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Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

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Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#141

Post by Brakenshire »

morganvachon wrote: post #83
nopacience wrote: post #50

We need phone drivers! To enable us to install any distro or OS. I would love to download X distro directly from their website > install on the smartphone somehow > boot > install phone drivers > make calls I have nothing against Android. I would like to choose who creates the OS used on my smartphone

> "I would love to download X distro directly from their website > install on the smartphone somehow > boot > install phone drivers > make calls" Unfortunately it will never be that simple. First, the distro you want would need to have an ARM port targeting the same version of ARM SoC in the phone. ARM isn't like x86 with just two targets (32 bit and 64 bit), it's a quagmire. Second, your distro of choice would need…

> Second, your distro of choice would need to stick with the exact kernel version used by the phone, and I guarantee if you take any three Android phones by three different manufacturers made in the past two years, you'll see three different kernel versions, each with tweaks made just for that device. Said tweaks would make it impossible to have a distro targeting all three devices even if they did have the exact same kernel version.

Would this apply for the new Purism phone? i.e. if all the drivers are upstreamed into the mainline kernel, does thstnot mean you can use any kernel past the point where the drivers are included, without modification?

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#142

Post by jpalomaki »

What I would like to do is use my phone as portable storage device and then plug it in to external processing unit and boot from my phone. The external processing unit could be desktop computer, laptop or tablet.

The reason? When sitting behind my desk at home or office I don't like to be limited with the mobile CPU. I have the required kWhs to power a proper CPU, GPU and run 64GB of memory. I also don't want to run separate computers on each location, because keeping these in sync (OS settings, applications, databases etc) is painful.

Technically we are almost there. We can put reasonably fast flash storage to the phone. USB-C should provide enough bandwidth. On OS software side we would need some work to make plugging in/out convenient. I don't want to do a full reboot every time I "unplug" the phone from desktop processing unit and move it somewhere else. As I move between processing units I would like to keep my apps open, maybe just doing a hibernate/sleep and then waking the system up connected to a different processing unit.

This solution means double spending on CPUs and memory, but desktop hardware is relatively cheap.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#143

Post by jhasse »

Jonnax wrote: post #74
saagarjha wrote: post #55

> Linux on Galaxy allows the latest Samsung Galaxy smartphone users to run their preferred Linux distribution on their smartphones utilizing the same Linux kernel that powers the Android OS to ensure the best possible performance. (emphasis mine) I knew there was a catch somewhere. I seriously doubt there's a technical reason why older Galaxy models can't support running Linux as well. I don't understand why it's so…

Can you explain how they are getting in your way? It's possible for you to unlock the bootloader on your phone to run a custom kernel? What is the catch? That they've put development effort into supporting newer phones.

> It's possible for you to unlock the bootloader on your phone to run a custom kernel?

No, due to proprietary firmware and drivers you're tied to a specific Linux kernel version.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#144

Post by Aissen »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #69
digi_owl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe you can actually get a desktop going by installing https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=x.org.server and setting the display environment variable in termux.

Yeah, but you need the actual programs, and when I last looked termux didn't build packages that use X and didn't include the libraries to compile them yourself (or at least I couldn't find them)

You can use proot + debootstrap to install debian/ubuntu for example.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#145

Post by camillomiller »

K0SM0S wrote: post #61
camillomiller wrote: post #8

Maybe 2018 is finally the year of the Linux desktop. Wait... :) Jokes aside, I can see how this would be useful for sysadmin and devs - bring along your smartphone and you're set - but this would never fly for a general, even if geeky, public. Very nice approach though, curious to see where this ends up going.

I tend to agree with your sentiment, but > this would never From experience, I now pause and consider twice any statement I make using never . You know, I thought Facebook would never become dominant using such a one-size-fits-all interface where I can't even choose a theme or even my color, let alone which elements to be displayed and in which order (I keep thinking their UI is ugly to this day, if this was our 'hom…

Good observation. I will keep it in mind.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#146

Post by padraic7a »

eat_veggies wrote: post #66
padraic7a wrote: post #16

This is definitely interesting and I would be curious to see where it goes in the future. In the meantime however anyone who wants to use Linux on their phone today should check out https://ubports.com/ It works now!

Does it still maintain phone functionality (sms, calling, data)?

Yep.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#147

Post by kakarot »

datenwolf wrote: post #97
narrowtux wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things take time. Remember that blue screen when they announced USB plug and play support in Windows 98?

The controller/driver side of USB-3 is still in a miserable state. USB-3 is the source of endless frustration both at the lab and at private computers. Issues range from: USB-3 controllers won't initialize reliably if there's a single low speed device conntected, like e.g. the keyboard/mouse I've connected to the USB-3 hub my my monitor, which I'd like to connected to a USB-3 port of my computer so that I can plug th…

I noticed an interesting case when running Windows 7 with KVM and passing through one of my USB-3 controllers. The controller has a single port and a 3.0 hub connects to it. When I connect a USB-2 hub to the 3.0 hub, DPC latency spikes through the roof because of the interrupts. Even if there is nothing plugged into the second hub.

I wasn't sure if this was an issue with KVM, USB-3 or just a general issue with nesting hubs (even though I'm running low speed/power devices and a 3.1 port should be able to handle it) but you make it sound like it might indeed be an issue with USB-3

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#148

Post by icebraining »

neals wrote: post #107

So can we go Samsung -> Linux -> Virtual Box -> Windows? Or is that not how this works?

To get fast VMs, you need the guest OS (in this case, Windows) to be built for the same CPU architecture, and preferably to have virtualization features on the CPU. Since you're not likely to get either, you'd have to emulate the CPU. QEMU can do it, but it'll be slow.

On the other hand, if Windows 98 is enough for you, you can run it on your phone right now: http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98

That site is doing the CPU emulation in JavaScript(!). It's fast enough because, well, it's Windows 98.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#149

Post by pjmlp »

ahartmetz wrote: post #71
simonh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all used to having desktop computers with generic x86 compatible processors and highly standardized internal interfaces and components, and compiling our software and installing it on any x86 computer we want. Smartphones with ARM SOCs aren't like that because they aren't just a CPU, they also include a crapload of additional system components. Even SOCs like the Snapdragon within a specific model will offer ma…

The Linux Device Tree infrastructure was created as a hardware description for hardware that cannot describe itself at runtime, which is mostly ARM SoCs. However that only works when hardware drivers are wired up to the device tree infrastrucure instead of being fully hardcoded. Given the usual bare minimum investment in software by most embedded hardware vendors, many/most drivers probably aren't. Given a set of har…

Device Tree Overlays come to rescue, but only if OEMs actually do care.

https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/dto/

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