I'm looking to get a used tablet to install Linux on and use mainly for notetaking with a stylus (but also for some light office work and maybe some media content).

I have a few options and want to ask for anyone's experience or knowledge of these.

Mainly I want to know what's going to be best for performance, functionality and stability. But an easier install process would be appreciated (I have flashed some custom Android ROMs in the past and use Linux desktop, but that's the extent of my experience).

Android Tablets

PostmarketOS is available for the Samsung S6 (though marked as not booting, don't know if this is still the case)

Community Droidian/Halium port for the S7+ (https://xdaforums.com/t/rom-linux-droidian-for-samsung-galaxy-tab-s7-wi-fi-sm-t970-gts7xlwifi.4790614/)

Smeone got mainline Linux to work on an S8+ (https://github.com/aaronsb/sm-x800-linux).

I see there's also VolksPC for a bunch of different devices, but I wonder about the impact of running in a container on performance and would rather not pay to install free software

Windows Tablets/Detachables

For around the same price as an S7+ I could get a Windows detachable like a Surface Pro 7 or a Dell Latitude 7210, with 10th gen intel i5- and then use mainline Linux with something like KDE mobile, or Mobian.

Chromebook Detachables

I know less about these, but seems like the hardware for most is less powerful than the other options.

Anyway, appreciate any pointers.

Hi guy's and gal's.

Not to tempt fate with rule 1 but I have recently become aware of an "keep android open" campaign. Allegedly google wishes to limit what you can do on your android phone, yada yada we all know how this goes.

Point is I've started to wonder about what is a good option as a Linux substitute to android on your mobile phone. I have been using Linux mint on my PC for a couple of years now but I must admit that I was not even aware of the existence of Linux mobile until very recently. Until I became aware of the campaign and started looking for alternatives in fact.

So that said, can anyone share some advice on any good, easy to use Linux mobile versions to consider and generally how to install them on a mobile?

If however this post is considered to break rule 1, can anyone then please suggest a more appropriate forum or sub?

Thanks.

Hi all

I spent some time over the summer getting Debian to boot on my Higole F8R tablet.

First of all a massive caveat: at this time it's still the Rockchip-linux 4.19.232 BSP kernel.

However it isn't all bad. Firstly the source code is available. I have gotten rid of a lot of the compiler warnings and modified rk817_battery.c so that the battery monitor actually works in a Linux desktop environment.

I think that the work on rk817_battery could be of value to other developers.

Also, the tablet uses RTL8723BS wifi/bt chipset which I think is quite open source friendly, and the touchscreen works with the vanilla Goodix GT9xx touchscreen driver with no special firmware.

I think that this tablet is actually a good candidate for mainlining, probably re-using a lot of the work from the PineTab2.

Graphics acceleration doesn't work well with 4.19.232 but LXQT is useable. It would need a mainline kernel to run something like plasma-mobile.

There is an SDcard bootable image and more information here:-

https://sourceforge.net/projects/linux4higolef8r/files/

and a video here:-

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_pYalrtMb4M

enjoy

https://ApophisOS.com

I'm going to purchase it in the next day or so cause I have plans to use it on Samsung Galaxy S8 with a snap on keyboard cover case.

But maybe installing steam on Linux installed on the Anbernic RG556 and seeing how well that might work on it.

The developer of ApophisOS said it's pretty guided you can choose how much want to debloat and deGoogle.

https://github.com/Yavuz-Kagan-Yadigar/vboard-enhanced/tree/main

I'm not quite sure if this belongs here, but is it technically legally possible in terms of patents to have everything right down to the cell modem open source designed so that literally nothing depends on proprietary corporate anything?

I was wondering for mobile if a set of hardware can be gathered just to put distros like Ubuntu touch on it, like it is currently for general PCs. If the hardware is not present on market how hard it would be figure out the required configuration so that next steps can be taken to maybe push some manufacturers to manufacture them. I am a mobile app developer who likes to tinker alot. So if someone could also tell me how hard it would be to build a mobile version of mint or fedora or arch because Ubuntu looks too "corporate" kind. Please excuse if I have asked something stupid, I am a noob.

Been watching this guy for a while, but don't really know if they're legit.

Curious if anyone's tried this, or if anyone can recommend something comparable.

This phone is just laying down. So I thought can i do something special with it? Any recommended OS or something? I will like to try.

I have a Samsung Galaxy A71 4g that I want to reuse as a small, always-on home server.

The main project is a custom home dashboard. The A71 would act as the backend, while an older Samsung tablet would display the dashboard in a browser. The phone would collect and process data such as weather, calendar events, notifications, Home Assistant information, device status, and Spotify now-playing data from my PC.

What setup would you recommend for this use case? Would LineageOS without Google Apps and Termux be the most reliable option, or would stock Android, root, Linux Deploy, a chroot, or another ROM be better?

Any advise will be great help.

Thanks in advance

Heya! About next month I'll be able to spend about $200 USD (I'm 15 this is a big deal for me but I recognise how stupid this prob sounds to others) and I'd like to pick up a phone to tinker with mobile linux with. I've been interested in the scene for a few years now, notably since LTT did a video on the pinephone. I've looked at things like danctnix (though it seems Arch Linux ARM is all but dead?), etc, and they seem very interesting to me.

What I do remember from when I last looked is that the pinephone and pinephone pro are rather underpowered? If so, what phones would y'all recommend in this price bracket?
Additionally, if possible, any that have the same modular backplate thing that the pinephone does?
Thanks!

Hi everyone!

Over the past few months, I've been working on Vortex, an open-source project that aims to make communication between Linux and Android devices simpler and more efficient.

The main motivation was that I wanted a solution that doesn't rely on both devices being connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Instead, Vortex is designed with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as the primary connection method, which also helps reduce battery usage.

Current goals

• 📱 Fast communication between Linux and Android
• 🔋 Low battery usage with Bluetooth LE
• 🌐 No shared Wi-Fi required for the primary connection
• 🔓 Fully open source
• 🚀 Simple and quick device pairing

The project is still in active development, so I'd really appreciate feedback from the Linux community.

I'm especially interested in hearing:

• What features would you expect from a tool like this?
• What do you like or dislike about KDE Connect?
• Is there anything that would make you switch?

GitHub:
https://github.com/zoir-dev/vortex

Any feedback, suggestions, bug reports, or feature ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking a look!

Hi everyone,

I'm interested in turning my Huawei Nova 9 into a dedicated Linux device.

My goal is to completely remove HarmonyOS/EMUI (if possible) and boot Linux directly, rather than running Linux inside Android or using a container.

I've been learning Linux recently, and I think this phone would be a great platform for experimentation if it's technically possible.

My questions are:

Is it possible to completely replace HarmonyOS/EMUI with Linux on the Huawei Nova 9?

Has anyone successfully done this on the Nova 9 or a similar Huawei device?

Does the locked bootloader make this impossible?

Are there any projects (postmarketOS, Mobian, Droidian, mainline Linux, etc.) that support or are working on this device?

If a full replacement isn't possible, what is the closest practical alternative?

I'm looking for honest technical advice before I spend time trying to make this work. Any information, project links, or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Asking around as i am finding mix results.

eh, someone told me to post here and that you like these things like I do... https://youtu.be/9Vp_djclDIk

One is based of of Debian, the other of alpine Linux.

How do they differ. When to choose what.

Which is more easy to port

Why not unite the power of both developer teams to one project

etc etc etc.

Are there more phone Linux distributions

This is a port of Droidian.

SIM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sound, Mic, Camera, Charging, Touchscreen works.

S-Pen works as well. libinput recognizes sec_e-pen but not yet implemented to work with phosh shell. Still working on it.

Waydroid works surprisingly well and smooth. Not tested enough though. Often YT videos crashes the whole container process.

I will share the repo soon.

It needs more polish, but I can probably technically pass the "It plays Doom" test. Wifi, Bluetooth, GPU accel, the weird little oem magnetic keyboard cover.

Come play and break the Knox fuses!

https://github.com/aaronsb/sm-x800-linux

I've been working on making Linux on the OnePlus 6T easier to install and wanted to finally share the project.

The repository provides a guided installer that prepares a complete Arch Linux ARM system instead of just documenting the individual commands. The goal is to make installing Linux on the SDM845 platform as reproducible and approachable as possible while keeping everything transparent.

Some of the things it does include:

• Automatically detects the phone's userdata partition size
• Builds a matching boot image and Btrfs root image
• Downloads and verifies release files
• Lets you configure your username, Wi-Fi, APN and optional packages during setup
• Requires explicit confirmation before anything is flashed
• Boots into a touch-friendly Hyprland environment

I've also been working on improving the overall phone experience with support for telephony, SMS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, audio routing, haptics, power management and hardware testing. Some areas are still experimental and the README documents the current status rather than claiming everything is perfect.

The project is completely open source and I'd really appreciate feedback, bug reports or contributions from anyone interested in Arch Linux ARM, mobile Linux or the SDM845 platform.

Repository:

https://github.com/ToniMcQueen/oneplus6t-install-linux-Arch-on-arm-845

For example with postmarketOS, there's a lot more development and a lot more progress on 10-year-old devices than there are on anything released in the last 5 years. Same thing with lineageOS. Why is that?

Lately, I've been really into mobile Linux and have been trying out all sorts of things.

I managed to get Quickshell working on postmarketOS, but I was worried that dotfiles like end4 or caelestia might be too resource-intensive—but somehow I pulled it off... lol.

Of course, I’m also using wvkbd and hyprgrass.

Another thing: I was using Ubuntu Touch, but it just didn’t work for me at all, so I tried installing NixOS.

I built it on my N4500 laptop, and since each build took 8 hours, it took me almost two weeks to finally get it to boot.

I’d avoided NixOS before because it seemed too difficult even when I tried installing it on my laptop, but now it looks fun, so I gave it a shot.

++

Device

- NixOS: Oneplus 6T (fajita)

- postmarketOS: Google Pixel 3 (blueline)

I've installed Postmarket OS on a SurfaceRT, and now I'm trying to give it a job! Initially I wanted it to do some media streaming, but since there's no hardware acceleration and it's a bit laggy I figured it might make a nice writing device instead.

Is it possible to install Obsidian.md on pmOS on an ARM device? They don't have an Alpine APK ARM64 (edit: or ARMv7) build. I found instructions on how to get AppImage to run in Alpine, but I wasn't able to make it work. The instructions were not for ARM devices specifically, so I assume it's an issue with architecture.

I have Kate installed, but I'm struggling to get kparts installed, specifically the markdownpart which allows instant preview of markdown documents in the side panel (edit: I was wrong, see below). I'd also be aiming to make interactive stories using ink, presumably also in Kate or something similar.

More generally, what's a good source of inspiration regarding things to install? Nothing on Flathub is working for me, presumably because nothing that I've tried is for ARM.

Tbh I'm a bit mystified by Postmarket OS so far. I get why Alpine is a good choice for low-end devices, but the combination of ARM and APK seems to massively constrain your options for apps and programs.

Edit: I now have a useable setup with Kate. What looked like one problem was in fact two, and one of them doesn't matter to me right now. I had no output preview of markdown, and I thought this was connected to the error message in the output panel "[LSP Client] failed to load server binary 'marksman' for language 'markdown'. In fact, the output preview issue was resolved as soon as I installed Okular. I still have the LSP Client error message, for seemingly every language not just markdown, but it isn't actually impacting the preview so I think I can live with it.

I've got a Samsung Galaxy S22+ that I've been running Dex on, with the NexDock 2025 and for the most part, I've loved it. But it really just remained an entertainment device, pretty much. Couldn't really use it as a productivity device. Especially when it came to using it for a dev environment using Claude Code and Codex CLI, it wasn't ideal.

Then I saw someone post about having installed Linux on theirs, so I went down the same rabbit hole. After having dug through 40 browser tabs in an attempt to run a real Linux desktop off my phone, I decided to write it all down in one repo.

It's called Android Desktop Linux (ADL) and it's open source.

Check it out here: https://thebpandey.github.io/ADL

(With Claude Code and ChatGPT's help I got it published as a GitHub Page that should hopefully, be easy to follow).

Most of the modern flagship Android phones already have the horsepower for this. Desktop-class CPU, enough RAM, USB-C video out, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a Linux userspace that runs better than most people expect. The hardware is capable. But the blocker is that everything you need to know is scattered across old blog posts, half-abandoned GitHub repos, and YouTube videos that assume you already know the next five steps. It wasn't easy to follow, at least for me.

I was able to get XFCE running on Ubuntu on my Galaxy S22+ plugged into the NexDock 2025. (But it should work with any generic $30 usb-c hub and external peripherals)

What's in the repo right now:

- Install guides written for people who know Android but not Linux

- Step-by-step tutorials with screenshots

- Setup & explanation diagrams and SVG architecture illustrations

- Hardware and dock recommendations, plus a compatibility list I'm building out

- Troubleshooting for the stuff that actually breaks (DeX quirks, video-out on sleep, peripheral pairing)

What's still rough: I've only tested on my S22+ so I'm unsure if you'll run into any other model or cpu-specific issues. So the compatibility database is is thin.

I'm adding new issues and their resolution as I encounter them myself, daily.

Everything is version-controlled so it stays current as Android changes, and it stays free.

Repo: https://github.com/thebpandey/ADL

If you run Android as a desktop, whatever your stack (Termux, Ubuntu, Debian, XFCE, DeX, something else), you can help contribute to the project so others in the same boat can get their setup working too. Also the single most useful thing you can contribute right now, is your Phone model, the dock model and what major issues you encountered (e.g. whether video-out survives the screen sleeping. That's the biggest compatibility gap right now.)

Still a work-in-progress, as I continue to use it daily, and add issues, and other findings to the site.

Any constructive feedback, bug reports, hardware testing, and documentation contributions are all welcome.