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Comment by itohihiyt | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone tell me why you'd want to do this? What use case is there for running Linux apps on android beyond curiosity or just because?

Personally if I need to do work that requires this I'd use a computer instead of a tablet or phone.

This might just be me though since I don't do banking or shopping on my phone either as I don't like the restricted nature of the small screen. Working from a desktop or laptop is a much freer experience.

Now running android app from a desktop, that is a killer feature for me!

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Desktop mode is the main one I can think of. Set your phone on your desk, plugin in USB-C cable, now you can run whatever "real" app you need under Linux while still only owning/maintaining/syncing a single device.

DeX is pretty popular for this on Samsung devices (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8RGMF2m3fA), but a native-Android desktop mode is slowly coming together.

Pixel 8+ supports USB-c DisplayPort Alt mode output to desktop monitor, i.e. you can have the full desktop keyboard, mouse and video experience.

If you want to be able to access both your desktop and the android one, you can use adb with size commands + scrcpy.

> the restricted nature of the small screen

Android is not restricted to small screens. With modern responsive UI designs one can address any screen size with a little extra effort. Ofcourse current Android apps are typically designed for small screens / touch (small screens make little sense for complex mouse or keyboard oriented UI's such as Blender or DAW's or IDE's etc.).

Conceptually Android offers a convoluted way to package linux for mass-market devices (with the objective, among others, to lock-down various "dangerous" functionalities etc.). While purist hackers will cringe, if its a means for open source linux apps to reach much wider audiences thats a good thing. It depends on what other small print gets associated with it :p

I don't have a very small laptop, but I do have a tablet with a keyboard cover. Although the keyboard is hideous, absolutely hideous (Samsung, it is also Swedish layout fml), it is still a keyboard. With termux I can do basically all local and remote tasks I need, plus I can read pdfs nicely on the tablet, take notes with the stylus etc.

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