[juliangoldsmith]

postmarketOS tries to bring a desktop-style, Alpine-based Linux distro to mobile devices. It has some level of support for relatively recent (~2015) devices, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

Replicant is working on creating a fully free software distribution of Android, rather than trying to provide a desktop-style Linux.

Porting programs isn't generally a huge deal. Most devices on postmarketOS currently use the old downstream kernel, and most things run fine on it.

The main problem is that a lot of peripherals require closed source drivers and firmware. For instance, very few devices have support for hardware-accelerated graphics or wireless connectivity, both of which are necessary on a mobile device.