Qualcomm claims that my Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus’ Snapdragon 8 Elite CPU is faster than the Intel Core Ultra 288V chip. My smartphone also has 12GB of RAM and 512GB of solid-state storage. In short, it’s more powerful than most of my laptops. So why not use it as a laptop?
Why not, indeed, says Google, which has introduced – at long last – a native Linux Terminal application in its March 2025 Pixel Feature Drop.
This part of the merge between Chrome OS and Android and is intended to replace Cros
Like the Nokia N900 did back in 2004 - except it was a real mobile OS (but fully yours)
Ah man sometimes I miss the keyboard on that thing haha.
Can’t believe it’s been 10 years since Ms-Dos mobile.
I am pretty sure it was possible even like 15 years ago through unofficial app on Google Play. What’s new here?
It’s now official™
Lil Debbie works on Android phones for quite a few years now, devs didn’t wait on google to chroot the hell out of android.
Samsung’s DEX had a downloadable Linux VM running nearly a decade ago.
And they killed it right?
I got a second hand note10+ just for that feature, only to find out they deprecated Linux on DeX D:
Motorola had something similar too. Forgot the phone model, but it ran a modified version of ubuntu when you put it in a dock.
Wasn’t it just running Android in desktop mode?
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This doesn’t sound like proper linux to me. I want to be able to plug in a USB (or what ever the storage device would be, microUSB for phones I guess) and boot from that. Where 1 image works for any device of the same architecture. This is the main thing I dislike about ARM currently.
Yeah, and I’ve never understood why that is. How come you have to build a custom hardware abstraction layer for each device separately on ARM chips?
I don’t think anybody expected that. This is just a shitty headline.
How about multi-booting via Ventoy?
This is just a Linux VM just like th Crostini in ChromeOS, so I’d expect similar 40%+ performance loss compares to for example proot container through Termux running natively.
The only thing this could probably offer would be giving you better OS GUI Integration into Android, like Crostini on a ChromeOS device. But if that is needed you might as well just use an Android port or an Android equivalent of your Linux software anyway, it’s not like you’d ever want to run Matlab, GIMP or OpenFOAM on your Android phone with its tiny screen anyway LMAO
Glad you’re having fun
Man I feel I’d almost wiped the debian install and added NixOS (nix package manager works fine under debian) using nixos-infect
A clean install and a night’s sleep and I’ll probably forget I was attempting this, but looks promising.
And I’m having issues writing / completing the install to /boot
Files are written to boot by the nixos-infect script, then disappear after sometime… If the VM is shutdown / rebooted I get the previously displayed unrecoverable error screen.
Might be an easier way to achieve this.
Is this termux or what?
It’s a VM
Sorry Google, PostmarketOS will scratch that itch and soon enough eat your lunch: https://postmarketos.org/
My dream has been to have a phone that works like a phone until I get home and plug in a monitor and kbm then it’s a full fledged PC. Think Dex but not shitty Samsung Android. While I’m dreaming while docked it could also utilize a desktop grade GPU.
Dex is the closest I can get right now. I’d love to have one device. However I’ll need to degoogle and foss more things. I rely on Google Too much for games and such.
May I introduce you to what already existed at one time? (Motorola Atrix 4G from 2011 with Ubuntu desktop when docked.)
Oh I remember. Ahead of its time. RIP.
I think it would have been much bigger if Pixels had hmdi out in the first few gens.
Honestly the steamdeck shows we are getting close. It works like that, just in a slightly bigger form factor and without some of the phone hardware.
A little more tech advancement and I think this won’t be that hard to do.
I do this today with my Librem 5 and a 1 TB uSD
IIRC you can do exactly that with the Nintendo Switch (carry it around like a handheld until you plug it into the TV and it becomes a stationary console), though i’ve never had a Switch myself so i don’t know for sure.
The switch is more or less the same when docked, only additional feature is you get to use a higher resolution.
I join you on this. The closest I found is a and old surface pro with Linux and waydroid on it. It is nicer than all my previous try but far far from perfect, not even good. Just meh + +.
That would be the life.
That headline got me really excited before I realized they meant “in an app”.
Spanish BQ manufacturer sold Ubuntu phones a while ago. I had one, and it felt great. Unfortunately the phone itself (the screen in particular) was pretty low quality, and the customer support not qualitative enough. Mine broke just by sitting in the couch with it in my pocket. That was a huge lost opportunity.
Mine broke just by sitting in the couch with it in my pocket. That was a huge lost opportunity.
yeah you should have hurled it at a fascist.
It’s just virtualization, the same way you would run a Debian VM under Windows or whatever.
yeah, but being able to replace Android would have been nice.
Why would you want to not use Android? Can’t you just de-google your android if that’s your concern? Android is made for mobile devices.
Feels backwards and you’re still not fully in control.
How are you not fully in control when running a foss rom? The only thing you can’t do (easily) is run a different Linux kernel due to drivers
The only phones that support it are either old or niche, I love my Google Pixel 9 and I would rather not give it up (I also love GraphineOS)
because of docker, smb over tailscale, and a general lack of convenience associated with android’s settings.
Isn’t that Termux?
Yes, except google is slowly killing Termux with a thousand cuts, while they will kill this only after a few years.
Google just doesn’t understand that they’re killing off the only people who want to buy their shitting products. How many people use Androids? How many people use Pixels? I would feel most people want these phones because we’re tech savvy people who don’t want the abstracted stuff Apple sells.
I thought Android’s market is people who don’t want to pay for iOS for various reasons, mostly due to cost.
There are way way more android phones in the world, but its mostly outside the US, so people pretend Apple is king.
Yes kinda. But if you buy the cheapest iphone and just use it until eol, it’s not too bad. Problem is the cheapest iphone, isn’t too cheap anymore.
They do? Can you elaborate?
Author faces regularly many issues when trying do make a new version of Termux to yet another set of googles demands or restrictions, sometimes unable to update play store version for years. As an (just) example, see this issue: https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-Android-10
there’s this thing https://furilabs.com/ but not FOSS; hopefully some of their hacks can make it into mobian or sumsuch
While interesting, that’s not really news.
I have been running
bashlinux commands on my android device back in 2016 via Termux. it worked perfectly fine back then already, you couldapt installapplications andpython3your script.The problem is with other things. Android is dedicated to being actually usable on touch-screen devices. Installing desktop apps on Android would un-do that effect, so i guess it wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
