Mobian on Ivon's Blog

Droidian on the Xiaomi Pocophone F1: Android Mixed with Debian

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0800

Flash an Android phone into Debian.

1. Introduction to Droidian
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Droidian is a mobile operating system based on Debian Testing. Its goal is to turn Android phones into Debian Linux devices. You could call it Mobian for Android phones.

Mobian is a Debian-based system built for mobile devices. It only supports open hardware from Pine64 and Purism, plus a small number of Android phones. At minimum, the target device needs to be Linux-friendly. Droidian takes a different approach from Mobian. It is more like Ubuntu Touch: mainly focused on Android phone ports, using Halium and libhybris to stitch Android bionic and Linux glibc C libraries together, lowering the difficulty of porting. The Droidian website also has detailed porting documentation.

However, the Linux kernel version used by Droidian is usually not far from the stock Android kernel. Running the latest mainline Linux kernel is not their goal; running Linux at all is enough. If you care about mainline kernels, consider Mobian or postmarketOS instead. The latter has also ported quite a few Android devices.

Droidian keeps Mobian’s ability to freely install packages. The system is not read-only either, so users can freely install desktop environments instead of being tied to Lomiri like on Ubuntu Touch.

Droidian also provides Android GSI images, which lowers the barrier to entry. If an Android phone supports GSI, then in the best case you only need to rebuild the kernel, meaning the boot.img part, and pair it with the Droidian GSI system image to flash Linux onto the Android phone.

2. Install Droidian
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See the supported device list on the Droidian website.

My Xiaomi Pocophone F1 has an unofficial port on XDA. Support is not bad; most functions work, and it can even make calls. But note that the Pocophone F1 already has Mobian support, so there is no special reason to install Droidian.

That also seems to be why TioCareca, the Droidian developer for the Poco F1, stopped maintaining it. This test is just for experimentation. Be careful to download the matching versions of the files. Do not randomly try newer Droidian rootfs builds unless you enjoy debugging your own choices.

Refer to the XDA post and download boot.img, vendor.img, and android-recovery-beryllium-adaptation_20220517.zip.
Download droidian-rootfs-api28gsi-arm64_20211127.zip and droidian-devtools-arm64_20211127.zip.
Download the stock MIUI firmware fw_beryllium_miui_POCOF1Global_9.6.27_6673f8a455_9.0.zip.
Hold the power button and volume-down button, then download TWRP for the Poco F1 and flash it.

fastboot flash recovery twrp-3.7.0_9-0-beryllium.img

Hold the power button and volume-up button to reboot into TWRP, tap Wipe and Format data, then reboot back into TWRP.
Flash boot.img and vendor.img. If that does not work, flash them with fastboot commands.
Flash fw_beryllium_miui_POCOF1Global_9.6.27_6673f8a455_9.0.zip, droidian-rootfs-api28gsi-arm64_20211127.zip, droidian-devtools-arm64_20211127.zip, and android-recovery-beryllium-adaptation_20220517.zip. If that does not work, use adb sideload.

3. Boot and use it
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The default password is 1234. Basic usage is no different from Mobian/Debian.

The default interface is an older version of Phosh, and it supports a Chinese UI. However, the graphics driver seems incomplete, and WebGL does not work.

Because it is based on an older Debian, the system is Debian 10 Bullseye. Maybe it could be upgraded to Debian 13 Trixie by changing the APT repositories, but then you have to deal with expired repository keys.

The uname command confirms that the kernel is still the stock Android Linux 4.9.2 version, far behind current Linux 6.0. Judging from how Droidian works, it cannot be upgraded.

Since the system cannot be updated to a newer Debian, this device is not especially useful here. Flashing a newer Mobian build is probably the better move.

If you flashed droidian-devtools, it enables SSH for you. Just plug the phone into the computer, then log in with the following IP:

ssh droidian@10.15.19.82

Debian for Phones: Installing Mobian on the Xiaomi Pocophone F1

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 18:00:00 +0800

What is Mobian? It is a phone Linux system based on Debian, developed from the Debian Testing branch, which means Debian 12 Bookworm.

Mobian was originally developed only for Pine64 devices. Later, it added support for several Android phones: OnePlus 6T, Xiaomi Pocophone F1, Xiaomi Mix 2S, Fairphone 4, and SHIFT 6mq. I think this has something to do with the development of postmarketOS.

My phone is a Xiaomi Poco F1. As of April 2023, most hardware functions work normally under Mobian, but the camera and OTG still do not work.

Hands-on video:

1. Installation Process
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Flashing Mobian will overwrite the Android system. To restore Android, use MiFlash.

First confirm that the Pocophone F1 bootloader is unlocked.

Power off the phone, then hold Power and Volume Down at the same time to enter fastboot.
From Mobian Weekly builds, download the flashing file (.tar.gz) for phones with the s845 processor. Extract it. It contains boot.img for booting and rootfs.img for the system. Open a terminal in that directory.
Use Fastboot to flash boot.img to the boot partition and the system partition. This Xiaomi phone also has displays made by Tianma and EBBG. Mine is Tianma, so I chose the tianma boot.img.

fastboot flash boot mobian-sdm845-phosh-20230402.boot-beryllium-tianma.img
fastboot flash system mobian-sdm845-phosh-20230402.boot-beryllium-tianma.img

Next, flash rootfs.img to the userdata partition.

fastboot -S 100M flash userdata mobian-sdm845-phosh-20230402.rootfs.img

Erase dtbo.

fastboot erase dtbo

Reboot.

fastboot reboot

2. Mobian Interface and Usage Tips
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The default account is mobian, and the password is 1234.

The default interface is Phosh (based on Gnome), and the display protocol is Wayland.

The basic gesture is to tap the bottom of the screen to enter multitasking.
Tap the top of the screen to open the status bar. Landscape mode has to be toggled manually.
You can switch the interface to Chinese in Settings, but most Linux phone apps are not translated, and there is no Chinese touch keyboard.
Open the terminal (King Cross) and use APT commands to update packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

Mobian’s software sources are the Debian bookworm repositories, and Gnome Software supports installing packages directly from the repository.

After installing Flatpak, the software store can also download apps from Flathub.

sudo apt install flatpak
sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

If you want to find other software made for Linux phones, check the Mobian, postmarketOS, and Plasma Mobile wikis. They have plenty of app lists.

Mobian is a Debian derivative, so there are also third-party repositories you can add to install tools made for Linux phones. Be careful, though: they can also make the phone fail to boot. Fun hobby.

3. Install Waydroid to Run Android Apps
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Mobian is based on Debian Testing. Use this command to add Waydroid’s upstream bookworm repository and install it:

sudo apt install curl ca-certificates -y
curl https://repo.waydro.id | sudo bash -s bookworm
sudo apt install waydroid -y
sudo systemctl enable waydroid-container
sudo systemctl start waydroid-container

Then refer to Waydroid + postmarketOS Tutorial.

4. Play Steam Games
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Create a chroot environment, compile Box86 + Wine, and run Windows programs. Detailed process: Play Steam Games with Box86

But the Phosh desktop environment is not suitable for desktop apps, because Phosh treats every window as an app. It is better to install the GNOME desktop environment separately.

Mobian on Ivon's Blog

Droidian on the Xiaomi Pocophone F1: Android Mixed with Debian

1. Introduction to Droidian #

2. Install Droidian #

3. Boot and use it #

Debian for Phones: Installing Mobian on the Xiaomi Pocophone F1

1. Installation Process #

2. Mobian Interface and Usage Tips #

3. Install Waydroid to Run Android Apps #

4. Play Steam Games #

Further Reading #