been doing some reading on linux, what about installing it on an old phone?

Can linux run on an old android phone? I am liking ZorinOS and I think im going to try it on USB stick for S&G's. So I have an old note sgh-i717. Can I install some sort of distro on that and use it some what successfully?

 

U hv ideas on how to flash Linux OS into phones? I don't think x86 OS will work with ARM device...

 

There have been others here running linux on their phones. I just figured there were a few different distro's like the x86 stuff available.

 

Find a suitable ROM instead of messing around with a distro....trust me... you're just asking for problems and potentially bricking it if you're missing a crucial file that's needed.

 

Older thread I know, but Andronix does this seamlessly and quite effortlessly, albeit with its own limitations. I have been having fun running a full Manjaro desktop on my phone and VNC'ing into it from either another computer (remote session) or even from the same Android phone running the desktop by using an Android VNC app and a dongle w/HDMI out dongle w/2 USB ports for mouse/keyboard and a USBC passthru power port for charging.

 

It has already been done, but I haven't looked into how much effort it takes. For a person with an avid interest in having a better and more unique smartphone, it's probably worth doing.
PureOS – a pure Linux phone experience
PinePhone: What You Need to Know About This Linux Phone

 

Those look interesting for sure. I like the idea of them updating for life. And not slowing down the phone to a crawl after a year or two. Thats a big draw there.

 

PureOS for PinePhone is an unofficial port of Purism's Debian fork.
Mobian is Debian with phoc and phosh shell elements added, so it is a purer Debian.
Mobian appears to be better maintained while PureOS looks like an experiment.

Been doing a little research, my current Android phone is years old and will need replaced but I despise the new phones with non-removable batteries (had a battery swell and pop the back off which would destroy a newer phone).

 

Thanks for the additional info. I haven't tried to keep current on Linux phone development and this is a lot more than I knew 5 minutes ago.

I totally agree on the bad direction with the design of new phones. The batteries not being replaceable is part of their self-serving plans to limit end-user maintenance ability and sell more phones. Sadly, that same kind of self-serving nonsense has even crept into the PC space, and I only expect it to get worse. Make it just barely good enough to last until the warranty runs out, build it to fail, and sell more rubbish.

 

Modern keyboard phones - FxTec Pro1 and devices by Planet Computers - run Linux. Such toys are expensive, however, and Linux experience is nowhere near as polished as Android.

 

You can thank apple for all of these "design" features. Even my 1020 had an easily replaceable battery and screen, I had to replace my screen, and the battery is right under it to swap out. One screw releases the entire screen lock and two more steps it's back in. Best hardware ever. The 1020 was my favorite phone I have owned, and if MS offically updated it to 10 mobile, I would probably still be using it.

 

There's PostmarketOS: https://postmarketos.org/ in case you didn't know about it. The main problem is that the list of compatible devices is pretty limited, and not a lot of people are working on it.

Android is technically Linux with a lot of extra stuff on top of it. And since it has a huge number of good apps, it gets the most attention.

Linux has been ported to ARM a long time ago, it's really no different than x86.

 

PinePhone has picked Manjaro Linux as their default OS:

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20210222#news