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, which i ...

-based operating systems on portable devices, whose primary or only Human interface device (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, whic ...

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 comput ...

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 telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...

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 ...

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

's Android operating system 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 Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

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 an ...

, 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, configure ...

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

Manjaro Manjaro ( ) is a 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 as its package manager. It is deve ...

by the PinePhone.

Active

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

** /e/ ** Android-x86 **

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 intellig ...

** 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 selects ...

(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 multin ...

* 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. Initiall ...

) * Maemo Leste (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) * 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 (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 inclu ...

* 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 *

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 * OpenZaurus

Smartphones

Librem5 phone convergence - screen keyboard mouse

Phones with Linux preinstalled: * Librem 5 *

Necuno The Necuno is a phone-like mobile device from Finland, where it is exclusively manufactured. It seeks to provide a high level security and user privacy by omitting the cellular modem. For this reason, it cannot be used on a regular mobile phone n ...

* PinePhone * Volla Phone * 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 int ...

– small footprint alternative to GNU Core Utilities, under GNU GPLv2 * 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 ...

Intelligent Input Bus The Intelligent Input Bus (IBus, pronounced as I-Bus) is an input method (IM) framework for Multilingual software, multilingual input in Unix-like operating-systems. The name "Bus" comes from its bus (computing), bus-like architecture. Goals Th ...

* Maliit * 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 ...

–

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 li ...

d alternative to BusyBox * Uim

UI

* GPE Palmtop Environment * MauiShell (and MauiKit) * Phosh *

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. ...

Lomiri Unity is a graphical shell for the GNOME desktop environment originally developed by Canonical Ltd. for its Ubuntu operating system. It debuted in 2010 in the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10. Since 2017, its development was taken over by ...

(previously known as Unity8)

References

{{Reflist Linux