What’s the difference between droidian and mobian?
As far as I can tell, droidian uses the android kernel etc (like ubuntu touch) whereas mobian is closer to mainline linux
What difference does that make? I had thought the android kernel was just the Linux kernel
I think that in the Android kernel (for your device) there are binary blobs for hardware drivers. Which are not in mainline and most of the times not even available anywhere.
It basically is, but this kernel is much modified by modem maker, SoC maker and device and component manufacturers. They almost always do dirty low quality patches just to make one device work with Android and not care about sending them to upstream (mainline) kernel or even about compatibility with anything but their Android version.
https://not.mainline.space/ - example of OnePlus 6 having more than 5,600,000 lines of code difference from normal Linux kernel. And is still considered pretty close compared to most phones.
Most of those changes seem to be drivers. I do wonder how much of those changes are auto-generated. AMD and Nvidia sometimes check in millions of changes for that reason, because their open source stuff is largely generated from their proprietary designs.
That not gpl violation? Not publishing kernel patch?
They are publishing their version of the kernel. The problem is that this kernel is so much modified and dirtly patched it is useless to run anything other than Android.
And many device drivers for Android are now proprietary blobs in Android userspace outside of the kernel code.
Android kernels are forks of Linux kernels.
For mobile devices, the difference is that Android kernels actually work, and upstream Linux kernels don’t. Projects like postmarketOS are working on mainlining more Android hardware, but you probably won’t get all of your hardware to work if you grab Linux 6.8 and try to run it on your phone.
The weird kernel situation is one of the reasons you get Android phones with the very latest version of Android and a kernel stuck at something like Linux 4.14 or even lower. Upgrading Android isn’t hard, upgrading the kernel would basically require Qualcom and every other company that delivered drivers to patch their code for you.
Driver blobs often have ludicrous requirements/restrictions and are made for Android. Main difference would be the kernel version i guess.
ooh, nice.
Will it run on a 8t? Which instructions did you follow? I’ve one lying around and i’d love to test mobile Linux
I read on the droidian Matrix that the 8 and 8 pro were ported. You might ask there?
Also, no instructions. The droidian installer was pretty straightforward. Downgrade to the last Android 10 and run it.
Why downgrade?
Something to do with firmware. I just follow the instructions
This is common with these Linux on Android-based phones. I believe Ubuntu Touch requires you to downgrade to Android 9 in most cases.
No available port for 8T yet.
How? Can it run other oneplus? I have a 6T and will want to try it out. Any help or suggestions would be helpful
For the 6T you can go straight to Mobian or PostmarletOS and ditch the android kernel!
Also, full-blown NixOS is possible with custom partitioning and stuff
It’s great if you want portable computer. But as smartphone, still no camera is a big downside :P.
The 6T specifically has a community image support, as described here
Awesome, I will get into it. Thanks for the quick turnaround
Worth it to try out and see the current state. The ecosystem is close to daily usage if you mind some bugs and use only standardized FOSS things. There are bugs here and there like GNOME Web crashing on more load that definetly can be a turn off for many to switch now, but it is worth trying out especially when going back is easy on OnePlus phones.
I love Gnome and would love a Linux phone, but sadly I hear they aren’t as secure as Android, and security is important to me. I’m really curious how the experience is to use it though.
Android is Linux. It’s all the stuff on top that makes it more secure - 90% of which is covered by flatpak + MAC.
Ok now we want to see more
Can you share a video so I can get an idea of how responsive it is?
Hopefully GKI will help Linux development and we’ll see more ports like that
GKI will still limit you to Google’s fork of the kernel
I want to try and port my Zenfone 8 to droidian when I have the will to do it, unfortunately Asus has disabled bootloader unlocking over a year ago and we still have no word since other than “soon™️” every 3 months. A shame really because this phone has great support by 3rd party android Roms such as lineageos or omnirom
