There's (finally) starting to be a move towards "phones as portable desktops." I'm surprised it's taken this long. The basic idea is that phones are powerful enough to run full software and operating systems, so why not just give them a toggleable "desktop mode" where you can dock the phone with a full size keyboard, mouse and monitor and use it as you would a normal desktop.
But this being the case, i would like to have full control over the phone in the same way that i have full control over an arch desktop.
So i was wondering, is there a linux DE which is touch oriented/designed for phones? Would it perhaps be possible to use the android or lineage OS DE on top of an arch system? It would be nice to have a phone running arch with a mobile DE, and when docking it as a desktop i can boot up GNOME or KDE.
At this stage im fairly sure noone has actually done this, so my question is more "what moves have been made so far towards this vision?"
Best Answer
That "vision" was alive and well about seven or eight years ago, and things were looking good. Back then I was able to install Debian on my old Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
Unfortunately, ever since then things have been doing in a terribly wrong direction: manufacturers started making more and more phones that are locked in ways that can't even be unlocked. Nowadays you can't even buy (at least here in the US) a phone that can be rooted, and believe me, I've tried. Honestly, I have no idea how they get away with that -- you pay good money to own that little machine, and yet, you can't have full control of it? I am hoping that at some point this will all boil over into lawsuites, like we had in the past, when some manufacturers tried to lock down personal computers. (Not much hope though, as the years go by, and people seem to care less and less.)