Linux for mobile devices, sometimes referred to as mobile Linux, is the usage of

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

-based operating systems on portable devices, whose primary or only

Human interface device A human interface device or HID is a type of computer device usually used by humans that takes input from humans and gives output to humans. The term "HID" most commonly refers to the USB-HID specification. The term was coined by Mike Van Fl ...

(HID) is a

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

. It mainly comprises

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whi ...

s and

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being com ...

s, but also some

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in part ...

s (PDAs)

portable media player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

s that come with a touchscreen separately. Mobile Linux is a relatively recent addition to the

Linux range of use Besides the Linux distributions designed for general-purpose use on desktops and servers, distributions may be specialized for different purposes including computer architecture support, embedded systems, stability, security, localization to a spe ...

, with

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

Android operating system Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of d ...

pioneering the concept. While UBPorts tried to follow suit with

Ubuntu Touch Ubuntu Touch is a mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system, being developed by the UBports community. Its user interface is written in Qt, and is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, ...

, a wider development of free Linux operating systems specifically for mobile devices was only really spurred in the latter

2010s File:2010s collage v21.png, From top left, clockwise: Anti-government protests called the Arab Spring arose in 2010–2011, and as a result, many governments were overthrown, including when Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was killed; Crimea is ...

, when various smaller companies started projects to develop open source phones.

Lists

Operating systems

This is a list of Linux distros directly targeted towards use with mobile phones, being offered preconfigured with the mobile-oriented software listed below. There are both phone producers who develop their own operating systems and independent developments by community projects. Outside of these, several traditional distros have versions compiled for

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...

, which could be configured to use these components. This is done, for example, with

Manjaro Manjaro ( ) is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution based on the Arch Linux operating system that has a focus on user-friendliness and accessibility. It uses a rolling release update model and Pacman package ...

by the PinePhone.

Active

* Android ** /e/ **

Android-x86 Android-x86 is an open source project that makes an unofficial porting of the Android mobile operating system developed by the Open Handset Alliance to run on devices powered by x86 processors, rather than RISC-based ARM chips. Developers Chih ...

EMUI EMUI (formerly known as Emotion UI, and also known as Magic UI on Honor smartphones since 2019) is an Android-derived mobile operating system developed by Chinese technology company Huawei. It is used on the company's smartphones and tablets ...

(Non GMS compliant) **

Lineage OS LineageOS is an Android-based operating system for smartphones, tablet computers, and set-top boxes, with mostly free and open-source software. It is the successor to CyanogenMod, from which it was forked in December 2016, when Cyanogen Inc. a ...

Replicant A replicant is a fictional bioengineered humanoid featured in the 1982 film '' Blade Runner'' and the 2017 sequel ''Blade Runner 2049'' which is physically indistinguishable from an adult human and often possesses superhuman strength and intel ...

** VollaOS **

Wear OS Wear OS (also known simply as Wear and formerly Android Wear) is a version of Google's Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other wearables. By pairing with mobile phones running Android version 6.0 "Marshmallow" or newer, or ...

** Other custom Android distributions MeeGo and co timeline

* AsteroidOS (for wearables) *

HarmonyOS HarmonyOS (HMOS) () is a distributed operating system developed by Huawei to collaborate and interconnect with multiple smart devices on the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. In its current multi-kernel design, the operating system select ...

(EMUI 12 onwards) *

KaiOS KaiOS is a mobile Linux distribution for keypad feature phones based on the Firefox OS open-source project. It is developed by KaiOS Technologies (Hong Kong) Limited; a company based in Hong Kong, whose largest shareholder is Chinese multina ...

* LuneOS (based on HP

webOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...

) *

Maemo Leste Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to co ...

(fork of discontinued

Maemo Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to c ...

based on

Devuan Devuan is a fork of the Debian Linux distribution that uses sysvinit, runit or OpenRC instead of systemd. Devuan aims to avoid "lock-in" by projects like systemd and aims to maintain compatibility with other init systems to avoid detaching ...

) * Mobian (based on

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

) *

postmarketOS postmarketOS (abbreviated as pmOS) is an operating system primarily for smartphones, based on the Alpine Linux distribution. postmarketOS was launched on 26 May 2017 with the source code available on GitHub before migrating to GitLab in 2018. I ...

(based on

Alpine Linux Alpine Linux is a Linux distribution designed to be small, simple and secure. Alpine Linux uses musl, BusyBox and OpenRC instead of the more commonly used glibc, GNU Core Utilities and systemd respectively.

) *

PureOS PureOS is a Linux distribution focusing on privacy and security, using the GNOME desktop environment. It is maintained by Purism for use in the company's Librem laptop computers as well as the Librem 5 smartphone. PureOS is designed to include ...

* Sailfish OS (based on

Nemo Mobile Mer was a free and open-source software distribution, targeted at hardware vendors to serve as a middleware for Linux kernel-based mobile-oriented operating systems. It is a fork of MeeGo. Goals Some goals of the project are: * Openly develope ...

) * SHR *

Tizen Tizen () is a Linux-based mobile operating system backed by the Linux Foundation, mainly developed and used primarily by Samsung Electronics. The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo. ...

(discontinued by Canonical, adopted by UBports Community) *

Discontinued

Bada Bada (stylized as bada; Korean: ) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Samsung Electronics for devices such as mid- to high-end smartphones and tablet computers. The name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in ...

Firefox OS Firefox OS (project name: ''Boot to Gecko'', also known as ''B2G'') is a discontinued open-source operating system made for smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, and dongles designed by Mozilla and external contributors. It is based on the ...

MeeGo MeeGo is a discontinued Linux distribution hosted by the Linux Foundation, using source code from the operating systems Moblin (produced by Intel) and Maemo (produced by Nokia). Primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances ...

* Moblin *

Openmoko Linux Openmoko Linux is an operating system for smartphones developed by the Openmoko project. It is based on the Ångström distribution, comprising various pieces of free software. The main targets of Openmoko Linux were the Openmoko Neo 1973 and t ...

* OpenZaurus

Smartphones

Librem5 phone convergence - screen keyboard mouse

Phones with Linux preinstalled: *

Librem 5 The Librem 5 is a smartphone manufactured by Purism that is part of their Librem line of products. The phone is designed with the goal of using free software whenever possible, includes PureOS, a Linux operating system, by default, and as of 2021 ...

* Necuno * PinePhone *

Volla Phone Volla may refer to: *Another name for the Norse goddess Fulla *Volla, Campania, a municipality in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Italy *Volla (comics) Asgard is a fictional realm and its capital city appearing in American comic books published ...

* XFone

Middlewares

BusyBox BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with inte ...

– small footprint alternative to

GNU Core Utilities The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a package of GNU software containing implementations for many of the basic tools, such as cat, ls, and rm, which are used on Unix-like operating systems. In September 2002, the ''GNU coreutils'' were ...

, under

GNU GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

* Fcitx *

Halium Halium is a collaborative project to unify the Hardware Abstraction Layer for projects which run Linux on mobile devices with pre-installed Android. The project aims to standardize the middleware software used by various projects to talk with a ...

* Intelligent Input Bus *

Maliit Maliit is an input method framework for computers with particular focus on implementing virtual keyboards. Designed mostly for touchscreen devices, Maliit allows the inputting of text without the presence of a physical keyboard. More advanced feat ...

* mer *

Smart Common Input Method The Smart Common Input Method (SCIM) is a platform for inputting more than thirty languages on computers, including Chinese-Japanese-Korean style character languages ( CJK), and many European languages. It is used for POSIX-style operating syste ...

Toybox Toybox is a free and open-source software implementation of over 200 Unix command line utilities such as '' ls'', '' cp'', and '' mv''. The Toybox project was started in 2006, and became a 0BSD licensed BusyBox alternative. Toybox is used for mo ...

–

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

d alternative to BusyBox *

Uim uim (short for "universal input method") is a multilingual input method framework. Applications can use it through so-called ''bridges''. Supported applications uim supports the X Window System legacy XIM (short for X Input Method) through t ...

UI

GPE Palmtop Environment GPE (a recursive acronym for GPE Palmtop Environment) is a graphical user interface environment for handheld computers, such as palmtops and personal digital assistants (PDAs), running some Linux kernel-based operating system. GPE is a complete ...

* MauiShell (and MauiKit) *

Phosh Phosh (portmanteau of ''phone'' and '' shell'') is a graphical user interface designed for mobile and touch-based devices. It is the default shell used on several mobile Linux operating systems including PureOS, Mobian, and Fedora Mobility. I ...

Plasma Mobile Plasma Mobile is a Plasma variant for smartphones. It is currently available for the Pinephone, and supported devices for postmarketOS such as the OnePlus 6. It is shipped by several Linux distributions, such as postmarketOS and Manjaro. Hi ...

* Lomiri (previously known as Unity8)

References

{{Reflist Linux