Fedora on non-rooted Android phones – 2016 update

GNURoot is amazing --- it&#x27;s a non-root chroot which uses ptrace to fake being in a multiuser root environment while being in a single, normal user --- but it doesn&#x27;t <i>always</i> work. Something about the security systems of modern Androids can cause it to fail in a variety of ways.<p>Weirdly, the exact failure mode seems to vary from device to device, so one person&#x27;s tablet will work fine, while another&#x27;s will report incorrect errnos on any system call which refers to a nonexistent file, while another will fail to load binaries, etc.<p>I used GNURoot heavily on a Nexus 7 for a while. Worked beautifully. I used it to write on, with a USB keyboard and a word processor what I wrote myself (&lt;plug&gt; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cowlark.com&#x2F;wordgrinder" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cowlark.com&#x2F;wordgrinder</a> &lt;&#x2F;plug&gt;). But then I unwisely upgraded it to Android 5.1 and everything stopped working. These days I use a Chromebook with Crouton.

could you share what you use it for? My usecase is converting my android tablet into lightweight html&#x2F;js dev machine - adding Arch&#x2F;xfce and bt keyboard and mouse. I also got it on various android phones, but still struggling to find a valid usecase. you know, other than just tinkering with it, which is also great :) BTW, I think that the current easiest way to try Linux on Android is app called Linux Deploy by meefik. its dev is very active. It allows you to raise arch, debian, ubuntu, slack, kali, opensuse, gentoo, and custom rootfs and spice it up it with lxde&#x2F;xfce&#x2F;gnome&#x2F;kde, as well as adds ssh&#x2F;vnc&#x2F;xserver access for you.

This somehow makes me want to be able to run CentOS on my smartphone someday as a live, busy webserver.<p>Given the exponential power growth of smartphones I am sure this will be possible by the end of the decade. Actually we already have 2.5ghz octacore smartphones now, so probably already possible.

I successfully installed it on my Nexus 6P (using gentoo; wheezy couldn&#x27;t be unpacked, and I had permissions errors in aboriginal).<p>Problem: &quot;dnf update&quot; simply fails with a &quot;KeyError: &#x27;armv8l&#x27;&quot;. I guess this is isn&#x27;t 64 bits ready yet…<p><i>Edit</i>: Fedora 23 does support Aarch64, this image does not.

So I&#x27;m a little confused by this. Is he running Fedora as the main boot operating system or something on top of&#x2F;beside Android (which he can switch to like an app within Android)?

&gt; The only missing bit is the Fedora 23 image, so I created one which you can download from my Google Drive here ... It’s an untouched Fedora minimal ARM image rootfs tarball, with some stuff removed (like kernel, boot partition etc.).<p>That stuff like this is possible and with as little hacking&#x2F;messing around as this is actually pretty cool.<p>Also props for the mention of the X-server app. I&#x27;ve been doing VNC server + client so far, and have always been a little unhappy about the result.

he said a sony phone, but which one did he use?

The phrase &quot;non-rooted&quot; in this article title is disconcerting.

Woah, this is amazing! But I&#x27;m somewhat baffled, I really want to switch back to Fedora but I can&#x27;t even get it installed on my Macbook Air ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugzilla.redhat.com&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=1282244" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugzilla.redhat.com&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=1282244</a> ), anybody have tips? So I&#x27;m somewhat perplexed how they managed to get it on a phone - still, pretty cool.