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Android Debian Linux

Google Introduces Debian Linux Terminal App For Android (zdnet.com) 43

Posted by BeauHD from the laptop-in-your-pocket dept.
Google has introduced a Debian Linux terminal app for Android in its ongoing effort to transform Android into a versatile desktop OS. It's initially available on Pixel devices running Android 15 but will be expanded to "all sufficiently robust Android phones" when Android 16 arrives later this year," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Today, Linux is only available on the latest Pixel devices running Android 15. When Android 16 arrives later this year, it's expected that all sufficiently robust Android phones will be able to run Linux. Besides a Linux terminal, beta tests have already shown that you should be able to run desktop Linux programs from your phone -- games like Doom, for example. The Linux Terminal runs on top of a Debian Linux virtual machine. This enables you to access a shell interface directly on your Android device. And that just scratches the surface of Google's Linux Terminal. It's actually a do-it-all app that enables you to download, configure, and run Debian. Underneath Terminal runs the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF). These are the APIs that enable Android devices to run other operating systems.

To try the Linux Terminal app, you must activate Developer Mode by navigating to Settings - About Phone and tapping the build number seven times. I guess Google wants to make sure you want to do this. Once Developer Mode is enabled, the app can be activated via Settings - System - Developer options - Linux development environment. The initial setup may take a while because it needs to download Debian. Typically this is a 500MB download. Once in place, it allows you to adjust disk space allocation, set port controls for network communication, and recover the virtual machine's storage partition. However, it currently lacks support for graphical user interface (GUI) applications. For that, we'll need to wait for Android 16.

According to Android specialist Mishaal Rahman, 'Google wants to turn Android into a proper desktop operating system, and in order to do that, it has to make it work better with traditional PC input methods and display options. Therefore, Google is now testing new external display management tools in Android 16 that bring Android closer to other desktop OSes.'

Google Introduces Debian Linux Terminal App For Android More | Reply

Google Introduces Debian Linux Terminal App For Android

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  • 20 years after.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @09:03AM (#65219635)

    The Nokia 770 shipped with just a Debian-based install on it. Could even point the sources.list to the Debian stable ARM repo.

    Granted it was just a tablet and not a phone, but still...

    • Re: 20 years after.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by shadowjk ( 654432 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @09:41AM (#65219657)

      Took until the N900 4 years after 770 before the "mobile Linux computer" line was bestowed with a cellular modem, not counting the WiMAX modem in the N810W.
        I remember using a fairly standard claws email client on both N810 and N900 and having no issues with the UI elements despite the approximately 4" screen. Today phones have 7" screens, UI elements are humongous yet I keep hitting the wrong things all the time. I wonder what happened.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        I loved my N900, especially the hardware keyboard. I was quite sad the day it died, though by then it was becoming difficult to use because the ancient web browser didn't work with a lot of sites due to not supporting the latest TLS version.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Teun ( 17872 )
        Ahh, the N900, it was a beauty and suffered an early death.
        (Mine died even earlier when it fell in the goldfish pond)
  • Imagine, DOOM on a phone... If nothing else, the Raspberry Pi has shown us the phone chip is suitable for general purpose use. It should be easier to attach a public monitor, keyboard, and mouse and use your phone resources as a Chromebook-like workstation.

  • I've run Termux for quite a while on my Androids, but this appears to be a full Linux in a VM, rather than a user-mode shell running directly on Android. Too bad it didn't make it to the 7a.

  • DOOM = Hello World (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @09:43AM (#65219661)

    Being able to run Doom on a phone is not impressive given that you can run Doom on your pregnancy test https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
    You want to impress me, run Crysis.

  • "Linux" (Score:3)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @10:07AM (#65219669)

    >"Today, Linux is only available on the latest Pixel devices running Android 15. When Android 16 arrives later this year, it's expected that all sufficiently robust Android phones will be able to run Linux."

    Linux is a kernel (or a system/distro running the Linux kernel). Android is a Linux system and always has been. So no, Linux doesn't "arrive" with Android 16. Maybe an officially-supported terminal app/environment does. But there have been terminal apps for Android for a very long time (with included typical *nix commands and environments). For example:

    https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • This is all why RMS wasn't wrong when he asked people to use the term GNU/Linux to describe operating systems with a Linux kernel and GNU userland. But alas he continues to be ridiculed for it, long after Android became popular enough for it to be obvious that non-GNU-based Linux operating systems needed to be distinguished from GNU based ones.

      I'm curious to know if they're doing this the same way Chromebooks do, with a VM, rather than with something lighter like cgroups (the engine behind LXC and Docker)?

  • Termux (Score:5, Informative)

    by Parsiuk ( 2002994 ) on Saturday March 08, 2025 @10:14AM (#65219677) Homepage

    "Linux is only available on the latest Pixel devices running Android 15"

    ...or just sideload Termux on whatever phone you like and be done with google's nonsense.

  • I'd be happy if my phone was capable of running the programs I use on my laptop. It would be great to run the full-fat versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, and Thunar, as well as GIMP, OpenSCAD, and maybe even KiCad, on my phone. Of course, adding an HDMI output to the phone would be ideal.

    Best case would be Linux itself, and ONLY Linux, on that phone. Screw the Linux VM on top of (already Linux-derived) Android. I'd rather avoid the spying and advertising that's baked into Android. I really don't want what is

    • Sounds like you need a Pine Phone. https://pine64.org/devices/pin... [pine64.org]

      • The reason I don't have one is that they have dismal battery life and don't even handle basic calls and texts reliably. I've been following them for a while, and it seems that they've taken the project as far as they can without having access to the proprietary blobs that handle the boilerplate cellular stuff. In any case, it's not viable as a daily driver so, sadly, it doesn't work for me.

        • Allwinner A64, a very old SoC incapable of supporting modern features such as Vulkan.

          The best candidate for a drop-in replacement would be the A523/7, as found in low end Android tablets from 2013. Modest but cheap.

          Pine64 now do have a board based on Avaota-A1 but the Sun-xi community are now only just mainlining the initial board bringup, so probably another 18 months before a Pinephone 2 appears on the roadmap, if at all.

    • My first thought was that I'm not sure how useful many Linux desktop apps would be within the confines of what can be done on non-rooted Android phones these days. Sure you could run Doom, but could you load a .wad file from the android's primary storage? Read from an arbitrary part of the MicroSD card? I assume writing to it would be right out. I expect this will be like running a Linux VM inside a jailshell. Having a phone that ran GNU/Linux as its only OS back when the N900 was current and supported was

    • The bit I can't get excited about is the rest of it:

      in its ongoing effort to transform Android into a versatile desktop OS.

      So we're supposed to use a locked-down, Google-controlled UI veneer designed to drive a fondle slab for content consumers as a desktop OS? Oh hell no [youtube.com].

  • Or are we gonna say Debian has the largest install base of any Linux distribution on mobile ?

  • The bleak, icky world of cellphones.

  • As soon as you want sudo, all your important apps stop working. They just can't let you sniff out their secrets.

  • I couldnâ(TM)t help but be reminded of this page http://www.thebestpageintheuni... [thebestpag...iverse.net]

    Where a beautiful rant about how he can restart his apache webserver from his nokia. Ackshullyâ¦. Yes i know itâ(TM)s just a ssh terminal doesnâ(TM)t stop me being reminded about it though.

  • Anyone knows why it is not available on LineageOS 22.1-20250302?

  • It's not usable. Termux is way ahead. Try again, Google!

  • I installed Termux years ago, I thought it would be handy to monitor server status, issue reboots perhaps, really light duty stuff. But without bluetoothing a keyboard in, typing into the command line from a software keyboard was ... like chinese water torture... maybe closer to bamboo under the fingernails... no thanks.

    So once you're into a keyboard, you might as well be using a laptop, where you can see the text in greater than 2 point text, and can type things like "rsync -e 'ssh -p 7975' -zrp --info=progress2 boat root@cart:/var/www/html/boatshow/boat" without self inflicted suffering.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      without self inflicted suffering

      I think you missed a semicolon in that command.

  • This tired google doublespeak is getting old. Android phones already run linux. So now they expose a different skin and call that linux, attempting to distract from the fact that Android is already just a linux skin. If you repeat a lie enough times does that make it true? Does being an overweight monopolist make your lies more true?

  • "Google wants to turn Android into a proper desktop operating system"

    Hence why DeX hasn't been updated lately?

  • So we will have Linux ontop of which there is Android JVM inside which there will be another Linux kernel? Sounds overly complicated and wasteful just to not let users to the main system.

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