Jay Freeman successfully ports Debian for Android

[MobileMan]

Would be nice to see how it operates but I dont want to risk messing anything up. I dont somehow what to render my phone useless if I need to send it in for a repair. I can hear the call from a Tmo rep asking me what have I done to my phone. LOL.

[71CH]

You guys have no idea how excited I am. Imagine Amarok and GIMP on the G1? Or running Compiz???? (I doubt this but it would be nice)

[Crashdamage]

First, any mods like this are only for advanced Linux geeks who are not worried at all about warranties, customer support or brickin' their phone in general. If any of that applies to you - don't try it.
Second, I can think of a few good reasons for running a more or less 'normal' Linux distro on a G1. But I can think of a lot more good reasons not to.

Let's just say I think Android is a very good adaptation of Linux for the purpose intended, much better than even Mobile LInux, with lotsa future potential. Debian (or Unbuntu or Mandriva or CentOS - pick any disktop distro) is not well adapted for mobile use. Expect lotsa problems.
In fact, I would think Android has a better chance of evolving into a good desktop OS than Debian does of evolving into a good mobile OS.

I've used Linux for a long time and always will. But I'm not even the least bit tempted to try this. A lot more disadvantages than advantages.

71CH wrote:

Imagine Amarok and GIMP on the G1? Or running Compiz????

Keep imagining. No phone yet has anything like the necessary horsepower to run such software really well. Well, Amarok - but then I hate Amarok...

[saurik]

Originally Posted by Crashdamage

Let's just say I think Android is a very good adaptation of Linux for the purpose intended, much better than even Mobile LInux, with lotsa future potential. Debian (or Unbuntu or Mandriva or CentOS - pick any disktop distro) is not well adapted for mobile use. Expect lotsa problems.
In fact, I would think Android has a better chance of evolving into a good desktop OS than Debian does of evolving into a good mobile OS.

I've used Linux for a long time and always will. But I'm not even the least bit tempted to try this. A lot more disadvantages than advantages.

This seems to be based around a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm working towards. I am not /replacing/ Android and putting Debian on the phone. I am setting things up so that when you ssh into the phone (sorry, /telnet/) and type ls -la you don't get "-la: file not found" because you have the most pitiful userspace ever.

Android is designed to do this. If you look at Android it entirely sandboxes itself into /system, /data, and /cache, none of which are part of the standard Unix directory hierarchy. This means you can throw all of Debian and all of Android on there and never will the two ever conflict.

This is /not/ about replacing the GUI, replacing the applications, trying to get some crazy alternative cellular stack, using desktop bluetooth, or any other "he installed Debian onto his phone?" insanity. This is just a matter of taking the following statement to its conclusion: I am carrying around a computer with me, it has a 600MHz processor and a QWERTY keyboard, it has up to 16GB of disk space, and all I'm running on it is a phone?...

Imagine being able to easily pop out nmap and figure out what the IP of the computer you are connecting to is, or quickly rsync some files from your office server to your phone (and even maintain all the permissions, something that wouldn't be possible if you just tried to copy it onto the vFAT SD card), or run your compiles and performance tests rapidly on the device itself without having to continually redeploy your applications to the device over the USB cable.

Seriously, the possibilities here are endless and there is no cost. My method of installation doesn't even make permanent modifications to the phone (everything is on the SD card or exists as changes to the RAM mounted / that by definition gets reset every bootup). /Comparing/ Debian to Android is simply fundamentally the wrong paradigm: put your hands together.