One of the coolest things that you could possibly do with your Android device is to run Linux on it (A full desktop operating system, in the palm of your hand). If you are asking yourself what Linux is exactly, this might help give you a quick explanation.
So what advantages would you get out of running Linux on your Android device? Well, besides doing things like running a Minecraft server and building your own cloud, you have a full suite of applications and….dare I say…penetration testing tools at your disposal. The possibilities are endless. To do this, you will need to have a rooted Android device. If you are running Android Marshmallow (6.0) and perhaps even Lollipop (5.0) you will also need to make sure that you have a custom kernel installed. I am using ElementalX on my Nexus 5.
What You Will Need:
- Rooted Android Device
- Busybox Installer
- Linux Deploy
- VNC Viewer (optional)
First, download and install the BusyBox Installer app. The purpose of BusyBox is to provide most of the standard Unix tools.
Afterwards, download and install Linux deploy. Within the app, go to the configuration panel (hit the button next to the stop button at the bottom). From here, you can configure that distribution that you want to use, along with the suite and desktop environment. I am going to stick with the default Debian distribution and keep LXDE for my desktop environment. Click _install _to begin the process of downloading and installing Linux. Once it’s done, select start. This will start up the Linux environment. You can either access it through a SSH shell(using port 22, with the default password set as”changeme”) or through a VNC.
To access through a VNC, download VNC viewer and set the address to localhost:5900. When you connect for the first time, it will prompt you for a password. The default password is changeme.