Run Linux+X on phone or android tablet (no root needed)

[wiak]

Following on from my above post...

Despite my doubts, I persevered, and have now successfully compiled latest gtkwialog 0.8.7 on my Android 6 tablet in GNURoot Debian.

I tarred up my Gtkwialog git repo on my PC, emailed it to myself, and then on Android 6 tablet opened the email and downloaded the tar.gz file to / on my GNURoot debian system. I untarred it there with tar xzvf ....tar.gz and doing it that way the necessary execute permissions on the various build scripts were preserved and all worked...

I don't know why starting in GNURoot debian in / dir and issuing git clone command results in a clone that doesn't have exec perms on these scripts... oh well - works the way I'm doing it anyway and gtkwialog 0.8.7 working fine on Android GNURoot Debian (EDIT: also now have wiagit running on it)... So can be useful afterall.

wiak

[wiak]

Well, GNURoot Debian no longer being maintained.

But just installed UserLAnd from Google playstore and running Ubuntu Bionic version on it via auto-installed X and vnc. Works just like GNURoot Debian once it is up and running. dpkg/apt working fine so can add what you like.

I'm using it to run cherrytree on my android phone (apart from using it as Linux plaything). Better on android tablet though, since bigger screen...

You can alternatively do a lot of the same yourself by first installing Termux program and then PRoot for android and then X and vnc stuff etc, but that involves a fair bit of knowledge and work (especially to get Debian with dpkg/apt etc). I think UserLAnd maybe uses a modified version of Termux underneath but I have to look into that more. An alternative to UserLAnd is AnLinux, which I'm going to also try out soon (it needs Termux installed first).

My current phone is a 1GB RAM cheapo vodaphone smartprime with android ver 5.0.2 on it, but previous experiment showed similar working on even earlier 512MB RAM android 4.2.2 phone okay (with external SD card - I'm using 16GB SDcard but I don't know enough about android to find where everything is stored or how much space it is taking up). My phone is default config (I have NOT rooted it).

I imagine it could be possible to get FatDog running on phone via one of these, but not sure how and I'm unlikely to try.

EDIT: But again the window manager used by default is twm... and on small screen I hate that really. So in xterm I entered:

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sudo apt update
sudo apt install jwm

But problem is, I don't know how window manager is getting started up in this case. Seems to be using Xsession and I looked in /etc/X11 but couldn't find how to change from twm to newly installed jwm (found no config for it in /home/user_dir or in /root for that matter). Anyway, for now, found a quick way to do manually since I discovered from process list that program /usr/bin/x-window-manager is what starts twm (actually that's a symlink to /etc/alternatives...). I hoped it was a script but it's a binary exec. So what I did is simply kill off twm with command:

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pkill x-window-manager

and then started jwm with:

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jwm &

Today, above pkill didn't work for me, so had to find the pid of x-window-manager and kill -9 it:

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sudo ps aux | grep x-window-manager

Maybe someone will find 'correct' more permanent way...?

Anyway, working fine as stands for my simple need.

wiak

EDIT: UserLAnd working well. The alternative, AnLinux, however, proved problematic for me in my attempt to install it, so for now I have given up on that one.

[rufwoof]

I see some run gopher on their phone, seems like a good pairing for potential very lightweight load. X is for Web 2'ers, that is primarily funded by advertisers and designed to maximise personal profiling. Web 1 is more Unix philosophy ... everything is a (text) 'file'. When your phones geolocation starts triggering public advertisements that are tuned to your presence then its all too much like potential subliminal messaging/brainwashing for my liking.
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Did you notice the subliminal 'vote for trump' in the above text for instance?