Coming back around to getting a full OS on my tablet I had mostly given up. I ran across a reddit post today that showed a full install with xfce into termux.
Intrigued, I started researching and found a wonderful guide by a developer.
https://github.com/termux-desktop/termux-desktop-lxqt
I was quickly able to get a desktop installed. (At this point I’m playing with termux on my phone and eventually get around to installing on my tablet.)
Darn it I didn’t take photos, and the thing even had a built in screenshot utility.
But wait, there’s more!
I realized this whole deal was using VNC to serve the graphics up, so I tinkered a bit and was able to use RealVNC from my desktop to remote into my phone. So now I’m able to use my keyboard and mouse looking at a full screen desktop running lxqt off a phone. Yeehaw!
Okay… Next I decided to look into what other desktops we could use and I ran into a nifty app called Andronix. This works along with termux to install a Linux distro with a full desktop environment.
I ran through it’s tutorial and got it installing. I went with xfce. It took a while for the scripts to run, but when it finally stopped I was at a root prompt for Arch Linux. Since it uses Proot to change the directory tree it looked exactly like I expected for a desktop install. I turned around and used RealVNC again to remote in on my desktop. Worked like a charm.
I finally stopped playing with it and got around to installing these things to my tablet. I’ve tried them both and not sure which one I’ll stick with long term. The distro installed with Andronix seems to replicate a full install but I haven’t tested enough to see what all will install. The lqxt desktop appears to be installed directly into termux which is a modified Arch distro that is hard linked into a subfolder of Android. I’ve considered rooting my devices, but haven’t found safe reliable ways of that yet.