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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.

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[-] slippyferret@lemmy.blahaj.zone 85 points 1 year ago

That headline got me really excited before I realized they meant “in an app”.

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 year ago

It's just virtualization, the same way you would run a Debian VM under Windows or whatever.

[-] desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 year ago

yeah, but being able to replace Android would have been nice.

Why would you want to not use Android? Can't you just de-google your android if that's your concern? Android is made for mobile devices.

[-] Kyouki@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Feels backwards and you're still not fully in control.

[-] Anivia@feddit.org 6 points 1 year ago

How are you not fully in control when running a foss rom? The only thing you can't do (easily) is run a different Linux kernel due to drivers

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[-] crabigno@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago

Spanish BQ manufacturer sold Ubuntu phones a while ago. I had one, and it felt great. Unfortunately the phone itself (the screen in particular) was pretty low quality, and the customer support not qualitative enough. Mine broke just by sitting in the couch with it in my pocket. That was a huge lost opportunity.

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[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago
[-] daddy32@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago

Yes, except google is slowly killing Termux with a thousand cuts, while they will kill this only after a few years.

[-] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 year ago

They do? Can you elaborate?

[-] daddy32@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] the_q@lemm.ee 35 points 1 year 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.

[-] Webster@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year 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.

[-] Canuck@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

I do this today with my Librem 5 and a 1 TB uSD

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[-] JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.de 32 points 1 year 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.

[-] American_Jesus@lemm.ee 34 points 1 year ago

Looks very similar to termux

[-] brax@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Probably hella nerfed in comparison.

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[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year 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

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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.

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[-] tinsuke@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

Sorry Google, PostmarketOS will scratch that itch and soon enough eat your lunch: https://postmarketos.org/

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[-] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 21 points 1 year 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.

[-] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago

I don't think anybody expected that. This is just a shitty headline.

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[-] Eagle0110@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year 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

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[-] Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago
[-] perishthethought@lemm.ee 34 points 1 year ago

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!
[-] SatyrSack@feddit.org 45 points 1 year ago

The GrapheneOS devs have been working on enabling this with all their hardening tweaks

[-] daddy32@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Everything you want, except sudo! That's freaking dangerous for you!

[-] cron@feddit.org 28 points 1 year ago

This incident will be reported.

[-] cron@feddit.org 8 points 1 year ago

If this will be anything like the Linux environment in chromebooks, then it will lack hardware acceleration. This could result in linux programs feeling sluggish and slow.

[-] Renohren@lemmy.today 16 points 1 year 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 10 points 1 year 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.

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[-] Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago

Can't believe it's been 10 years since Ms-Dos mobile.

[-] Matriks404@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

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

[-] lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

It's now official™

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[-] brax@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

Why do we want this when we can already install it via Termux?

[-] Grazed@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

This is native while termux is emulated, I think.

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[-] lostbit@feddit.nl 6 points 1 year ago

oh i like this.

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

[-] superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure I saw this is going to work on graphene

[-] ouch@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is there an official source for this?

The article links to this blog post, but I did not see anything relevant in it:

https://blog.google/products/pixel/pixel-drop-march-2025/

[-] StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

This part of the merge between Chrome OS and Android and is intended to replace Cros

[-] bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago

Like the Nokia N900 did back in 2004 - except it was a real mobile OS (but fully yours)

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[-] TheWilliamist@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Samsung’s DEX had a downloadable Linux VM running nearly a decade ago.

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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
439 points (97.0% liked)

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