Android devices (was Microsoft hates Open Source)

[Les Ferguson]

do the android phones allow one to install an arbitrary OS,
e.g. debian, etc?

There is a debian build available which you can boot from a memory card, so you don't have to mess with the installed o/s. I haven't tried it yet (I have a android touch tablet with wireless, no phone capability tho).

One of the biggest problems is that hardware is all different, addresses are largely unknown etc, so you can build a basic debian for a specific CPU chip and get it running with active touch screen, with luck, but all the hardware buttons will prolly be useless, and other hardware features may need lots of guess work.

From my experience, even trying out different builds of android can be painful, even when it was built for a specific brand/model.

[Shiv Manas]

do the android phones allow one to install an arbitrary OS,
e.g. debian, etc?

There is a debian build available which you can boot from a memory card, so you don't have to mess with the installed o/s.  I haven't tried it yet (I have a android touch tablet with wireless, no phone capability tho).
One of the biggest problems is that hardware is all different, addresses are largely unknown etc, so you can build a basic debian for a specific CPU chip and get it running with active touch screen, with luck, but all the hardware buttons will prolly be useless, and other hardware features may need lots of guess work.

From my experience, even trying out different builds of android can be painful, even when it was built for a specific brand/model.

--
Les Ferguson
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Some phones are better off than others, but mostly its because they've
received enough developer attention. The HTC HD2, for example runs
Ubuntu just fine with most features working (Wifi/3G/USB host). (Of
course, it's technically not an Android phone.. but most people buy it
these days so that they can run Android and Linux.)

I have an HTC Desire and can get a basic build of Gentoo running, but
it's far too nascent for doing anything useful and it receives very
little dev attention. :(

In general though, HTCs are considered very 'hacker-friendly' in terms
of messing around with bootloader / ROM - but there are other
manufacturers who don't want users doing anything fancy on the system,
like Motorola for example, who insist on ostensibly locking their
bootloaders and making it difficult (not impossible) to hack it.
(Another Sony in the making?)



- Shiv

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