I have an unused Windows tablet from 2021 running some Core M processor or other that I want to put Linux on and start using again. It doesn't have a keyboard so I would have to actually use it as a tablet and not a laptop. Is there a distro built around one of the mobile desktop environments that also runs well on x86? (Last time I tried Linux mobile it was pretty much only for ARM and I never got it to work well on even an x86 virtual machine.) Or is regular GNOME deskrop still my best bet for a tablet?

Hey everyone, I'm going insane due to a lack of creative project. I've written an app already but I haven't gotten around to publishing it yet. I'd like to know what kind of apps you'd like to see created for mobile Linux. I prefer easier, bite-sized projects over particularly large ones, but I'd love to hear your ideas nevertheless.

My current rig:

• old android phone with GPS disabled
• external GPS device (NMEA over bluetooth)
• OSMand from f-droid for offline maps and navigation
• BlueGPS to connect to the bluetooth GPS device, grab the NMEA signal, and feed it as a mock location
• developer options » mock locations enabled

The idea is to save on phone battery so I can navigate more than an hour. The phone’s internal GPS is energy intensive because of all the GPS calculations. By offloading the GPS work to an external bluetooth GPS, the phone’s battery can be somewhat devoted to the screen because bluetooth uses much less energy than GPS. And NMEA carries lat/long so the phone need not do the calculations.

Not sure it actually works though.. been waiting for satellites for a while now. Anyway, I would like to know if this config can work on any FOSS platforms, like pmOS. Can OSMand run on pmOS or is there a better option? IIUC, Android apps are a huge CPU hog on pmOS because of emulation.

Ideally I would like to buy something 2nd-hand like a BQ Aquaris X5 and put pmOS on it. I’ll need a quite lean mapping and nav app that runs on pmOS, and also has the ability to use an external GPS.

For the first 15 minutes when satellites are taking forever to appear, I would like to use something like WiGLE WiFi Wardriving which makes use of wifi APs and cell towers the same way Google location does, but without feeding Google. Is there anything like that on pmOS, or any other FOSS phone platform?

Updates

Every mobile FOSS platform listed by the OSM project have been abandoned as far as I can tell. But perhaps OSM is just poorly tracking this because osmin and pure maps apparently both run on Postmarket OS:

• https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Osmin
• https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Pure_Maps

There is a network-dependent nav app called Mepo, but that would not interest me.

There is also Organic Maps which comes as a flatpak for aarch64. It requires the whole KDE framework which is fat in terms of size but probably not relying on emulation so it could perform well enough.

I have a Xioami A2 Lite, the version with 3GB of RAM, it runs Android One version 10, it's not so great performance wise but it's sufficient for my needs, anyway, after checking out pm site I found out it's supported via community builds, most of the stuff seem to work, but I'm worried about receiving calls and text messages, I also have some Android apps that I must run (though a container on my laptop would do the job actually but it'll be best if I could run them on the phone), also I don't have an OTG adapter so I'm worried if I'm ever stuck I can't switch TTY and reboot, also my phone's lock button is kinda stuck and needs some weird angle to respond, I have some old extra phone around in the case calls don't work on pm but I'd rather use only a single phone, I have zero use of any bank apps, and I don't have much of experience with roms installing and kernel baking, I have been using GNU/Linux on my laptop for three years and I have good understanding of how things work in a GNU/Linux system, what do you suggest for me? I'm fine staying on Android if that's the best option until I get a new phone

• 2 Linux Mobile grants we applied for at the amazing @nlnet @NGIZero fund have been accepted: OpenIMSd and Enhanching Firefox for Linux on Mobile! 🎉
• Libcamera progress
• Trailblazer now supports the PinePhone
• A generic (!!) qcom-msm8953 port
• Progress for pmb v3
• systemd progress, new timeline
• Many mobile-config-firefox improvements, some features now optional via about:config
• and much more!

Summery via https://fosstodon.org/@postmarketOS/113421664736742629

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.kde.social/post/2232894

Since https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1gdhy7u/experimental_flathub_release_of_newpipe_on_linux/ got a bit of traction yesterday, this is WhatsApp straight from Meta running on Linux desktop using android-translation-layer.

android-translation-layer (ATL) is a Wine-like approach to run Android applications on Linux. Rather than running an Android container like for example Waydroid does this instead implements the Android API. Note that right now it's very much work in progress and almost no app will work yet, but the fact that they have apps like Newpipe and WhatsApp running already is very promising!

Join the Matrix chat at #android-translation-layer:matrix.org and follow along!

A new community update! New hardware to announced and previous hardware to return!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20851873