Open-source build system enables Debian Linux on Rockchip-powered Doogee U10 tablet
The GitHub-hosted project allows users to boot Debian 12 from an SD card on the $80 Android tablet, leveraging the Rockchip NPU for faster local large language model execution.
Developer tech4bot has released an open-source build system, rkdebian, on GitHub, enabling the installation of Debian 12 Bookworm on the Doogee U10 Android tablet. Powered by the Rockchip RK3562 System on Chip (SoC), the project allows users to boot a full Linux environment from an SD card without unlocking the bootloader or modifying the device’s internal storage. Removing the SD card allows the tablet to revert to its stock Android operating system, preserving the original factory configuration.
The build system was reverse-engineered from scratch, utilising no Board Support Package (BSP), vendor documentation, or official support. Development assistance was provided by AI models including Claude, Codex, and Antigravity (Google Gemini), with Firefly RK3562 open-source repositories used as a starting point. The current public build is marked as a pre-release, dated May 14, 2026, and requires an x86-64 Linux host machine, with Debian or Ubuntu recommended for the build process.
A key feature of the resulting Debian image is its support for local Large Language Model (LLM) inference on the RK3562 Neural Processing Unit (NPU) using Rockchip's RKLLM stack. Benchmarks indicate that the Qwen3-0.6B model runs significantly faster on this hardware for local NPU inference compared to standard CPU execution, positioning the tablet as a viable platform for on-device AI tasks without cloud dependency.
The image includes a service, rk-power-profile-sync.service, that maps Phosh power modes to cpufreq policy, with configuration available in /etc/default/rk-power-profile-map. An update mechanism is also included, producing an update.tar.gz file that can be applied via USB, SSH, or file manager. The system automatically detects and applies these updates on reboot, logging progress and errors to /var/log/rk-update.log, with failed packages moved to a separate directory to ensure the system boots normally.
Third-party components included in the repository are subject to various licenses. These include proprietary ARM Mali GPU packages, Rockchip MPP packages licensed under Apache 2.0, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers from Seekwave Technology Co. Ltd released under the GNU General Public License v2.0. The Linux kernel, U-Boot, and Debian packages retain their respective upstream licenses, ensuring compliance with open-source standards while leveraging proprietary hardware acceleration.
