entry to the GRUB bootloader.
Restart our PC. The next time we reboot our PC, we should see the PrimeOS entry we just added in the GRUB bootloader menu.