8-Core ARM Pocket Computer Runs NixOS

July 17, 2025 by Tyler August 9 Comments

What has 8 ARM cores, 8 GB of RAM, fits in a pocket, and runs NixOS? It’s no pi-clone SBC, but [MWLabs]’s smartphone– a OnePlus 6, to be precise.

The video embedded below, and the git link above, are [MWLabs]’s walk-through for loading the mobile version of Nix onto the cell phone, turning it into a tiny-screened Linux computer. He’s using the same flake on the phone as on his desktop, which means he gets all the same applications set up in the same way– talk about convergence. That’s an advantage to Nix in this application, compared to the usual Alpine-based PostMarketOS.

Of course some of the phone-like features of this pocket-computer are lacking: the SIM is detected, and he can text, but 4G is nonfunctional. The rear camera is also not there yet, but given that Mobile-NixOS builds on the work done by well-established PostMarketOS, and PostMarketOS’ testing version can run the camera, it’s only a matter of time before support comes downstream. Depending what you need a tiny Linux device for, the camera functionality may or may not be of particular interest. If you’re like us, the idea of a mobile device running Nix might just intrigue you,

Smartphones can be powerful SBC alternatives, after all. You can even turn them into SBCs. As long as you don’t need a lot of GPIO, like for a server,a phone in hand might be worth two birds in the raspberry bush.

Continue reading “8-Core ARM Pocket Computer Runs NixOS” →

Self-Hosting A Cluster On Old Phones

April 9, 2025 by Bryan Cockfield 35 Comments

The phones most of us carry around in our pockets every day hold a surprising amount of computing power. It’s somewhat taken for granted now that we can get broadband in our hands in most places; so much so that when one of these devices has reached the end of its life it’s often just tossed in a junk drawer even though its capabilities would have been miraculous only 20 years ago. But those old phones can still be put to good use though, and [Denys] puts a few of them back to work running a computing cluster.

Perhaps the most significant flaw of smartphones, though, is that most of them are locked down so much by their manufacturers that it’s impossible to load new operating systems on them. For this project you’ll need to be lucky enough (or informed enough) to have a phone with an unlockable bootloader so that a smartphone-oriented Linux distribution called postmarketOS can be installed. With this nearly full-fledged Linux distribution to work from, the phones can be accessed by ssh and then used to run Kubernetes for the computing cluster. [Denys] has three phones in his cluster that run a few self-hosted services for him.

[Denys] also points out in his guide that having a phone that can run postmarketOS might save some money when compared to buying a Raspberry Pi to run the same service, and the phones themselves can often be more powerful as well. This is actually something that a few others have noted in the past as well. He’s gone into a considerable amount of detail on how to set this up, so if you have a few old smartphones gathering dust, or even those with broken screens or other physical problems where the underlying computing resources are still usable, it’s a great way to put these machines back to work.

Thanks to [mastro Gippo] for the tip!

Smartphone Runs Home Server

December 9, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 21 Comments

It’s one of the great tragedies of our technological era. Smartphones that feature an incredible amount of computational power compared to computers the past, are largely locked down by carriers or manufacturers, dooming them to performing trivial tasks far below their true capabilities.

But there is hope. In part one of this build, a OnePlus 6T is stripped of its Android operating system in favor of postmarketOS, a Linux distribution based on Alpine designed for a number of Android phones and tablets as well as some Linux-only handhelds. The guide also demonstrates how to remove the battery and use a modified USB-C cable to essentially trick the battery management system into powering up the phone anyway. The second part of the project dives into the software side, getting the Linux system up and running before installing Docker and whichever Docker containers the user needs.

There are a few downsides to running a server from a smartphone. Although there’s plenty of processing power available for a wide range of applications, most phones won’t have Ethernet support out-of-the-box which forces the use of WiFi. There’s also limited storage options available, so a large NAS system may be out of reach. But for something like a home automation system or a music streaming server this could put plenty of older devices to work again. And if you don’t want to hunt for an Android phone that isn’t completely hobbled out-of-the box you might want to try a phone that’s Linux-based from the get-go instead.

Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip!

PostmarketOS Now Boots On Over 250 Devices

June 17, 2024 by Tom Nardi 43 Comments

Every year, as consumers gobble up the latest Android devices, more old, but perfectly serviceable, units end up collecting dust in drawers. Or worse, they end up getting tossed in the trash. One of the most promising tools we have to help keep these older devices useful is postmarketOS, a full-fledged Linux distribution that provides a flexible and up-to-date software environment on devices that might otherwise be stuck with some old and unsupported version of Google’s mobile operating system.

As of the latest update on the postmarketOS blog, the team has announced an exciting milestone: over 250 devices can now boot the stable release of the OS.

Now to be clear, not all devices will be fully functional. In fact, the blog post clarifies that some of them only barely boot. But it’s progress, and now that these semi-supported devices aren’t hidden behind a development version of the OS, it means more folks will be able to put them to use.

For example, if you want to turn your old smartphone into a low-energy headless webserver, it doesn’t really matter if its display, touchscreen, or speakers are supported. You just need it to boot into Linux and fire up an SSH server so you can get in and start working.

But support for new devices is just one of the additions in this new v24.06 release. The blog post also points out several notable software upgrades, including the move to the 6.x branch of KDE Plasma Mobile. This brings with it a long list of improvements and changes, including a rewritten homescreen with enhanced customization options. If you prefer a more minimal GUI, don’t worry. This new release also updates Sxmo, which provides a menu-driven interface for both touch screens and hardware controls.

Among the newly supported devices is a generic x86_64 image that should work on a wide array of PCs. While obviously there’s no shortage of Linux distros you could run on your old computer, being able to install postmarketOS on it is definitely helpful for development purposes. There’s also a new Tegra ARMv7 target which brings a number of new devices into the fold, such as the Google Nexus 7, and Microsoft Surface RT.

Looking to run postmarketOS on your own hardware? The best way to start is to check the Devices page and see how many of those old gadgets you’ve got collecting dust in a drawer are compatible.

A Nexus 5 Smartphone Running PostmarketOS

PostmarketOS Turns 600 Days Old

January 17, 2019 by Eric Evenchick 18 Comments

PostmarketOS began work on a real Linux distribution for Android phones just over 600 days ago. They recently blogged about the state of the project and ensured us that the project is definitely not dead.

PostmarketOS’ overarching goal remains a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones. We previously covered the project on Hackaday to give an introduction. Today, we’ll concern ourselves with the progress the PostmarketOS team has made.

The team admits that they’re stuck in the proof-of-concept phase, and need to break out of it. This has required foundational changes to the operating system to enable development across a wide variety of devices and processor architectures. There’s now a binary package repository powered by builds.sr.ht which will allow users to install packages for their specific device.

Other updates include fixing support for the Nexus 5 and Raspberry Pi Zero, creating support for open source hardware devices including the Pine A64-LTS and Purism Librem 5. PostmarketOS now boots on a total of 112 different devices.

We’re excited to see the PostmarketOS project making progress. With the widespread move to mobile devices, users lose control over their computing devices. PostmarketOS gives us the ability to run code that we can read and modify on these devices. It’s no small feat though. Supporting the wide variety of custom hardware in mobile devices requires a lot of effort.

While it may be a while before PostmarketOS is your daily driver, the project is well suited to building task-specific devices that require connectivity, a touch screen, and a battery. We bet a lot of Hackaday readers have a junk drawer phone that could become a project with the help of PostmarketOS.

Unlock & Talk: Open Source Bootloader & Modem

April 19, 2018 by Drew Risinger 13 Comments

During the early years of cell phones, lifespan was mainly limited by hardware (buttons wearing out, dropping phones, or water damage), software is a primary reason that phones are replaced today. Upgrades are often prompted by dissatisfaction with a slow phone, or manufacturers simply stopping updates to phone software after a few years at best. [Oliver Smith] and the postmarketOS project are working to fix the update problem, and have begun making progress on loading custom software onto cellphone processors and controlling their cellular modems. Continue reading “Unlock & Talk: Open Source Bootloader & Modem” →

PostMarketOS Saves Old Smartphones

January 9, 2018 by Tom Nardi 67 Comments

Modern smartphones, even the budget models, are extremely impressive pieces of technology. Powerful ARM processors, plenty of RAM, and an incredible number of sensors and radios are packed into a device that in some cases are literally given away for free when you sign up for a service plan. Unfortunately manufacturers are not obligated to keep up with software updates, and while the hardware may be willing to keep on fighting, the user is often pushed to upgrade due to perennially outdated software. Even if you aren’t the kind of person to be put off by using a phone that doesn’t have the latest and greatest OS, the lack of software security updates pose a clear threat in a world where mobile devices are increasingly targeted by attackers.

But what if the operating system on your phone worked more like the on one your computer? That’s the dream of postmarketOS, a Linux distribution created by [Oliver Smith] that is designed to be installed on outdated (mostly Android) smartphones and tablets. He’s recently made a comprehensive blog post about the state of the project a little over 6 months since it started, and we have to say things are looking very impressive so far.

One of the key goals of postmarketOS is to avoid the fragmented nature of previous attempts at replacing Android with a community-developed operated system. By avoiding binary blobs and focusing on getting the mainline Linux kernel running on as much as the hardware as possible, there’s no need to make different forks and releases for each supported device. By unifying the OS as much as far as it can be, an upstream update can be pushed to all devices running postmarketOS regardless of their make and model, just like with traditional Linux distributions.

The blog post shows two things very clearly: that the community is extremely excited and dedicated to the prospect of running what is essentially desktop Linux on old smartphones and tablets, and that postmarketOS still has a long way to go. In these early days, many devices aren’t what could be considered “daily drivers” by most standards. In fact, the blog post mentions that they’ve decided to abandon the term “supported” when talking about devices, and make no claims beyond the fact that they will boot.

Still, incredible progress is being made on everything from mainline kernel development to getting standard Linux desktops such as Gnome, MATE and XFCE4 running. Work has also been done on the backend process of compiling and packaging up components of the operating system itself, promising to speed up development times even for those who don’t have a beefy machine they can dedicate to compiling. The blog post ends with a helpful list of things the reader can do to help support postmarketOS, ranging from making your own t-shirts to porting to new hardware.

At Hackaday we’ve seen our fair share of hackers and makers re-purposing old smartphones and tablets, keeping them out of the landfills they would almost certainly end up in otherwise. A project that aims to make it even easier to hack these cheap and incredibly useful devices is music to our ears.