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.

  • @the_q@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3410 days ago

    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.

    • monk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      12 days ago

      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.

    • @Webster@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      159 days ago

      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.

    • @gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      29 days ago

      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.

      • @TacoSocks@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        English
        39 days ago

        The switch is more or less the same when docked, only additional feature is you get to use a higher resolution.

    • @SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      28 days ago

      Dex is the closest I can get right now. I’d love to have one device. However I’ll need to degoogle and foss more things. I rely on Google Too much for games and such.

    • @Diurnambule@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2
      edit-2
      10 days ago

      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 + +.

    • bitwolf
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      9 days ago

      MaruOS

      I think it would have been much bigger if Pixels had hmdi out in the first few gens.

  • JRaccoon
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3210 days ago

    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.

      • suoko
        link
        fedilink
        English
        -210 days ago

        It has been called 8 elite so that people think they bought an X elite?

        That’s not very nice…

    • @GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      9
      edit-2
      10 days ago

      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?

      • @lka1988@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        5
        edit-2
        10 days ago

        It has access to /sdcard as 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.

        • JRaccoon
          link
          fedilink
          English
          410 days ago

          It has access to /sdcard as a shared folder.

          How does this work? The app doesn’t seem to have any settings related to it yet. Under /mnt in the VM I noticed folder shared that seems to match the downloads folder on my phone, which seems odd

          • @lka1988@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            310 days ago

            …shit, I think you’re right, it might be the Downloads folder. Sorry! I’ll check mine next time I boot it up.

    • @unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      410 days ago

      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.

      • JRaccoon
        link
        fedilink
        English
        410 days ago

        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.

      • masterofn001
        link
        fedilink
        English
        4
        edit-2
        9 days ago

        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.

  • @Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    219 days ago

    This doesn’t sound like proper linux to me. I want to be able to plug in a USB (or what ever the storage device would be, microUSB for phones I guess) and boot from that. Where 1 image works for any device of the same architecture. This is the main thing I dislike about ARM currently.

  • @Eagle0110@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    179 days ago

    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

  • @Renohren@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    169 days ago

    Lil Debbie works on Android phones for quite a few years now, devs didn’t wait on google to chroot the hell out of android.

  • @dai@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    109 days ago

    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.

    • @dai@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      29 days ago

      And I’m having issues writing / completing the install to /boot

      Files are written to boot by the nixos-infect script, then disappear after sometime… If the VM is shutdown / rebooted I get the previously displayed unrecoverable error screen.

      Might be an easier way to achieve this.

  • @Matriks404@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    79 days ago

    I am pretty sure it was possible even like 15 years ago through unofficial app on Google Play. What’s new here?

    • @gamer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      28 days ago

      I remember running some linux distro on my G1 wayy back in the day. Idk if it was debian, but it was a formative learning experience for me since it taught me what “chroot” was.

  • @lostbit@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    English
    610 days ago

    oh i like this.

    too bad its still android with al there tracking and bloatware. Hopefully degoogled roms will follow