Intel Bay Trail and Cherry Trail Android tablet platform quirks
Board-specific glue that lets Linux run on cheap Intel Atom (Bay Trail and Cherry Trail) Android tablets sold roughly 2014-2017, including Acer Iconia, Asus ME176C and TF103C, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 and Yoga Book, Nextbook Ares 8, and Medion models. It works around Android-only ACPI tables so buttons, sensors, and power management work under normal Linux.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as a legacy niche. The hardware stopped shipping around 2017 and deployment numbers are small, but Hans de Goede was still landing substantive additions as recently as August 2025, including expanded Acer support, so the code is actively maintained and gives owners of otherwise-stranded Android tablets a path to current Linux. There is no replacement for these per-board quirks, so removing it would simply break the devices it rescues.
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_X86_ANDROID_TABLETS is current through 6.19/7.0-rc+HEAD, confirming the driver is upstream and actively buildable rather than abandoned.
- spinics.net
A 2025-08-31 patch from Hans de Goede restructures the directory to add more Acer support, which is direct evidence of ongoing upstream maintenance and no current removal push.
- phoronix.com
The driver exists to support quirky Intel-based Android tablets with broken ACPI/DSDT tables, i.e. a legacy compatibility niche rather than a current mainstream platform.
- phoronix.com
Coverage of early follow-up work describes the supported devices as aging consumer tablets and shows the use case is rehabilitation of old hardware, not new-volume deployment.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver, not an early-exit case. Local `exec_command` inspection showed DMI matches and BIOS dates concentrated in 2014-2017 (Acer Iconia, Asus ME176C/TF103C, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2/Yoga Book, Nextbook Ares 8, Medion, etc.) and local `git log` showed substantive fixes/additions in 2024-2025, including Acer support. All cited URLs were obtained via `web.search_query`: LKDDb for upstream presence, spinics for recent patch traffic, and Phoronix for device-class context. No removal discussion surfaced; the evidence points to a still-maintained but legacy/low-deployment quirk driver with no natural replacement beyond keeping these board-specific quirks in-tree.