I found this netbook(?) somewhere in old things and just wonder: can linux be installed on it?
No, you’re not allowed. Now go to your room and think about what you’ve done.
*what you have NOT done.
Fixed that for you 😉
It’s already running Linux. You just showed us a screenshot of it running Android, which is Linux.
Clearly not the point of OP’s question though
the ACKSHYUALLY is strong with this one
No it isn’t. Dude is just pointing out the obvious.
I honestly preferred the people who insist on calling it GNU/Linux over the people who think Android should be called Linux.
Wow, your preferences are so cool! What’s it like to judge people so good?
I know :D
Does this means can install any repo on my phone?
If you can root your phone, probably some of them, perhaps many of them, but that probably wouldn’t make for a very good phone.
Sadly no, because while Android is based on Linux, it is so far removed that the kernel is wildly different. Some teams such as mobian, SFOS, postmarketOS, etc. have got fair dinkum Linux running on android devices though.
As much as a human has of a lizard (lizardbrain). Are we still Lizards?And “Android” specifically is a certified package with proprietary apps.Firstly humans having lizard brains is pop science nonsense, and secondly humans and lizards are amniotes. And thirdly, the Android userland is Apache 2.0 licensed, regardless of whatever proprietary apps might or might not be installed on top of it, and the vast majority of Linux distros’ kernels have proprietary binary blob drivers installed in them.
Ok, you got me there. Was a hard day.
For better or worse the more correct name GNU/Linux did not catch on and is universally shortened to Linux. Android uses the Linux kernel, but is not GNU/Linux, and therefore is not Linux.
Alpine Linux users are in shambles.
This is some ass-backwards logic. You’re trying to redefine Linux and then declaring that Android does not meet your novel definition. If Android, Alpine, and Chimera are not Linux, then what are they?
they are operating systems that use the linux kernel, just like GNU/Linux (aka “Linux”) does.
Are reading what you write? It’s linux so it isn’t?
kernel != operating system
I don’t know if it’s that cut and dry. If you study a Operative Systems class or buy a book about them, it’ll exclusively deal with the kernel.
If you can give a reference to any such book, I’d be very interested to see it.
Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne is a classic OS textbook. Andrew Tanenbaum has some OS books too. I really liked his OS Design and Implementation book but I’m pretty sure that one is super outdated by now. I have not read his newer one but it is called Modern Operating Systems iirc.
GNU/Linux != Linux
Linux is a kernel
GNU/Linux is the GNU userland (tools and libraries) combined with the Linux kernel to form a complete operating system
Android is Linux but not GNU. So are Alpine, postmarketOS, and others I can’t think of
Linux is to an operating system as bread is to a sandwich… an essential component, but a slice of bread by itself does not make a sandwich make
Most of what you said is exactly my point. It’s true the word Linux, used properly, refers to a kernel and not an operating system. But that’s not the way the word is used in practice, and it is not what OP meant when they used it. They meant " an OS with the Linux kernel and GNU userspace utilities." When the word Linux is used that way, Android is not Linux.
Do you not consider Alpine Linux to fall into the general category of “Linux”, then? It lacks GNU user space utilities, though there is never a world where I would not consider it a “Linux” operating system. You seem to be overgeneralizing here and making assumptions about OP’s intentions that aren’t based in fact. I don’t see the point in drawing meaningless lines, here. What you’re referring to (as described by the GNU project) is GNU/Linux, not “Linux” by itself. The two are often but not always used interchangeably, and treating them as exactly the same leads to major outliers, like Alpine. I’ve heard plenty of people use the term “Linux” in practice to describe software running on embedded devices that don’t contain GNU utilities, so this isn’t exclusive to Alpine. In fact, the only real exception that I see consistently to operating systems that run the Linux kernel is Android, so it makes much more sense to formulate a description of the generic term “Linux” as simply having an exception for Android, though I’d argue that the only reasons that Android isn’t viewed as “Linux” is because it is a mobile operating system, it is developed with the sole intention of including non-free, proprietary software (AOSP by itself isn’t meant to be the full operating system on any device, but rather a framework), and the fact that the structure of the filesystem and the way apps are run differ completely from the ways of traditional “Linux”. It seems to be an exception purely by the fact that it operates in fundamentally different ways than other “Linux” operating systems.
Idk (I’m not op) but I think when people say “can I install Linux on this” everyone knows they mean gnu/Linux. Yes, if I’m picking a container base image obviously alpine is also Linux, and if we’re talking about kernels then Android is too. But if we’re talking about desktop OSes then I think it’s close enough.
I feel like that’s precisely the point they tried to make
Surely its easier to install Linux than android.
I want to know how they put android on it
I mean, the internals might just be the ones of a tablet or something. With android I’d be guessing its an ARM chip
Wut. This thing is like a decade old at least. Did we use ARM back then?
ARM chips were common in phones, even 10 years ago. But after doing a bit of research, there seems to be an unofficial open source version of android made to run on x86. Might be that this thing is running that. No idea, really
Probably Yes
Looks like you already did
deleted by creator
Most likely yes, as many others have said. Of course you’ll likely have to pick a very lightweight DE.
As a fallback there is always NetBSD.
NetBSD will not work at all with Broadcom Wireless
I mean if you’re down to NetBSD as your pick you’ve probably already made some big concessions so plugging into Ethernet isn’t a huge leap at that point.
Broadcom makes the wifi
Yes you can here is a place to start https://kernelhacks.blogspot.com/2012/06/arch-linux-on-wm8650-netbook.html?m=1
This looks like one of those low cost netbooks from the time where “EPad” and “MID” tablets were a thing. There is an edition of Windows CE floating around for these - but WiFi will not work, neither the modem if this has one built in.
No idea about Linux - there is a kernel so you’re technically half way there, but considering most of these had a slow single core ARM CPU and 256MB of RAM on a good day, practical use is limited IMO
It probably has USB, wifi adapters are cheap.
Well of course you can.
Yes you can, it won’t be great though.
I used to maintain a Linux distribution called “OpenWM8650” (back in 2011 / 2012) which was specially aimed at the WM8650 and WM8505. It would run off the SD card. Which wasn’t great, but the flash onboard support was horrible at best.
Maybe you can find some old information on it, on XDA because the website for the initial distribution is long gone.
https://archive.org/details/wm8650-linux It might have been archived here.
Just want to say good luck. Someone brought me one of these and asked to make it ready to be their university laptop in 2013. I worked real hard not to laugh because money was obviously tight but I just told them to return the pos to Amazon.
I think you would need to provide more detail to know what you have. Does it have a model number on it anywhere?
that’s it: CPU: WM8650 800Hz Memory:DDR 256MB
It’s information on back cover
“WM8650” seems to indicate a VIA WonderMedia WM8650 armv5te chipset, used by a lot of anemic Android laptops circa 2011 (sold under various brandnames, but apparently all made in the same factory). People have installed Linux on them in the past (there seems to have been a fad for Arch on these for a while, given the search results), but you might have trouble getting a device tree that will work with a modern kernel.
Honestly, though, it has less processor than a Raspberry Pi 3. Unless you’ve already thought of a specific use for this, I’d dump it back in the junk drawer.
I played with Raspbian Minecraft up to Raspi 2.
I think my pi zero w might run a circle around it.
It might be an interesting project to hardware mod it to gut it and replace internally with an R.Pi.
Probably not worth trying to actually use today. I’d leave it as it is, imo it’s better as a small piece of history - Android on PC is pretty niche
I just can’t find
This device should be able to run Linux fine of the specs you provided are correct. You can either use CLI or a Light weight Window manager like IceWM. Web browsing and video playback are out of the question but it most certainly can run vim.
I would just install Debian. It is likely a 32bit machine.
well in a cosmic sort of sense, it already is. (android is based on a modified linux kernel). seriously though, check out https://antixlinux.com/ it’s a distro to put on any computer, even ones that old.
MX Linux is the sister project, and I think it also can work on very old hardware.
It had problems with my multi monitor setup, but it booted so ridiculously fast, even on a live ISO. Certainly worth a look.
Not enought ram for MX Linux
Debian is a better choice in this case.
