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I have an Android device with a broken screen and I'd like to turn it into a dedicated Linux server. Now I'm reading articles found by googling but I'm still not sure what is the best way to do this. One way I've found so far is using Linux Deploy after rooting my phone. However, I'm still not sure it is the best and valid way since I have a little knowledge on Android and Linux.

I have listed below what I want.

  • A dedicated Linux server so it doesn't need to be run alongside Android. (I don't worry about its performance but I want to fully utilize the device's performance.)
  • A server which can be accessed via SSH clients such as PuTTY.
  • A full featured Linux server on which I can run Python and MySQL. (I hope it can be a replacement for my Google Cloud service.)

Can somebody give me a guide for this?

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  • Depending on your definition of Linux, this would be very phone specific and unlikely to run any "standard" Linux distro without Android. Android uses the Linux kernel, and a lot of Linux bits, but overlays that with Android functionality which can't easily be stripped out of the phone - and indeed any attempts to do this will depend entirely on the make and model of the phone.
    – davidgo
    Dec 23 '17 at 10:06
  • What make and model of phone ?
    – davidgo
    Dec 23 '17 at 10:06
  • @davidgo It is LG G2.
    – Han
    Dec 23 '17 at 10:36
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Since Android IS Linux you can use the existing Android configured by your carrier/manufacturer to to run Linux applications. The other approach is to replace the entire OS on the device and this is heavily dependent on the device. Not because compatibility with the CPU or even drivers is a big issue but because carriers lock down features of the device and the boot loader process is extremely convoluted on android devices as well as the need for a image or "rom" to install the distribution as well as a way to flash it to the device all of which are things that are specific to the device and may be locked by the carrier.

You can use an app called Linux Deploy to install a chrooted Debian distribution. But this will use the Linux kernel provided by the Android OS itself. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.meefik.linuxdeploy

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I believe you will be unable to get the G2 to do what you want - As its a relatively niche phone, with locked (albeit probably hackable bootloader) there won't be a standard Linux distro for the phone - and rolling your own would be inordinately difficult.

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