This open source app delivers one-tap Arch Linux installation with development tools, file sharing, and desktop software support.

Running Linux-based operating systems on smartphones has come a long way. We now have several Linux-powered smartphones on the market that cater to different use cases. Some pack in flagship-level performance, while others try to be a value-for-money proposition.

Sadly, these devices are out of reach for most people around the world due to excessive taxation from their countries and shipping charges. Of course, many do have an older spare Android smartphone laying around.

Why not make good use of it? In this article, we will be taking a look at a very cool project that turns an Android smartphone into a Linux machine with a simple APK file and no root access.

    • SpaceNoodleEnglish
      91·
      4 days ago

      I can’t find a list of supported devices, which is disappointing

          • limerod@reddthat.comMEnglish
            4·
            3 days ago

            GrapheneOS is not regular android. It disables JIT and hardens many settings. So, things like proot and others can be finicky to work. Everyone else should be fine unless its an old phone or some chinese phone with certain broken features or restrictions.

        • limerod@reddthat.comMEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          From a cursory search there is not. Maybe, try asking on their forums to see if you can disable some security feature.

        • punkibas@lemmy.zipEnglish
          21·
          3 days ago

          There’s also a native desktop mode for grapheneos now, you can activate it in dev options

          • picnicEnglish
            6·
            3 days ago

            Yeah but dont expect feature parity with samsung’s dex. Dex’s a mile away in small quality of life features. Android’s baked in desktop is so barebones I cannot fathom it took google 9 years to get this out. Its embarrasing.

            I sold my samsung and moved to grapheneos, but I really miss dex. And gallery.

              • picnicEnglish
                1·
                3 days ago

                Simple cropping, drawing and blurring are something I now know I used nearly daily basis earlier. Tried to find a gallery viewer that had simple pixelize and cropping, couldnt find one.

                Installed aves libre for pictures, and now using signal’s inbuilt pixelize function.

        • Carrot@lemmy.todayEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          I didn’t, but I didn’t look too hard. I wasn’t really expecting it to work

      • picnicEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        Yup, same thing with pixel8pro and grapheneos

    • Pycorax@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Not working on One UI either it seems? That said some people have mentioned it working so I’m not sure what’s the cause here.

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    Although the usage of (x)wayland is novel, there have already beem projects which do something similar before.

    Termux can run a linux container in a proot, which you can then connect to via an app like vnc to get graphics.

    There exist several options to automate this setup, such as anlinux. There is also the proprietary andronix, which used to be open source but now it looks like tgere repos aren’t being updated.

    It’s bad reporting to frame this as a novel app, when it’s not. The novel thing is the way this app does xwayland rendered by a native wayland compositor (instead of remote desktop softeare or other solutions), which is really cool though.

    • mlfh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      3·
      4 days ago

      This looks to be running a full virtual machine via the Android Virtualization Framework in the same way as the new “Terminal” app in AOSP, so you have full root control over it.

      Edit: I was wrong about the backend, per below it uses proot instead

  • vortexal@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    While this is much easier to setup than running Termux, this really doesn’t seem to be working well for me. I keep having this problem where it stops excepting mouse input for seemingly no reason. I know it’s not frozen because my keyboard still works but I can’t use it for more than a few seconds before mouse inputs stop working. I don’t have this problem with Termux, I have other problems with it but that’s a different story.