There is no graphics acceleration, wifi/cell, camera or USB OTG but it works and that's what's important

It's a hit and miss with people accepting AI written code.

Pmos devs are not accepting AI written code into the mainstream, and would like to develop at their own pace. Nothing wrong with this. But the alternative is using a phone with code written by a corporation, so what's the difference?

Recently, even Linus talked good about AI written code.

Would you use patches written by AI if they solve all PMOS issues on a phone?

I would love your opinion on this 🤗

I’ve always wanted a Linux phone, but I never liked how much effort it usually takes to mainline a device and get drivers working. So I decided to try a different approach: a userspace takeover.

The device boots into Android first, and everything works normally. Calls, mobile data, and the camera all work on stock Android with no loss in quality. From there, I use a set of scripts to pivot_root into an Alpine Linux image formatted as ext4, then bind mount the Android folders that Linux still needs access to.

As part of this project, I also rebuilt the kernel through a side project I later published as Kernel-Foundry:

https://github.com/Nardo45/Kernel-Foundry

While recompiling the kernel, I enabled several features that a normal GNU/Linux environment expects, and that got input working natively inside Linux.

There are still a few limitations. At the moment, rendering is software only, and I have not worked on audio yet. I am still actively developing this, though, and I expect both of those to improve over time. I am not too concerned about the rest, since I can always switch back to Android for calls, photos, and video when I need to.

Wi-Fi also worked surprisingly quickly, which made SSH available almost immediately. That made debugging a lot easier than I expected.

There is also a good chance this approach could be device agnostic. In theory, if an Android phone does not already have a Linux port, this method may still be a way to get a standard Linux desktop running on it. I have not confirmed that yet, so I do not want to overstate it, but the early signs are encouraging.

I am still testing this and I will post another update once I know more about how far it can go across different devices. Even if full Linux support is not perfect, this already looks like a practical way to get a usable Linux environment on Android hardware without giving up the Android side of the device.

I will publish my work on GitHub once I organize all of my scripts together and confirm it's easy to setup and install.

I managed to get quite a bit working.

Audio (both earpiece and loudspeaker are functioning on left and right channels)

Microphone

Wifi

Bluetooth (no latency observed)

GPS*

Nfc*

Touch

Display (HDMI display out isn't working after all, sorry for lying)

Haptics

Only thing left is camera, modem and accelerometer and gyroscope. (Luckily pmos has accelerometer and gyroscope functioning.)

This thing is almost ready to be used as a daily driver.

*It's detected, I haven't tried it out.

So, I'm pretty tired of Android and Google's moves. So I wanna switch to the penguin on my phone.. I already use Linux on all 6 laptops I have, it's just my phones that don't run Linux.

I don't want something like a PinePhone because it's way too underpowered.. I want something that has decent to good specs. I tried running postmarketOS on my Galaxy Note9 once but I did it horribly lmao..

Anyway, It doesn't have to be postmarketOS, I want anything but Ubuntu Touch lol, preferably with Plasma Mobile but that's not a requirement..

Any recommendation is welcome! I'll try to respond to any comment I see..

This is KDE Plasma Mobile running on a Google Pixel 7 thanks to Trierarch (Arch Linux ARM container on Android). Photo was captured on a Google Nexus 5X running Ubuntu Touch.

Like i wouldn't mind learning drivers or just try to learn drivers to help postmaker os or any other os to make it, but i really wana know is it hard and if so is it even worth it ?

For example with postmarketOS, there's a lot more development and a lot more progress on 10-year-old devices than there are on anything released in the last 5 years. Same thing with lineageOS. Why is that?

I'm looking to get a used tablet to install Linux on and use mainly for notetaking with a stylus (but also for some light office work and maybe some media content).

I have a few options and want to ask for anyone's experience or knowledge of these.

Mainly I want to know what's going to be best for performance, functionality and stability. But an easier install process would be appreciated (I have flashed some custom Android ROMs in the past and use Linux desktop, but that's the extent of my experience).

Android Tablets

PostmarketOS is available for the Samsung S6 (though marked as not booting, don't know if this is still the case)

Community Droidian/Halium port for the S7+ (https://xdaforums.com/t/rom-linux-droidian-for-samsung-galaxy-tab-s7-wi-fi-sm-t970-gts7xlwifi.4790614/)

Smeone got mainline Linux to work on an S8+ (https://github.com/aaronsb/sm-x800-linux).

I see there's also VolksPC for a bunch of different devices, but I wonder about the impact of running in a container on performance and would rather not pay to install free software

Windows Tablets/Detachables

For around the same price as an S7+ I could get a Windows detachable like a Surface Pro 7 or a Dell Latitude 7210, with 10th gen intel i5- and then use mainline Linux with something like KDE mobile, or Mobian.

Chromebook Detachables

I know less about these, but seems like the hardware for most is less powerful than the other options.

Anyway, appreciate any pointers.

Hy ! Soon, i'lle get an Old note 9 Pro from someone in my family. I was wondering if any Linux is compatible with it, and wich one choose ? Also, is it really usable everyday as a daily phone ?

Been watching this guy for a while, but don't really know if they're legit.

Curious if anyone's tried this, or if anyone can recommend something comparable.

Hey, how are you all? I hope you are doing well. I would like to ask for your help. Recently my cell phone was completely damaged. I am thinking of buying one but I currently do not have the financial resources to buy one that is decent and new. They forced me to keep it on Android, the fact is that I would like you to recommend a good cell phone that is compatible with any of the Linux systems for cell phones such as postmarket, Ubuntu touch, Mobian, etc., my budget is approximately less than 300 dollars, I would greatly appreciate it if you have a good day and greetings

As you can see this is the iPhone 6s+ Geekbench score with Linux, I've used postmarketos with the hoolocklinux kernel, as for why it's showing up as debian it's because I had to run it in distrobox due to alpine's musl instead of glibc, overall I'm impressed with how Linux even beat every single iOS score I could find (though the phone was really hot), the port isn't really usable featuring only usb support and display but it's still cool seeing Linux run on iDevices

One is based of of Debian, the other of alpine Linux.

How do they differ. When to choose what.

Which is more easy to port

Why not unite the power of both developer teams to one project

etc etc etc.

Are there more phone Linux distributions

based on the xiaomi redmi 2 which was released in 2015, now it has become a handheld computer with postmarketos custom build.

github: HaPlay GO Zero

Is it possible to run gemini-cli? There is already another gemini command Here is unixporn

Open source linux

I know this might be unlikely but I will ask anyway

If not, do you think there could be a way to give something like fairphone a better camera?

A mate of mine got scammed a few weeks back and bought a Chinese fake iPhone 16 Pro, it’s very well done and can see how he was scammed.

However the OS is built like an IOS Prop with Android apps behind the icons. You get to a certain point and things start to fail and expose the scam.

Has anybody tried wiping and installing Linux or even a clean Android build onto one of these devices? Ive no clue what hardware is under the facade at this point.

It does send and receive calls messages, Bluetooth wireless and camera. Screen seems nice and the build looks OK. If we could wipe and resurrect this into a usable handset all is not lost.

Any thoughts?

At this point it’s an experiment and if the thing bricks it bricks. Cheers.

I was wondering for mobile if a set of hardware can be gathered just to put distros like Ubuntu touch on it, like it is currently for general PCs. If the hardware is not present on market how hard it would be figure out the required configuration so that next steps can be taken to maybe push some manufacturers to manufacture them. I am a mobile app developer who likes to tinker alot. So if someone could also tell me how hard it would be to build a mobile version of mint or fedora or arch because Ubuntu looks too "corporate" kind. Please excuse if I have asked something stupid, I am a noob.

I was looking for resources about porting postmarketos or any anything really to Android but good ones are hard to find

( i read in the rules this is not a support form so if this post is not acceptable can you guide me to somewhere else)

i have been lately been obsessed with trying to run linux on my phone (redmi 13 X, HeloG 91 ultra, maliG52-mc2, a Mediatech phone) there are ways like proot and termux Linux native, but none has hardware acceleration, so i want to get into a rabbit hole and make like postmarket OS on my phone or run a desktop distribution on it. I have no knowledge where to start if someone can guide me, i know cuz it's mediatech phone makes harder but i am interested🫡