Nov 29, 2016 - This projects aim is to bring a range of linux distros to your android. One huge caveat I can't get my tablet to showw the linux desktop except in. The hardware and software of Surface RT is locked, so you are unable to run Linux, Ubuntu or Android OS on the tablet unless cracking it. For Surface Pro, you could try a regular UEFI based boot loader or use a virtual machine software in Windwos 8.
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PostmarketOS is a Touch-Optimized Linux Distro for Smartphones and Tablets Arguably one of the worst things about the Android ecosystem is how quickly most devices reach the end of their software support life cycle, at least when compared to Apple or Google. Right now, you can expect to get up to 2 years of updates and 3 years of security patches from your manufacturer. If you’re lucky, those updates may only take months rather than a year to arrive! This is due to many factors, silicon manufacturers being an important one.
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And Google has done lots of things to try and fix that, the most effort being. However, if you’re the tech savvy kind of person, you can keep your device up to date with custom ROMs, which port over the newest Android releases and security patches to older, unsupported phones. This is not enough, though, as eventually, age will take its toll, and your phone will become progressively slower as time moves on. The reason is pretty simple: as Android becomes more feature rich, it also becomes progressively heavier with time, increasing resource usage to a point old phones can’t really keep up. You can even install an (launched in 2010), and while the fact that it boots and works mostly stable is a feat in and of itself, and something quite incredible, it’s not really usable as a reliable daily driver due to the heavily outdated hardware. The Hummingbird processor (Exynos 3110) + 512 MB of RAM combo is just not able to run Nougat smoothly, even with overclocking. Phones with 1 GB of RAM are struggling to run the latest custom ROMs.
The same situation does not happen with old computers, though, mainly thanks to GNU/Linux distributions. You can actually take a 2007 computer and install a basic Linux distro on it, and it’ll run through most tasks (including web searching, multimedia playback, social networks and more) without a hitch.
You will even get the latest security patches and most new features on your old computer. These distros also keep resource usage to a minimum, so while it definitely won’t be faster than a newer computer, it will work just fine for most of your casual needs. There is a small project hoping to bring that kind of support to Android phones and tablets, and that project is called postmarketOS. PostmarketOS – a Linux Distro for Your Phone or Tablet postmarketOS (pmOS for short) has a single premise: it aims to give Android smartphones a 10-year life cycle. It’s an actual, touch-optimized Linux distribution that you can get up and running on your smartphone or tablet, no matter how old it is. PmOS builds upon, a lightweight Linux distribution aimed at security, so you can squeeze decent performance out of an old phone without worrying about out-of-date software packages.
They also promise not to restrict features to only certain newer phones or tablets, so even older devices will be able to take advantage of features like full disk encryption. You can also package and run pretty much anything you want on postmarketOS. It’s developed in the spirit of regular Linux distributions so you can even use multiple phone interfaces, ranging from things like Ubuntu Touch to a simple, old-fashioned shell interface. You can also use any app from any ecosystem, including regular Linux desktop applications. They are also aware of the issues with security holes in old devices. There’s not much that can be done, as those depend on device and silicon manufacturers to fix.
However, they did say that they’re exploring their options to maximize security on their supported phones. They also said that they’re interested in using the mainline Linux kernel instead of an Android fork in order to maximize the safety of the user space. Status of postmarketOS postmarketOS is currently at a very early stage of development, and it’s not usable for most users yet. A pre-alpha version has been booted up on the Google which is shown in the images of this article, but it’s still a big work in progress. There is no ETA either for the release of a stable version, so if you’re interested in this project you will have to wait patiently until it’s done.
While a 10-year lifespan is truly something unbelievable when speaking about smartphones, we are really excited to see how this project will end up, as it looks like a promising alternative for those who like to keep their old phones around until they physically break. If you want to learn more, check out their, their, and their, where you will find everything about this project. If you’re interested in contributing to postmarketOS, check out the source code at!
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No NSFW GNU/Linux is a free and open source software operating system for computers. The operating system is a collection of the basic instructions that tell the electronic parts of the computer what to do and how to work. Free, Libre and open source software (FLOSS) means that everyone has the freedom to use it, see how it works, and change it. GNU/Linux is a collaborative effort between the GNU project, formed in 1983 to develop the GNU operating system and the development team of Linux, a kernel. Initially Linux was intended to develop into an operating system of its own, but these plans were shelved somewhere along the way. Linux is also used without GNU in embedded systems, mobile phones and appliances, often with BusyBox or other such embedded tools.
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Or a subreddit for it, and when it has over 350 subscribers, and we'll add it to the sidebar. I've been running Windows 8.1 on my tablet and I'm interested in dual-booted Linux. In the past, I've used Ubuntu, but I wasn't very happy with it last time (several years ago), and I wanted to ask people who would know better than me: what distribution should I install if I want to dual-boot? I figure that they're all mostly the same on the command line, so I'm most interested in which UI would be best on a touchscreen.
This may be a common question, so feel free to direct me to existing resources if there are good ones I haven't seen! A linux distribution is basically a GNU/linux distrobution:) Whenever you talk about linux as an OS and not just the kernel, then it's GNU/Linux. Basically, kernel=linux, the whole OS=GNU/Linux.
GNU by itself is basically an unfinished OS, the key thing it is missing is a finished kernel (that's where the linux kernel comes in and thus the term GNU/Linux). Some brief history: Richard Stallman was fed up with proprietary code and OSes so he started a project to make a free (libre) OS. Several years later they coded a lot of it but were still missing a kernel. Meanwhile, some dude by the name of Linus started out his own hobby project and started coding the Linux kernel, basically because the dude wanted to use the hardware he had. When Linus changed the license to a free license, BAM, you had all the parts necessary to make a free (libre) OS! Back to today, a modern (GNU/)Linux distribution contains the Linux kernel, a lot of stuff that falls under the GNU project, but also a lot from others. GNU is still added because a lot of key, underlining, userspace (ie.
Not in the kernel) stuff is still GNU, and there are plenty of GNU stuff (I keep finding out new stuff is GNU, or GNU has a program for something I'm looking for). So while you may use something like KDE and not actually see GNU software that much it's still there and important. Quite simple. Linux is just a kernel, one part of a system. GNU is a whole operating system (but commonly isn't used as it is). And when you replace GNU's kernel (its name is HURD) with Linux, you get GNU/Linux. That being said, not everything on a modern GNU/Linux system is from GNU.
Eg systemd as a system daemon isn't a GNU project. If you run web server, httpd is from Apache. Or if you have desktop, neither X.org nor Wayland are GNU projects. On the other hand, GNOME is.
Now you can understand the confusion about Android: Android is and operating system. It's not Linux.
It just has Linux as its kernel. But since the aren't any GNU packages, it's fundamentally different from Debian or Fedora or openSUSE, so it doesn't make any sense to call it GNU/Linux.
I've been quite simplifying and will again, but I still hope to make things clearer to you, not foggier:) 'linux' packages if you with this mean GNU/Linux programs, that is programs to be run on the GNU/Linux operating systems, then you are right these won't run on GNU nor Android GNU/android I'm not sure what do you mean by this. There is a naming custom that says that the thing before / is the name of userland and after / is the name of kernel. Thus this doesn't make sense, since Android isn't a kernel, it's whole OS.
If you mean GNU with Android's kernel, then that's good old GNU/Linux we all know and love (and hate sometimes:) ) if you mean Android's userland with GNU's kernel - with HURD, that is a very interesting and possible concept, but afaik nonexistent to this day. Crossbreeding and mixing matching, isn't impossible. Folks at Debian have a OS with GNU with FreeBSD's kernel (so no Linux) and they call it GNU/ kFreeBSD (k for kernel).
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