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by rsync 3172 days ago
"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 difficult for Android manufacturers to allow users to install whatever they want"

Can you do this (install arbitrary OS, etc.) on any of the google nexus devices ? I have never used one but my impression was that they had totally unlocked boot loaders, etc.
1 comments
zanny 3172 days ago
If the bootloader is unlocked / fastboot can write to the bootloader / etc you can put whatever code on your phone you want to run.

The problem is the hardware is undocumented and the shipped drivers are proprietary so you would need to reverse engineer support for everything from the chipset to the modem to the display adapter.

So you can go throw a Debian Arm image in place of a system partition on many Android phones... it just won't boot.

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dmitrygr 3172 days ago
That isn't true. It will actually boot. In fact, you will even have unaccelerated graphics. Depending on the phone, you will probably have working Bluetooth. WiFi will work if you copy the firmware image from the original Android installation. Touch screen will work perfectly fine. Power management and thermal management are going to be a lot of work. Graphics acceleration is unlikely
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rsync 3172 days ago
"So you can go throw a Debian Arm image in place of a system partition on many Android phones... it just won't boot."

Won't even boot ?

I would expect that peripherals and radios and so on would be out of reach due to hardware/drivers but my expectation was that you could boot and get serial comms somehow ... as unusable as that would be ...

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