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.
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?
Author faces regularly many issues when trying do make a new version of Termux to yet another set of googles demands or restrictions, sometimes unable to update play store version for years. As an (just) example, see this issue: https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-Android-10
Google just doesn’t understand that they’re killing off the only people who want to buy their shitting products. How many people use Androids? How many people use Pixels? I would feel most people want these phones because we’re tech savvy people who don’t want the abstracted stuff Apple sells.
I thought Android’s market is people who don’t want to pay for iOS for various reasons, mostly due to cost.
Yes kinda. But if you buy the cheapest iphone and just use it until eol, it’s not too bad. Problem is the cheapest iphone, isn’t too cheap anymore.
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.
Looks very similar to termux
Probably hella nerfed in comparison.
It has been called 8 elite so that people think they bought an X elite?
That’s not very nice…
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.
So does it run X? Or GNOME? Can you make a call from it? Can you receive a call? And does the internet work?
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.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.
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.
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.
May I introduce you to what already existed at one time? (Motorola Atrix 4G from 2011 with Ubuntu desktop when docked.)
Oh I remember. Ahead of its time. RIP.
Wow, that is incredible!
I do this today with my Librem 5 and a 1 TB uSD
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.
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.
That would be the life.
Sorry Google, PostmarketOS will scratch that itch and soon enough eat your lunch: https://postmarketos.org/
I like postmarketos, but lol. Lmao, even.
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.
I don’t think anybody expected that. This is just a shitty headline.
How about multi-booting via Ventoy?
Yeah, and I’ve never understood why that is. How come you have to build a custom hardware abstraction layer for each device separately on ARM chips?
Because it creates e-waste, and e-waste is immensely profitable.
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!
Everything you want, except sudo! That’s freaking dangerous for you!
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
Glad you’re having fun
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.
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.
Is this termux or what?
It’s a VM
Can’t believe it’s been 10 years since Ms-Dos mobile.
I am pretty sure it was possible even like 15 years ago through unofficial app on Google Play. What’s new here?
It’s now official™
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.
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.
Sadly not always good ones…
Is there an official source for this?
The article links to this blog post, but I did not see anything relevant in it:
Samsung’s DEX had a downloadable Linux VM running nearly a decade ago.
Motorola had something similar too. Forgot the phone model, but it ran a modified version of ubuntu when you put it in a dock.
Wasn’t it just running Android in desktop mode?
I got a second hand note10+ just for that feature, only to find out they deprecated Linux on DeX D:
And they killed it right?
Never even got to a production release. ☹️
I wish there was a way to side load it. Honestly Samsung really has let too many things slide. Ilafter this s23ultra does I’m not getting another Samsung
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Like the Nokia N900 did back in 2004 - except it was a real mobile OS (but fully yours)
