Convert an Android Device into a Linux Machine

Before installing anything on your Android device always remember to backup your data. The prerequisites for the Android device are: more than 5 GB space in SD card, 1GB RAM and root access ability.

Step 1: First Install Busybox app from Google Play store. This app provides several stripped-down Unix tools in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD. Run BusyBox on your device and tap on Install button, be sure that you have root access.

 Step 2: Once the Busybox libraries are installed, it’s time to install terminal. This terminal app is from an external source (XDA Developers), so you need to enable “Unknown sources” in your phones’ application settings option to allow Andriod to install .apk files which are not hosted at Google play store. Now we are ready to install the terminal. Download it from this link https://goo.gl/AQwmbs .After you have a downloaded terminal app just open it and type the word “su” to get the root access. Now type “busybox arping –help”. If it prints some text like some parameters -f -q -a then Busybox is perfectly working otherwise please check your root and terminal permission.

Step 3: Now open your PC browser, go to sourceforge.com and search for LinuxonAndroid Keyword. You will get two zip file here one has 1.54 GB Ubuntu image and other has an executable script.  Next step is to create a folder in your SDcard called “Ubuntu” and copy above extracted zip folders in it. One folder contains .img file and another has a .sh file.

Step 4: We are almost done now. Now just open your terminal app and write “su” again. Then write: “cd /mnt/sdcard/ Ubuntu”. Please note that if you have created a folder with some different name in step 3 then please replace it with Ubuntu.  To start using it, just type “sh ubuntu.sh”. Your Ubuntu will be up and running when the script is executed successfully but if you still can’t see it then there is nothing to worry. Just download AndroidVNC from Google Play store. And use this info: Nickname: Ubuntu on Android, password: Ubuntu and Address: localhost. You can access it from your PC by using VNC viewer, but both systems must be on the same network.

Conclusion:

Once you’ve installed Ubuntu, the next obvious question is what do you do with it? You can install any Linux app on it, like a web server, media player, etc. and start using it to your liking. Happy experimenting!