20 Nov
2022
20 Nov
'22
6:50 p.m.
On Sunday 20 November 2022 04:23:30 deloptes wrote:
I am really sceptical about you undertaking.
You are not alone. Your scepticism is shared by the Present Author.
;-)
Well Android is a Linux fork, but again, you can't just get the hardware
working without drivers, which are mostly proprietary and closed
My ambition is not to create a working, fully-functional smartphone with a TDE
desktop. I want only to see if it is possible to get it installed in such an
environment. I realize that there is a different file system, the problem
with drivers, etc., etc.
Long ago (20 years?), I knew somebody who actually installed Linux on a phone.
I don't know how, don't know if it actually worked. I didn't hear much more
about it, so I assume that it wasn't really functional, but he actually got
Linux to run on a phone, and this was one of those really old cheap phones;
not one of our new smartphones.
If I get a chance to talk to him about that (probably not soon), then I will
find out more about how and so on. At the time, it seemed like building a
ship in a bottle: interesting, but not really practical. Now it suddenly
seems like a good idea.
As I said, I have a brand-new, working phone, but I don't intend to do
anything to mess up that device (yet), as I do actually use it for maybe 5-10
calls a month.
However, I also have an older smartphone, which does not receive a phone
signal any longer, but which still can connect to Internet. This is the
device that I intend to start on. Once I get it rooted - if I don't brick
it - I intend to install Replicant, Sailfish, or whatever is closest to
GNU/Linux free/libre (meaning, I won't be restricted by proprietary
barriers), and there, if I have enough capacity, I will try to install a TDE
desktop, just to see if it is possible.
Other phones (as I've heard here and elsewhere) use some modified KDE desktop,
if they have a proper desktop at all, so perhaps I am not yet entirely out of
my mind. (Some may suppose otherwise.)
After I get practice at rooting my older smartphone, and installing a
free/libre OS, then I will try it out on my new phone, my primary phone. At
present, I don't intend to experiment with TDE on my new phone, but in
another year or two it will become my older phone, and then anything goes.
As for the rooting, I've been doing my research, and I hope that over the
winter months, that will be my project, to root my older phone, and if all
goes well, to get my new phone rooted, Google-free, running a free/libre OS,
and to be functional.
I looked round for some kind of group that is into rooting Android phones, but
they don't seem to exist, or maybe they keep to themselves. I suppose that
this would be like building a pirate ship in a bottle.
Bill