My current progress on Android Linux DRM control
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This project started because I finally got root working on my phone.
The catch is my phone can't boot Linux or custom ROMs directly (yet), so I started wondering...
What if I left Android running and only gave Linux control of the external display?
After a lot of trial and error, I found a way to duplicate Qualcomm's display lease so Linux can drive a monitor over USB-C while Android keeps running in the background.
That was the "wait... this actually works?" moment.
Instead of Linux feeling like it's trapped inside Android, it starts behaving much more like a real desktop. Linux can control things like the monitor's resolution, refresh rate, display modes, and more, while still sharing Android's kernel and drivers.
The end goal is to build a laptop shell around it.
Current plan:
- 1080p portable display running at 144 Hz (it was sold as 120 Hz, but I found a hidden 144 Hz mode)
- Thunderbolt 4 dock for power, video, touch, and USB
- Keyboard
- Trackpad
- Custom 3D-printed shell inspired by Razer Project Linda... just a lot bigger because I like big laptops.
Honestly, I'm mostly doing this because I wanted to see how far I could push a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 if Android stopped getting in the way.
So far it's been way more usable than I expected. Almost no heat, no noticeable lag, and the only major piece of software I'm relying on is DroidSpace to host the Ubuntu rootfs. Everything else is mostly shell scripts, root access, and a lot of experimenting.
Root was required. Maybe theres some workaround but this basically is a way to bypass androids compositor...so its hard to say