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Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

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Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#231

Post by hdhzy »

herpderperator wrote: post #29

I did something like this (shared kernel and chroot) on an old Nexus S back in 2012 with Gentoo. You can use a precompiled stage3 tarball which contains the fundamental filesystem layout and utilities (for the target architecture), and then for anything else that you need, you just use Portage (Gentoo's package manager) to compile stuff for you. Not super practical in terms of battery life and time if you're constant…

Very cool thanks for sharing!

> Not super practical in terms of battery life

Samsung avoided this problem by requiring that the phone is connected to the dock that is also charging it.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#232

Post by jordache »

fragmede wrote: post #219
jordache wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really need robust USBC drivers. Even Apple, being in the forefront of USB C connectivity, is vastly lacking in robust USB C operations. Plug in/out of usbc cables causes dramatically high crash rate on the new MBPs

By "forefront of USB-C connectivity", you mean the new iPhones still use the proprietary lightning connector, to the detriment of progress.

first mass market laptop to be exclusively on USBC? Yeah if anyone, you'd get expect them to get the USB C stuff right...

But it wasn't the case. It's downright infuriating to use.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#233

Post by jhasse »

microcolonel wrote: post #229
jhasse wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drivers are proprietary.

That only means that the matching kernel drivers can't be upstreamed, that doesn't mean you can't forward port the kernel drivers. The kernel drivers are open source. I personally wouldn't settle for a system with a closed source userspace, but Brakenshire said that you're stuck with an old kernel , which is just not true.

> The kernel drivers are open source.

Why does Replicant have so many problems getting Wifi, 3D acceleration, etc. running then?

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#234

Post by tmzt »

rsync wrote: post #160
JorgeGT wrote: post #10

It's quite interesting that with the power of today's mobile devices (multicore 1GHz+ CPUs, GPUs, 2Gb+ RAM) we still don't have a standardized interface to plug them into desktop peripherals and launch a desktop OS/GUI. One would thing that such an universal interface would quickly become a standard offering in airports, hotels, libraries, conferences, etc.

"One would thing that such an universal interface would quickly become a standard offering in airports, hotels, libraries, conferences, etc." My favorite computing peripheral form factor has always been the PCMCIA card. It seems to me that you could fit a minimum viable phone inside a PCMCIA card and then insert that PCMCIA card into a normal sized laptop when you choose. The laptop would have no CPU/RAM - it's just…

The REXX? I think it was made by Rolodex or something.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#235

Post by digi_owl »

d_k_f wrote: post #227
digi_owl wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall there is an app like that for Android, but it requires a rooted device. Basically it presents ISOs over the USB connection as if they were storage devices, allowing them to act as boot media for a connected PC.

I just googled this, do you mean https://softwarebakery.com/projects/drivedroid ? Sounds rather nice, especially considering I've been installing various systems over the last few days and flashing images to a thumb drive gets old really fast. Thanks for mentioning this, it'll probably save me a few hours in the future!

Yep, i think thats the one.

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#236

Post by ninju »

rsync wrote: post #160
JorgeGT wrote: post #10

It's quite interesting that with the power of today's mobile devices (multicore 1GHz+ CPUs, GPUs, 2Gb+ RAM) we still don't have a standardized interface to plug them into desktop peripherals and launch a desktop OS/GUI. One would thing that such an universal interface would quickly become a standard offering in airports, hotels, libraries, conferences, etc.

"One would thing that such an universal interface would quickly become a standard offering in airports, hotels, libraries, conferences, etc." My favorite computing peripheral form factor has always been the PCMCIA card. It seems to me that you could fit a minimum viable phone inside a PCMCIA card and then insert that PCMCIA card into a normal sized laptop when you choose. The laptop would have no CPU/RAM - it's just…

There is the ASUS PadPhoneX

https://www.asus.com/us/Phone/ASUS_PadFone_X_US/gallery/

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#237

Post by kasabali »

byterollingbits wrote: post #4

No thanks! I'm not buying a phone that won't get updated with security updates. My trash box is littered with Korean Android phones that have no upgrade path or ability to clean with a fresh install. I'm opting for a Pixel 2 and an iPhone X for work and personal. They're expensive at first, but way cheaper and far more convenient in the long run. They always have immediate security updates, and they update their OS f…

Samsung is pretty good at security updates actually. See this 4.5 years old phone here [0] (july), or this 3.5 years old one [1] (september).

0: https://www.sammobile.com/firmwares/galaxy-s4/GT-I9505/

1: https://www.sammobile.com/firmwares/galaxy-s5/SM-G900F/

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#238

Post by Humphrey »

JorgeGT wrote: post #10

It's quite interesting that with the power of today's mobile devices (multicore 1GHz+ CPUs, GPUs, 2Gb+ RAM) we still don't have a standardized interface to plug them into desktop peripherals and launch a desktop OS/GUI. One would thing that such an universal interface would quickly become a standard offering in airports, hotels, libraries, conferences, etc.

That's what this Kickstarter project is trying to achieve.

https://www.sentio.com/

It looks like a MacBook Air, but is really just a screen, keyboard, touchpad, and portable battery bank for your Android phone.

Hopefully my Kickstarter pledge pays off!!

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#239

Post by kasabali »

It's already mentioned in sub comments but I'd like to mention GNURoot Debian [0] in a top level comment.

It is regular Debian (full repository of unmodified packages unlike Termux), and unlike variety of other chroot based solutions it doesn't require root access (utilizes proot).

0: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gnuroot.de...

Re: Linux on Samsung Galaxy smartphones

#240

Post by microcolonel »

jhasse wrote: post #233
microcolonel wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only means that the matching kernel drivers can't be upstreamed, that doesn't mean you can't forward port the kernel drivers. The kernel drivers are open source. I personally wouldn't settle for a system with a closed source userspace, but Brakenshire said that you're stuck with an old kernel , which is just not true.

> The kernel drivers are open source. Why does Replicant have so many problems getting Wifi, 3D acceleration, etc. running then?

The largest two components in 3D acceleration are the userspace shader compiler/GL library, and the display configuration code. The latter is in (usually) the kernel these days. They should have no particular issue forward porting the kernel side of the equation, but if they want full open source 3D acceleration, they are going to need to write the userspace part of the driver (or more likely, port Mesa to it).

As for WiFi, not sure. The drivers could be crappy in ways which don't cause problems on Android; or (rarely) could rely on a userspace component. Otherwise they just haven't gotten around to it.

Also, both of these problems would be specific to a given device (or at least a given chipset). Which device are you talking about that they are having these problems with?

As for Replicant specifically, they are only satisfied with free software, right? I don't think they would even want to forward port the graphics drivers, since unless there's already enough development on an open source driver to warrant upstreaming, there's probably not a workable open source userspace to match the driver anyway, so they wouldn't distribute it either way.

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