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 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
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.
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.
there’s this thing https://furilabs.com/ but not FOSS; hopefully some of their hacks can make it into mobian or sumsuch
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.
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.
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.
Is there an official source for this?
The article links to this blog post, but I did not see anything relevant in it:
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.
Why do we want this when we can already install it via Termux?
This is native while termux is emulated, I think.
Life is full of choices, isn’t it.
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.
They do? Can you elaborate?
What’s the catch
Its goog so:
- you get Debian terminal, run whatever you want!
- they get to track everything you do, remember your passwords for you and sell that data to everyone they can!
The GrapheneOS devs have been working on enabling this with all their hardening tweaks
Everything you want, except sudo! That’s freaking dangerous for you!
This incident will be reported.
To Santa!
If this will be anything like the Linux environment in chromebooks, then it will lack hardware acceleration. This could result in linux programs feeling sluggish and slow.
oh i like this.
too bad its still android with al there tracking and bloatware. Hopefully degoogled roms will follow
I’m pretty sure I saw this is going to work on graphene
Would be nice to have some alternative for my Note 10+ that is no longer getting updates. Seems it’s not popular enough to have an EOL root/custom rom made, so it’s just stuck. Seems a waste for a device with decent CPU/GPU and 12gb ram.
Zomg, you have Lineage OS!
LineageOS A free and open-source operating system for various devices, based on the Android mobile platform.
Your phone will feel snappier than ever, you’ll get latest Android stuff (I’m sure official support for 15 is coming), and security updates.
You can also easily google or degoogle it.
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/d2s/
(Or if it’s the 5G variant)Only if they have the Exynos variant. Won’t work on the Qualcomm variant, annoyingly.
Bingo, it’s the Qualcomm variant unfortunately.
Oh nyoo :(
