Because Im currently typing this on mine (1 GiB, android install) and everything is (very surprisingly) rock solid – page loading is very smooth, youtube playback is smooth as well (it can even play 4k videos no problem) and even gaming works flawlessly well (Haven`t went too far beyond PS1 games, but from PS1 and under it plays everything really well.).
In short – It delivers a desktop experience at the expense of almost nothing with the power draw at that same level – 1W (best case scenario) to 3W(worst case scenario).
And that is correct – Orange pi boards are (mostly) Android-based boards at heart. Anything beyond that, and youll have to deal with lots of tinkering.
Eh…on my first try, I went with debian and everything felt really half-baked. For example, docker is borked (And I think theres a way to fix it – havent really tried fiddling with it at all.). Sound is also borked (Tried both alsa and pulseaudio, aaand nada.). And I think I managed to “cheat” my way in the “GPU supported land” by installing
mesa-utilswith the --install-recommends flag (Cant really tell what happened, other than both cpu usage and temps dropped a whole lot after installing it.).It might be possible installing pi-hole however (pretty sure it runs on any potato nowadays.) Network “just werks” out of the box (Ethernet). Average cpu temps were at 68 to 72 degrees, w/ cpu usage at 80’ish, all cores. (That is while running an youtube video, at 380p. No case, with two passive heatsinks on both the cpu and memory and a small fan blowing right on both of em.).
Those issues simply do not exist on Android. Aside from the lack of customization options and docker, that is.
Would you say as an Android OS you can still do most of the things you would want to do in a Linux OS? Command line interface? A non-touch screen interface? Because that’s always one of the main things that holds me back, I really like Android for certain things, but it always feels a little limited.
Im not an Android expert to be honest (Been fiddling with Linux for some time however, which made my “transition” from 0 to “less-terrible” a rather pleasing one) but I’d say… no. There might be some alternatives to certain Linux-restricted software that might work “out of the box” tho (Like AdGuard instead of pihole) and maybeeeeeee some “voodo magic” can be done with
adb(Which is the closest you’ll get of a “Android package manager” of sorts since it allows you to install packages remotely and some tricky things I’m still not aware about.).Unless you really, REALLY need to tweak the kernel with some turbonerd stuff which is completely off my line of knowledge or some other similar stuff… then I’d say that Android will give you an “acceptable” Linux experience.