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.
Sorry Google, PostmarketOS will scratch that itch and soon enough eat your lunch: https://postmarketos.org/
I like postmarketos, but lol. Lmao, even.
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.
And what’s stopping you? Install new LineageOS on an unblocked Samsung, check one checkbox xin developer settings and here it is. Without the GPU, of course.
I do this today with my Librem 5 and a 1 TB uSD
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.
May I introduce you to what already existed at one time? (Motorola Atrix 4G from 2011 with Ubuntu desktop when docked.)
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.
Can’t believe it’s been 10 years since Ms-Dos mobile.
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.
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
Like the Nokia N900 did back in 2004 - except it was a real mobile OS (but fully yours)
- 2004 wasn’t even 770 times.
Tested this on my Pixel 8a. Works as you would expect. Personally I have a little hard time coming up with use cases for this but I guess it’s kinda cool.
I have a phone that acts as a grid outage resistant p2p webserver. runs stuff like syncthing, briar mailbox, etc. i can see this being useful for that kinda stuff.
Looks very similar to termux
Does it have access to the same filesystem as Android? I’ve been looking for Android apps that can do something like dropbox’s “online only” feature. Most cloud storage providers offer that on desktop but I’ve never found one that works on Android. It’s just photo syncing or nothing usually, and even that doesn’t work like I want.
Also, can it run uninterrupted in the background or is android going to unceremoniously kill it randomly like it does with normal apps?
It has access to
/sdcardas a shared folder. And yes it can run in the background, though it’ll eat your battery if you keep it running for a while.
So does it run X? Or GNOME? Can you make a call from it? Can you receive a call? And does the internet work?
Nope. But as mentioned in the article, some support for display servers might be coming in Android 16.
Networking does work. I was able to install packages using apt and also ping machines on my local network. Could be useful.
I guess in a pinch it could be used to ssh into other machines. However, I’m sure there are plenty of SSH clients available for Android, which are much more lightweight solution than running a whole VM.Termux can.
You can run a full GUI install of the distro of your choice and even vnc or rtp into it.
A bit tedious to set up, but follow the docs and it is no problem.
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.
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
