GNU Guix Wrangled To Run On Android

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNU Guix Wrangled To Run On Android

The GNU Guix transactional package manager can be made to run on Android smartphones/tablets, but not without lots of hoops to jump through first...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNU-Guix-Android

[stormcrow]

I think a word of caution should be added here: if you do this you could render your phone unusable for its primary use, that is, being a phone. It requires a lot of hackery to get to work, and any benefit of installing Guix is dubious beyond brownie points. The original article doesn't go into why you might want to do so, analysis of benefits and drawbacks, only some hand waving idealisms about freedoms for the user. That's nice and dandy and all that, but if you want a maximum of freedom while still keeping useful hardware, the average privacy conscious Android user should take a look at LineageOS & F-Droid without installing G-apps. Course you can also use F-Droid along side G-apps and Play Store, but you sacrifice any privacy benefits in avoiding Google's analytics engines in play services.

Be absolutely sure that any version of LineageOS (or any other custom ROM) exactly matches the hardware version and carrier(s) your phone is meant to work with. You risk having a brick otherwise.

[NateHubbard]

Ok, so I read over the page (https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/bl...ix-on-android/) describing the installation, and the gnu site itself (https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/) and the wikipedia page (don't bother) but I still can't understand what you'd gain by installing this package manager I've never heard of.

I assume there must then be something else you can use this to install that would make it worth all this trouble?

[kpedersen]

In general, once you are logged in as root on a terminal on any Android phone / tablet you can chroot into any Linux with an arm (or matching architecture) userland. I don't quite understand what this method gains you.

I mean, I certainly understand why people are happy to obliterate a phone to gain a small Linux ARM machine. That bit is obvious (phones are cheap, and there is very little out there in terms of powerful ARM devices). But why such a tricky method. Is it to remove the Android part entirely and just use the hardware?