Doesn’t require root, installed on top of Android, launches like an app.
Best, lowest risk way to get familiar with the capabilities without requiring a new device with specific distro support. I’m a huge believer in having things you can actually experience in your hands.
Mobile distros:
- Mobian (aims to mainline into Debian)
- Droidian
- Maemo Leste
- Postmarket (based on Alpine)
- Manjaro (based on Arch)
- Ubuntu Touch
- Pocket Blue (Fedora-based)
- Others
Mobile desktop environments options to try on your distro:
- Phosh (Gnome-based)
- Plasma Mobile
- Lomiri
- GNOME (mobile) Shell
You could even try installing Waydroid in it for Xzibit-style Android-ception
You could try installing Samsung’s Tizen GNU/Linux OS via Termux and let us know how it goes.
To my understanding, they have the same looking UI such that if Samsung ever wanted to move customers over from Android everything would look familar, without their customers knowing it’s a different OS under the hood.