this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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You can get ARM builds of Linux. I have never tried them so can't speak to how well they work on a phone.
Just running Linux is one thing, but making it working with anything outside the CPU like the motherboard onboard chips and other components is a different task.
Check out a table of what works on one of the Linux distro targetting phones: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
There is no phone with fully working hardware and most barely booting and showing console.
Is there a lot of benefit to running postmarketOS compared to rooted Android?
I've had some trouble with flashing an old Asus tablet in that all the old images/info are basically dead links. But that is mostly just your average link rot.
I figured compiling a custom ROM was more trouble than it's worth but if the main branch is actively maintained maybe less so.
If you want "a phone" with PostmarketOS, forget it now. It can be good as a portable mini computer for remote connecting to a servers and things like that, but until you are about to take sacrifices of for ex. not working camera and do not want to be sure alarm clock app is going to ring at the morning this won't be for you.
It's much less polished, stable and pleasent for daily use as Android. But they are good reasons why people are developing it.
For anyone who is interested, I keep my eye on Pine for this sort of thing.
https://pine64.com/product-category/smartphones/
Interesting. For the Nokia N900 there is Maemo Leste which also uses mainline Linux (+ a few patches they are working to mainline) and there everything works. Mind that works means in this case: Does what I want if I issue a number of console commands. However most of it by now even works via the GUI.
Keep in mind that Leste is a project by a few enthusiasts and writing drivers for undocumented hardware is a monumental task, writing GUI for a whole mobile OS is also complicated. So it is utterly astonishing, how far they got!