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Ask HN: Android OS with Linux level customisation

2 points by KinetiNode ↗ HN
Hello HN, I've been working with Android from the past few weeks and I have noticed that android is nowhere near customisable like linux. So I've decided to develop a custom ROM that has exactly this. A fully customizable android with linux level customization. Before I even start this project what are the most technician limitations for this project? Why has noone done this before? I would love to see critiques and why this doesn't work , I'm still learning android so I'm not too sure why it might not work. Thanks!

14 comments

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mohanz
I believe I've tried that back to the age of android 6 and successfully turned one of my old phone to a mini server. However I'm not sure whether the current versions it would be easy to even bootload and config the moving parts yourself. What is your primary use case?
KinetiNode
UI customisations , basically changing everything to the way you like and you can start over and make your own version or add / remove functions (like a full incognito mode that isolates your entire session) idk dude editing system UI.apk is somewhat good but I can't create custom stuff in it I can only edit existing ones.
1970-01-01
>working with Android from the past few weeks

>Why has noone done this before?

This is a joke.

KinetiNode
It's just I can't find any custom ROM for my specific smartphone so I want to make one specifically for it and with UI customisations while being user friendly too
1970-01-01
Plug myspecificsmartphone+XDA into Google.
fsflover
Why not use GNU/Linux if you want "Linux level customization"? Mobian, postmarketOS, PureOS already exist and work on phones.
KinetiNode
Uh.. not my phone I'm only making the OS for myself anyways if people don't like the idea , and I might have mislead everyone here but I want a user friendly way to edit and create custom UI in the smartphones while not being as complicated as linux
fsflover
What is so complicated in Linux compared with Android?
JacobKfromIRC
This is a minor nitpick, but I don't think postmarketOS is GNU/Linux.

I am not sure what the correct term would be to refer to the group of operating systems including those you mentioned but excluding Android, since all of them include Linux, but it does seem like there's something different about Android that puts it in a different category compared to other Linux-based operating systems.

d3Xt3r
The most technical limitation would be fighting with upstream (AOSP), if you make radical changes like the ones you're proposing, assuming you can even get it all to work, it'll be very very hard to keep your changes in sync with upstream, as Google tends to break these things. Even big and famous groups like Paranoid Android, who used to make radical changes to the UI in the old days, gave up because they couldn't fight the fight against upstream. Almost every ROM group around the same time also changed their strategy to be as in line with AOSP as possible. This was like 10+ years ago. Android today is far, far more complex, and security is also a huge issue with all the AI-driven vulnerabilities out in the wild, making it imperative that you update your ROM every month - but with the kind of changes you're proposing, it's impossible for one person to maintain such a codebase.

The only way it'll be feasible would be to use AI, but you'll quickly burn thru your tokens, because the Android codebase is absolutely massive. And with the amount of money you'd be spending on it, you might as well just buy a Linux phone.