this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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fwiw: it was viable when i had the first android released to the public; it was an HTC and with debian.
So, 15 years later we're worse off than then? Argh.
Out of curiosity, was it "just" a plain Debian system, or did it support touch screen and phone service?
Around that time we had the Nokia N900. For me it was the perfect phone. Debian as a base with Nokia's (unfortunately proprietary) apps on top of X11. You could just recompile Linux apps like Gimp and it worked. Apps that were made for Palm's WebOS worked.
Pidgin's libpurple was used for all the instant messaging so just about any protocol just worked without any need for extra apps. You could easily hack the underlying system. People added functionality like using the light sensor as a button. Angry Bird's first release was on that phone.
I miss it dearly. It was killed by Microsoft. Nothing ever managed to come close. That little 128 MB RAM machine had better multitasking than modern 8 GB phones.
androids can't do base distro's anymore?
the touch screen support was TERRIBLE, but it was helped a lot by the physical slide-out keyboard and i never got the phone capabilities to work correctly, but i heard from my colleagues at the time that some of them had figured it out.
I'll be honest, I never tried. Seeing that there are projects working independently to bring Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch to Android, I'd guess no? Plus I know you can run any distro in an emulator within Android systems, but that feels more like a curiosity.