The project’s goal is to run a full graphical Linux desktop on your Android device. At its core, Android has a Linux kernel, meaning it and desktop Linux manage processes and handle memory in the same way. Above that, though, there are different file systems and libraries. Local Desktop solves this problem by replicating the bits of Linux that are missing from Android so that a desktop sees all the dependencies it needs to see in order to run.

You don’t need to know all the complicated bits. That’s for the developer to handle. All you need to do is install the app. This one isn’t available from the Play Store, but you can download the Local Desktop APK from Github.

Replace Android with Fedora

The full-blown method

There is a well-established effort to revive old phones using Linux known as PostmarketOS. If you have, say, a OnePlus 6 lying around, you can blow away its existing software and install Linux instead. Thing is, PostmarketOS is primarily geared toward running the mobile versions of desktop Linux, such as Phosh and Plasma Mobile. I first learned about PostmarketOS in the days of the Pine Phone and Purism Librem 5.

The Fedora Project is now using a similar approach to instaĺl regular desktop Fedora on Android hardware. The project is known as Fedora Pocketblue Remix, and it provides an atomic and immutable Linux distro, much like Fedora Silverblue. While the stated goal isn’t explicitly to bring old hardware back to life, you will need a pretty dated Android phone in order to take this particular project for a spin. The oldest phone I have on hand is a Pixel 6, and that’s still too new by several years.

Inside the Android terminal

The bleeding edge

This last method isn’t ready for prime time yet, but it possibly hints at the most promising work being done to enable Google’s Linux terminal app for Android to run graphical apps.

After installing a canary build of Android released over the summer, Android Authority noticed a new button in the top right corner of the terminal. Tapping this “display” button sends graphical activity from the terminal to Android proper. To make the magic happen, you type “weston” into the terminal, a command that’s likely to look familiar to Linux users familiar with the Wayland display server. This is the code that actually displays your apps.

Android Authority demoed Gedit, the older GNOME text editor, up and running next to a GNOME Terminal window. This time around, the writers did not demo Doom.

Does Google ever intend for this to become the primary way that anyone uses their Android devices? No. Realistically, this is more than likely background work being done in the process of merging ChromeOS with Android. But if there’s a possibility of launching full Linux desktop apps on Android devices in a laptop form-factor, that’s perhaps even more exciting than running Linux on phones and tablets. For the time being, this pre-beta software is also only available on Pixel phones.

Master of your domain

Part of the fun of both Linux and Android is the ability to do with them what you will. Android may come with more restrictions, but where there is a will, there is a way—and the number of ways to will Linux into your Android phone only continues to grow.