4mo ago

The new Debian VM on Android 15 - what use-cases are there?

The latest version of Android 15 on the Pixel devices lets you enable an experimental Terminal app and Debian VM. What are the fun use-cases of this, that you can think of? Let's assume the finalised version of this feature will include the ability for sound drivers and proper port mapping/forwarding.

Running web servers off your phone might become feasible
Basic light development work
Use to easily SSH to other clients if needed
Already proven it can run DOOM

There's bound to be many more use-cases as this feature expands, and especially when Android replaces ChromeOS in the future.

14 comments

Depends, if it can do everything that termux does without some kind of security features that will make it unusable it can prolong device life and phones have a lot of different things in them including great cameras!
- Well right now it's still just a VM and whilst you have root access you can't access anything on your phone as it appears to be sandboxed. Not sure about camera access.
  But yeah, in theory you could use an old Android phone instead of buying a raspberry pi, for any little side project. Ideally Google adds a way to enable the VM at boot as right now you can't do that.
  
  A VM running a fully-fledged operating system should never, ever have root access to its host device...
  
  The problem with phones is just the battery. The battery is probably not getting bypassed when charging, so when you just leave it running for a long time without looking at it, that might be a safety issue. But I'm also just guessing, I don't know if it's really that dangerous.
Linux desktop on Android have been attempted many times with variable success, and it goes way beyond command line, see UserLAnd
It brings all Linux desktop apps to your phone, and all you need is Bluetooth mouse.
Do you need to edit an audio file? Try looking on Play Store, every audio editor has ads and subscription and offers only cropping and equalizer. But what if you need cross-fade? Open your Linux VM - bam! Audacity! All the audio editing tools you can ever need, and ten times more that you'll never use!
Do you need to make a meme? Go download some shitty meme maker from Play Store, that will only let you add text to ten preset images. Or get a photo editor that has twenty sepia effects but won't let you combine two images. But a simple sudo apt-get install gimp command in your Linux VM, and you get a pixel-perfect image editor with transparency support, layer support, and a thousand brushes, and you can even plug a graphics tablet into your Android tablet and have stylus pressure making brush strokes of different width, or just use an Android tablet with stylus support, the pressure works there too.
Do you want some more esoteric thing like sqlite3 database viewer? Well, Linux VM is your only choice.
It becomes even more important if you want to buy a cheap Android tablet and ise it as a kiosk for some business. Run the backend server on your Linux VM, run the frontend in the Android web browser, and you don't need to buy an expensive POS terminal.
- Play Store... Don't forget that Google can take your apps away. I bought PicSay Pro for making memes over a decade ago and now it's no longer available. Of course I dumped it to apk for manual transfer to other devices but how long before "unknown" app installation is taken away?
  I'd like access to serial port over USB for running 3D printers and robots off of devices that would otherwise be e-waste, but it's hit-or-miss and the battery charging problem that was already mentioned here.
Install podman, run containers
I know that not everyone is interested in this but I'd use it as another method to play PC games on my Android devices. Right now, JoiPlay and a few source ports I'm aware of are the only apps that I've been able to get PC games working successfully with on any of my Android devices. I've tried both Winlator and Limbo Port but I have not yet gotten a single game working correctly in either of them. Granted, I have no idea how to properly configure them, so I might just not be using them correctly.
Does it have Wayland
- Not graphical apps yet.

14 comments