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d1str0

Member

Registered: 2019-04-22

Posts: 9  

Motorola Droid 4

Hi,
I've bought an used Motorola Droid 4 to use as a very compact system on the go. Mostly for scripting and writing emails. Since I have Devuan on everything else I decided to give it a try on it, but looking at the images for this hardware I realized I have no idea how to install it.
I have dd the image to a SD card, but what's next?
The phone is rooted an currently has Lineage OS.

Thanks.

climbingturtle

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2019-03-13

Posts: 11  

Re: Motorola Droid 4

Hi, have you looked at Maemo leste yet? It sounds like what you are looking for, it is based on devuan and seems to be supported for that Motorola device you have!

https://maemo-leste.github.io/

Here is the instruction for getting Motorola Droid 4 to work: https://leste.maemo.org/Motorola_Droid_4

d1str0

Member

Registered: 2019-04-22

Posts: 9  

Re: Motorola Droid 4

have you looked at Maemo leste yet?

I haven't and I will try it, however I want vanilla Devuan on the phone to use it as a mini laptop of sorts. I don't care if I can't use it as a phone. That being said if for example Maemo leste let's me install applications from Devuan's repository and generally fool around like I do with my others systems, all the better.

I will try it and report back.
Thanks.

crankypuss

Member

Registered: 2018-09-15

Posts: 58  

Re: Motorola Droid 4

have you looked at Maemo leste yet?

I haven't and I will try it, however I want vanilla Devuan on the phone to use it as a mini laptop of sorts. I don't care if I can't use it as a phone. That being said if for example Maemo leste let's me install applications from Devuan's repository and generally fool around like I do with my others systems, all the better.

I will try it and report back.
Thanks.

Have you considered a Raspberry Pi using your droid as its output terminal?  Not sure, but i think there's a Devuan build for the Raspberry Pi, fwiw.  If you just want a tiny laptop, it may be of interest; if it needs to be pocket proof you'd need to build stuff, most likely.  fwiw

d1str0

Member

Registered: 2019-04-22

Posts: 9  

Re: Motorola Droid 4

Well Maemo Leste is awfully slow on the Droid 4, the interface lags so much is barely usable. Wifi works and a I can connect to it through SSH which is considerable faster than using the terminal emulator on the phone. I will try to get rid of the desktop environment and install I3 insted. Still I would like to know how to run the vanilla Devuan image for this phone (tried to use the same method for Maemo Leste but it didn't work).

Have you considered a Raspberry Pi?

I don't think that would work for me as I would have to carry a Raspberry Pi with a battery, the phone and maybe the router, or forget abouth the phone and have the raspberry with a screen and keyboard: but that would also be too bulky.

ToxicExMachina

Member

Registered: 2019-03-11

Posts: 210  

Re: Motorola Droid 4

You can't run vanilla Devuan because you need custom set of drivers. You can make filesystem via debootstrap and run Devuan with custom kernel for Droid 4. GUI lags may be caused by slow videodrivers.

d1str0

Member

Registered: 2019-04-22

Posts: 9  

Re: Motorola Droid 4

run Devuan with custom kernel

Do you mean with this image?

https://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr … id4.img.xz
With "vanilla Devuan" I was talking about it. I guess it has at least some of the drivers for the Droid.
I'll give deboostrap a try (didn't know about it) with that image if that's what you meant.
Thanks