About Android... anyone aware of a lightweight alternative?

[hoppimike]

Like on my PC, I like XFCE as opposed to Gnome or KDE because of the speed boost. But on my mobile... I am not aware of any such alternative to Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0).

Is this simply because phones are a bit more hardware specific and cutting edge and therefore more complex to support?

If I had the option I'd bung a crazily lightweight OS on there so I could run more impressive games and apps.

I know this isn't an Android forum but s'all Linux!

... plus I bet the guys on the Android forum won't be as cool as the people here on the Mint forum!

Cheers,

Hoppi

[sagirfahmid3]

I would suggest SliTaz, but I'm not sure if that works chrooted in Anroid. Anyways, it uses 35MB idle RAM and has a LLLLOOTSS of apps you can install (Libreoffice, VLC, Firefox, are just some of them...there are like 3000 apps). It uses LXDE, but man, it looks sexy if you know how to tweak LXDE...*drools*

Here's some basic SliTaz commands (pronounced Sli Taz, not Slit Ass )
http://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:packages

[hoppimike]

I would suggest SliTaz, but I'm not sure if that works chrooted in Anroid. Anyways, it uses 35MB idle RAM and has a LLLLOOTSS of apps you can install (Libreoffice, VLC, Firefox, are just some of them...there are like 3000 apps). It uses LXDE, but man, it looks sexy if you know how to tweak LXDE...*drools*

Here's some basic SliTaz commands (pronounced Sli Taz, not Slit Ass )
http://doc.slitaz.org/en:handbook:packages

Thank you

[sagirfahmid3]

Since you run Android, I'll assume your device has 512MB+ of RAM (Google's minimum specs). If so, you can run Debian Squeeze on it or Ubuntu.

[hoppimike]

Since you run Android, I'll assume your device has 512MB+ of RAM (Google's minimum specs). If so, you can run Debian Squeeze on it or Ubuntu.

yeah it's erm... this phone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_One_S

Debian Squeeze sounds interesting... but I don't wanna uninstall Android.. shame it might be tricky to dual boot a phone lol

[sagirfahmid3]

Dude....that phone is fscking epic! Dual core 1.5GHz ARM processor and 1GB RAM!
It can run Debian without sweating, but getting it on the phone is possible and a bit difficult

[hoppimike]

Dude....that phone is fscking epic! Dual core 1.5GHz ARM processor and 1GB RAM!
It can run Debian without sweating, but getting it on the phone is possible and a bit difficult

Thanks dude ^^

I was playing N.O.V.A. 2 on it last night it was really cool!

Maybe I'll just stick to Android ICS I mean it runs pretty fast plus Jellybean is out soon! Can't wait! ^_^

Thank you for the help and time though ^^

[steev]

Unfortunately most ARM devices usually run the OS they came with and running anything else is pretty difficult because of locked bootloaders or closed GPUs. Since Android is Linux it can chroot any ARM Linux distro. This will allow you to run normal desktop Linux apps, but it won't make your phone any faster since it is running on top of Android.

There are some things you can do to make Android faster, though.

One is to installer a different Launcher, a very popular one for ICS is called Nova Launcher:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... VuY2hlciJd
A lot of people claim it is faster than the stock Launcher.

Another thing you can do is install a custom ROM (Note: this may void your warranty)
Custom ROMs usually remove a lot of the bloat that comes with the device or have tweaks to improve performance. Check XDA developers for more info:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1531