Don’t say, hey android has Linux in it, yeah no, idc, I want to know how far we are from buying a Linux phone at a price point of 200 USD.
A Linux phone is one which is built completely on Linux, uses Linux apps and most important has a terminal.
I don’t want a Linux Phone for privacy, although that’s a great reason, but I want it for the freedom it provides me. Hell, I don’t care if Android itself comes with a terminal and has similar features to Linux, I just want a Terminal which can install apps, where I can write commands and it will execute it. Complete Control on my phone and how it behaves is what I want.
I want to tell it when to sleep, when not to sleep, when to boot, when to edit a file and how, when to take a screenshot and what to do with it and where to save it, etc, etc. I hope you get the idea.
Yes. You have your pine phone. It’s more expensive than you’d like. But if if and only if enough people adopt it. Prices will come down with time
Since you don’t want anybody to tell you that Android is Linux, and you can do everything you want to do on Android with a custom ROM. I won’t mention it
do you know of any projects which has good support (and reputation) which has something like a terminal in it? I mean, I just want a terminal.
Also, I will be happy to spend 500USD on a Linux phone just to support it, but I wanted to know how far they are. Thank you for your comment.
If you just want a terminal you can install termux from github right now. No need for a custom ROM. It will be fairly locked down but you can use almost all programs that there are for linux. I use yt-dlp in Termux to download youtube videos
I like you lol. btw, can I do stuff like control volume using Texmux? Like idk, switch on or off my wifi and turn off airplane mode and stuff
I’d guess not, at least without root, as Texmux is still an app and Android won’t allow apps that much control over the phone.
I think this lack of real control via the terminal vs ‘real’ Linux is a key point.
You can control volume using termux with termux-volume command nand wifi with termux-wifi* commands. Not sure about airplane mode but reboot is possible with adb only
You need to use root or pass through some other access control mechanism to control network interfaces or audio devices on Linux too, Android’s access control mechanism for those things just isn’t built with shell scripting in mind because using a terminal on a phone is a pain…
Termux API from FDroid?
You can also install DE like XFCE into termux to run graphical programs. I use that for noaa-apt decoder.
"A userdebug build of AOSP or GrapheneOS has a su binary and an adb root command providing root access via the Android Debug Bridge via physical access using USB. This does still significantly reduce security, particularly since ADB has a network mode that can be enabled. Most of the security model is still intact. "
https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/13264di/is_root_possible_with_grapheneos/?rdt=38934
I’m using CalyxOS on a Fairphone 4, works pretty well, appart from getting Playstore apps from Aurora Store without a Google account (I search for apps in firefox and open the link with Aurora which is clunky but works). You can install a terminal emultor from F-Droid, not sure why you would tbh but I’ve found several.