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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Got two shit tablets for free, want to install mobile linux distros on them. Any reccomendations? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello! I've got 2 alcatel 1T7 tablets completely for free from my internet provider some time ago, didn't use them at all because the thing is lighter than a rasppi. Want to tinker on it now, thinking of installing a linux OS for more freedom on what to do and also to degooglify the tablet. Any recommendations on OS selection?

It runs amd32 chip, ARM Cortex-A7

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

From what I can find it has a quad-core Cortex-A7 ARM32 chip, a.k.a Mediatek MT8321, with 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage, which is not plenty for a device running Android 8.

Your best bet for running "Linux OS" is postmarketOS. But the ARM world is a lot different than the x86 world that you might be familiar with: you can't just "install" any OS on an ARM platform, you need to port it (write code & tweak config) for each device. And the only device that has the same SoC does not look good.

So you next best choice is probably Termux. It could be installed on any Android devices, and provides a decent "Linux" environment that are pretty close to a real Linux console. Of course, it's really difficult to run GUI applications, and running things like Docker would probably be out of the questions (ARM32 already had pretty rough Docker support as-is). But still, it's a good way to get your hands dirty with Linux, and you can definitely use them for quite a few things: writing C or Python code on the go, get familiar with command line, or just run a few small services (e.g. SSH for remote connection, NginX for web server). The possibilities are still endless.

Now, as for the de-googling part, you will still need a custom ROM for this, and I'm not even sure if your device even support flashing third-party ROMs (some carriers would lock it down), so it might not be possible to flash an entire new OS, but someone else seemed to have already posted a potential ROM you could try. Still, you can still find some tutorials that can help you disable as much Google as possible with ADB command, which you might need to adapt to your specific device.