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Hi, I am new here. Consider the following scenario. I have some old phones (say a moto-g6 and a moto g8-power), and I'd like to run ubuntu-touch on them.
Special circumstance: I don't care all that much whether the cellular part of the phone works. I just want to have linux and wifi and maybe ethernet-over-usb. Anything else is bonus. Basically, I would like to use these old phones as a replacement for raspberry pi or similar, just a generic little linux appliance.
QUESTION: Can I install one of the existing ports on such phones, and maybe get the basic functionality I need without having to go through a whole porting process? I know that ubports-installer only will install UT onto specific supported phones, so that method will not work. So I'm looking for info on
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what are the odds it will work?
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where to download existing images from?
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a solid recipe for installing a ubport manually using fastboot flash commands, or the like.
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how to chose an image (maybe one that is for a phone with a very similar chipset?)
Has anyone tried this?
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@reikred Existing ports have no chance of working, even those with the same SoC/chipset. If a device with the same chipset has already a port, it can make the porting easier.
The reason why the same port doesn't work for all devices with the same chipset, is that it isn't guaranteed that they will have all hardware the same. Some devices of the same model sometimes have different displays, with the same specs, which need a new driver! -
@reikred It won't work. The port is specific for the device for various reasons, such as the partition sizes, vendor BLOBs, kernel and so on. Likewise, even though UT is Linux, it is different from a desktop Linux install, the system is read only to protect it, apt doesn't work unless you want a high chance of breaking the system and there are other differences.
If you try, you have a good chance of bricking the device if you don't know what you are doing and not being able to recover from it.
If you are not wholly bothered, buy a device that is on the installer and works, but lets say has a cracked screen as these can be quite cheap. I think for what you want to do, you would be better off looking at x86_64 thin clients, laptops or SBC's (like the Pi) and a desktop orientated Linux distro.
It will be difficult if you really want to try.
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K Keneda moved this topic from Porting on
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C CiberSheep moved this topic from General on
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@reikred Well, I guess the idea of having a semi-generic semi-functional UT, for unsupported devices, is a whole lot more complicated than what I was hoping for.
Apart from some of the constraints being mentioned:
It seems to me that one of the constraints being implied and applied, but not so much spoken of, is that a UT port MUST fit within the existing partition structure of the specific android device in question. I'm surprised by this. There really is no partitioning tool for re-partitioning the storage of Android devices? There also seems to be the matter of reusing some of the existing partitions that contain device-specific firmware, so there is that matter, too.
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@reikred There is project Treble (made partitioning more standard with A/B partitions) which somewhat fixes those issues, which enabled for an Ubuntu Touch GSI to be developed. However its development has stopped as it was a dead end to create fully functional devices.
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@ikoz said in Trying ubuntu-touch on an unsupported device:
Ubuntu Touch GSI
Oh, interesting. Just for reference I found some links to project Treble (even if Treble is a defunct project, a reference does not hurt).
https://xdaforums.com/t/gsi-arm64-a-ab-ubuntu-touch-ubports.4110581/
https://xdaforums.com/c/project-treble.7259/Note to self: GSI stands for Generic System Image
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@reikred Treble (by Google) hasn't stopped, all new devices with android 9+ have it. The Ubuntu Touch GSI isn't developed anymore.
