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Re:Google requiring Android apps on Play store to use its bi... by ryukafalz on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @02:36AM (#24624729)
>How easy/hard is it nowadays to just go to a store, buy a nice phone, go home and put Mobian on it?

I don't want to say impossible, because that's not quite true, but close to. Mobian runs pretty much a stock Linux kernel, and there are only two recent devices on the market designed to do that: the PinePhone and the Librem 5. The alternative is to use libhybris to run on top of an Android kernel (including all the proprietary drivers needed for a typical Android phone), but... that's really something the distro developers would have to do, not you as a user.

Some Android devices are now mostly bootable with mainline Linux or something close to it (PostmarketOS has done a lot of great work here), but these are typically devices that are several years old, not the kind of thing you'd go out and buy in a store.

In short: unless the device you buy happens to be a PinePhone or Librem 5 or you are a dedicated kernel hacker or distro developer... no chance, for the vast majority of recent devices you might buy.

Re:Google requiring Android apps on Play store to use its bi... by TooCreative on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @04:59AM (#24625436)
Would I be able to put Mobian on the phone in the first place? How would I do that? Is there a button combination or something that tells android phones to boot from an external media?