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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Can you even do that? Do you need a custom ROM written specifically for the device?
I thought Android was based on Linux anyway.
There are two things referred to as "Linux". One is the full operating system, sometimes also called GNU/Linux, and one is the Linux kernel, which is just the "backbone" of the OS. Android is an OS that uses the Linux kernel, but it is not a (GNU/)Linux OS. There are some Linux distros for smartphones but they are very few and for only a very limited set of devices.
Android is basically "Android/Linux", he wants "GNU/Linux" instead
Yep, you can install Linux on a phone, depending on the model and if someone's made a custom Linux ROM for it - you can't just download a Linux distro and install it directly, because this is the ARM architecture and the way it boots and the way drivers are handled is quite different from PCs (x86 architecture), which is why you need a custom Linux ROM with the bootloader, drivers, config etc all baked in.
PostmarketOS is one such ROM/distro, and you can install it on some popular phones like the OnePlus 6/6T, but there may be some limitations, such as the camera not working etc. It would be better to instead buy a phone that explicitly supports Linux, such as the Pinephone, the FxTec Pro1, some Sony Xperia phones (SailfishOS), or Planet PDA phones like the Gemini/Cosmo Communicator.
Don't forget the FairPhone
I bought my phone prioritising specs like 256GB storage, headphone jack, 120hz, cameras, etc, and I only realised later that I couldn't install any custom ROM or even Magisk, as they weren't written for my device.
So I'm a bit annoyed about that.
I was talking about the pinephone
You can flash the rom on a lot of current android phones. But now you can get phones like the pinephone which ships with a linux os of your choice. I don’t know what os’s are available but there is more than one. I do know that Ubuntu is one of the main ones that gets installed though