I prefer the other way around. A decent android emulator for Linux.
I just need sudo and a package manager
The promise of the smart phone was a mini computer in your pocket. I think we got it, but then the vendor locked the user out of admin on their own bought and paid hardware 🤷♂️
This sums up my frustration these past decades. Smartphones were originally limited due to lack of power and resources, I was ok with that. Working on the iPhone and having access to the internals, as an engineer it made sense they were limited until security was figured out. You want an always online pocket computer to be secure.
…but we figured it all out, and instead of the phone becoming more open like the Mac, the Mac started becoming more closed like the phone. Gave up on the platform, at least Android was open-source and open hardware, mostly…
…but then they copied Apple and started making closed source binaries to replace the open ones, now Google doesn’t know what they want to be when they grow up, after their “everything is free through ads” business model fell apart. Apple, Google, and Samsung now just copy each others’ stupid decisions and true innovation has mostly died in that space. (Especially right now with them all snorting the “AI” cocaine.)
…pretty much gave up on the dream of a pocket computer and started collecting watches, went back to a laptop. (Which I can’t get Debian to run on natively due to a glitch in how the mobo handles NVMe SSDs, disk randomly falls off while running. Didn’t have patience to troubleshoot after a few weeks work and a corrupted OS.)
Would like a nice early 00’s dumbphone with a decent camera now, but all the “dumbphones” today are terrible by comparison. They just shoehorn some mediocre linux or Android lite on am underpowered SOC and call it good. And carriers have rushed so hard to get to this 5G future, a future where many are stuck in non-standalone for the foreseeable future and selling home broadband is the only real use they’ve come up with, so real dumbphones no longer work on their networks.
Try Termux, it’s great.
While it doesn’t get you sudo, it does get you a package manager and a decent amount of programs.
I use it and rclone to sync my cell phone’s photos to a S3 bucket.
what package manager?
edit: nvm its aptYou can totally use sudo if you’re rooted. Using su also allows you to acces your native shell instead of Termuxs
You’re totally right, but I wasn’t assuming they had a rooted phone.
Is there any difference between the native shell and Termux’s? I just installed fish and chsh’ed it to default: after syncing over all my dotfiles it looks and acts as expected.
Is there any difference between the native shell and Termux’s? I just installed fish and chsh’ed it to default: after syncing over all my dotfiles it looks and acts as expected.
I did the same, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
I don’t know for sure, but if I hat to guess I’d say that Termux uses chroot to emulate a more Linuxy experience by changing your root to /data/data/com.termux/files/ with it’s own bin, etc, lib and so on directories
Using su you escape that chroot and start using your roms root directory at /
I might be totally wrong with this, but that should hopefully clarify the way it behaves
Aah, okay.
I don’t mind the chroot too much, especially as you can just use Termux’s
termux-setup-storagescript for accessing files.But, yeah, I can see how one would want to use su for that!
Last I looked you could pretty easily get root on many phones, just if you did you couldn’t use stuff that checks the device security
If you want to carry two phones you could use one for banks and 2 factor authentication, and have root on the other
Banking is pretty significant
Yeah, that’s why you’d want two phones
Terminal applications only? Or does that make me able to run LibreOffice, Kdenlive and whatever I like?
It gives you a Linux VM but the only interface is the terminal. I’ve used this with a ChromeOS fork.
Let’s me repurpose an old phone for some headless container funtimes. If I can infect it with NixOS I’ll be golden.
Thx. I have limited use for it then. I tend to carry my laptop anyways and just whip it out once I need to type in long terminal commands with pipe symbols, extra characters and press Ctrl-C. I don’t think my phone has an adequate form factor for terminal tasks. Though, I occasionally use it to ssh into machines and do some quick fix. But I already have an app for that.
Terminal applications only?
As a first step definitively, simply because such a feature needs to start somewhere and text mode is easier than writing a wrapper for graphics systems.
Or does that make me able to run LibreOffice, Kdenlive and whatever I like?
I’m thinking that this is the end goal. Google struggles to get desktop-like apps onto Android tablets. Many people use iPads as primary work computer these days. My employer is switching to them and we’re late to the party.
An audacious step for Google would be to distribute Flatpaks in the Play Store. That’s very unlikely but it’s technically a possibility.
Also, Steam integrating an x86 emulator for ARM devices makes even more sense now. I thought it’s mainly for ARM Chromebooks but Android tablets getting an “Install Steam” button and becoming more compatible to games than Windows on ARM would be so bonkers.
Desktop apps in a WebView using vnc on a VM on a tablet are a miserable experience that nobody wants to endure
I tried that, too. I already had a Debian VM on my phone years ago. Along with some VNC software and an android app to connect to the virtual desktop. It was really cumbersome to use. Especially keeping it open in the background and using it while doing other things was next to impossible.
Samsung ships a traditional desktop environment on their phones and tablets since years. Phones need to be pluggeg into a USB-C dock, tablets need a type cover. Others followed them with similar environments. Surely this is not meant for touch-only use.
I know. And that seems to be quite well made. Unfortunately they don’t have HDMI output on their mid range devices. At least the Samsung phone of my wife doesn’t output anything when connected to the TV. And we both refuse to spend $1.000 on a phone. And I mean this convergence is kind of a strange use-case. On my desktop I have a computer attached to the screen anyways. KDEconnect syncs everything and I don’t need to attach my phone. And on the go, I don’t have a keyboard and monitor with me. I think convergence is useful if you want some private stuff on the second monitor at work. Or while sitting in the computer science lab at school/uni and those machines are locked down. It’s a bummer only/mainly Samsung does that. And the situation with HDMI and that USB alternate mode and the manufacturers using that to distinguish their flagship devices from the regular ones. It’s probably only a few cents and mainly politics that keeps me from enjoying thinks like this.
I think it’s more targeted at tablets than phones.
Okay. I mean I already have Termux for that. And I don’t think a phone or tablet is a good device to operate the terminal or type in VI key bindings. They’re much more made for graphical applications and touching buttons and graphical elements. Let’s see where this is going. I still like using computers and having like 105 proper keys accessible for my fingers. Especially if my mode of interacting with the device is typing in text. And not clicking on things. But I get that nowadays lots of people use tablets and phones and stuff. And this certainly is a necessary first step.
They run like shit on ChromeOS, so Google can shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Probably because ChromeOS is only installed on crappy computers. Runs like lightning on my Lenovo.
Nice, so I’ll have a workaround if Termux is too crippled by Android’s restriction.
I need yt-dlp in my pocket 😬
Oh boy you’re gonna love YTDLnis https://github.com/deniscerri/ytdlnis
Oh boy you’re gonna love Seal https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal
Why not NewPipe?
More flexible, and works on a lot of websites.
