Or Mer, or Sailfish, or FirefoxOS, or even lunaOS these days...

There's no longer any Linux left, it's just Android these days, and starting to eat up on the desktop too.

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that one of the above OSs can use Android kernel and drivers, and provide gnu/linux + X11? I'm pretty sure that's not true of Sailfish - it is Wayland based, and I've been told that the X11 compatibility that Wayland hypothetically provides does not actually exist for Sailfish. I think Mer is Wayland only too now. Am I wrong?

Yes, all of them use Android behind the scenes and (except for FirefoxOS) provide a GNU userland and X11. In the case of Sailfish, there's Xsdl for a quick show, and Xwayland for a.. well, at this point, it offers no benefits over Xsdl.

Have you seen this video of Ubuntu Mate running on the Meizu MX4? It demonstrates applications such as LibreOffice and Chrome running on XMir.

Canonical are also working on Miracast support.

They're also teasing us a little:
"The same Ubuntu experience across any device - coming soon"

Why not Pandora 1GHz?
https://www.dragonbox.de/en/189-pand...-consoles.html

"Currently out of stock." That's why.

#21: there is libhybris. Why can't we use it to run our favorite distro on any Android device? What are we missing?

#22: I'd argue. The thing I love about N900 is that it's one device to rule them all. I don't have to carry two devices. There are times I use it mainly as a phone. At times, I exhaust its computer potential. It's a win-win situation
(more replies will follow in a while)

#25:
it's why it's not always good to use popular OSes

well, it's nice to be able to code on the fly, on the phone. It's why I built OCaml. Sometimes, when I was reading some C examples, I simply fired up some text editor, compiled and checked how it works.

#27: well, what I'm missing in Pandora is... the cellphone feature

#34: yes, but you don't bring the whole toolbox just to screw one screw. So it comes with the smartphones - it's easier to code a 10-liner on a phone than to carry the laptop with you.

as for the iPhone. Its success bases on the fact that an average user wishes not to think about the usage. Just make a couple of calls, send some snaps, reply on fb. Nothing intricate, nothing complicated. We're not average users.

as for the Pyra. I wish I could really use it as a phone But with terminal-only dialing, I really doubt it's ready for it
besides, the gaming controls seem superfluous to me.

Someone commented a thing about Jolla. Well, it's unavoidable to target mainstream audience. It's the core of the company's income. What Nokia managed to do and failed to continue was to create a device which both laymen and hackers can use.

An N900-like android device?

It's videos like that which are the source of much frustration to me. The narrator says "First of all we have to start an xmir window, and I will do this from a remote login where I have already lined up the commands..." . The commands to get xmir to work are never shown. I've seen several videos like this that show xmir can work on at least some Ubuntu Touch devices, but I've found none that show how to actually get xmir to run. What little snippets of nonvideo documentation I've found has only allowed me to brick the phone a few times. I've seen even less evidence that SailfishOS actually can work as an X11 server.

Well, what I mean is: we have libhybris. Even though, Ubuntu Touch barely works on unofficial devices. Shouldn't it be trivial to install Linux on any Android device?