Qualcomm claims that my Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus’ Snapdragon 8 Elite CPU is faster than the Intel Core Ultra 288V chip. My smartphone also has 12GB of RAM and 512GB of solid-state storage. In short, it’s more powerful than most of my laptops. So why not use it as a laptop?
Why not, indeed, says Google, which has introduced – at long last – a native Linux Terminal application in its March 2025 Pixel Feature Drop.
That headline got me really excited before I realized they meant “in an app”.
Isn’t that Termux?
Yes, except google is slowly killing Termux with a thousand cuts, while they will kill this only after a few years.
They do? Can you elaborate?
Tested this on my Pixel 8a. Works as you would expect. Personally I have a little hard time coming up with use cases for this but I guess it’s kinda cool.
Looks very similar to termux
It has been called 8 elite so that people think they bought an X elite?
That’s not very nice…
Does it have access to the same filesystem as Android? I’ve been looking for Android apps that can do something like dropbox’s “online only” feature. Most cloud storage providers offer that on desktop but I’ve never found one that works on Android. It’s just photo syncing or nothing usually, and even that doesn’t work like I want.
Also, can it run uninterrupted in the background or is android going to unceremoniously kill it randomly like it does with normal apps?
I have a phone that acts as a grid outage resistant p2p webserver. runs stuff like syncthing, briar mailbox, etc. i can see this being useful for that kinda stuff.
What’s the catch
Its goog so:
- you get Debian terminal, run whatever you want!
- they get to track everything you do, remember your passwords for you and sell that data to everyone they can!
The GrapheneOS devs have been working on enabling this with all their hardening tweaks
Everything you want, except sudo! That’s freaking dangerous for you!
This incident will be reported.
To Santa!
If this will be anything like the Linux environment in chromebooks, then it will lack hardware acceleration. This could result in linux programs feeling sluggish and slow.
oh i like this.
too bad its still android with al there tracking and bloatware. Hopefully degoogled roms will follow
I’m pretty sure I saw this is going to work on graphene
Would be nice to have some alternative for my Note 10+ that is no longer getting updates. Seems it’s not popular enough to have an EOL root/custom rom made, so it’s just stuck. Seems a waste for a device with decent CPU/GPU and 12gb ram.
Zomg, you have Lineage OS!
LineageOS A free and open-source operating system for various devices, based on the Android mobile platform.
Your phone will feel snappier than ever, you’ll get latest Android stuff (I’m sure official support for 15 is coming), and security updates.
You can also easily google or degoogle it.
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/d2s/
(Or if it’s the 5G variant)
