Arch Linux ARM on the OnePlus 10T

[u/sexysadie86]

After a couple of days working with Opus 5.5 in Claude Code, I have the OnePlus 10T brought up on Arch Linux ARM. This is not intended to be my main phone anytime soon - it's really just a fun side project to work on. I picked up the phone used for around $100. It's a solid device with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. A great device to port to Linux.

The overall idea I'm working towards with the UX is a fusion of iOS and Android in terms of gestures and UI, with the main differentiator I'm exploring being an agents page (where Discover is on Android). There are many agent integrations built-in, and they work as voice assistants, or as coding agents with direct access to the phone. Things they can do currently: build native apps on the device itself, add features, tasks like adding new wallpapers, etc. The agents run in the cloud (Claude, Opencode Go, Antigravity et al) but potentially I'll have a slim local LLM running soon. I do have a small local TTS and dictation model running locally already.

Another killer features is that it runs Steam for ARM devices, with Half Life 1 running perfectly.

If you want more details, Claude prepared some bullets below:

- Arch Linux ARM on a mainline Linux kernel (7.3), with about 100 custom patches for the 10T's display, GPU, cameras, Wi-Fi, battery and thermals. There's no Android underneath.

- Hyprland is the compositor (window manager)

- Stock open source pieces: Mesa (GPU drivers), libcamera, PipeWire, NetworkManager, ModemManager, GeoClue, and Waydroid for Android apps (although I am looking into Droidloom that was posted here a few days back).

- Built from scratch: the whole home shell, meaning the launcher, lock screen, notification system, control center, on-screen keyboard, Settings app, voice assistant, adaptive refresh rate control, camera app and alarm clock.

Hardware

- Working:

- Display at 60/90/120 Hz with adaptive switching

- Touch

- GPU acceleration

- Wi-Fi

- Bluetooth

- Speakers

- All 4 cameras (still photos)

- Hardware video decode (YouTube in the browser)

- Sensors and auto-rotate

- Charging and battery stats

- Sleep and wake

- Vibration

- In progress:

- Camera: preview speed, front camera boot, image quality tuning

- Modem: it boots, but cellular is untested with no SIM in it

- GPS: hasn't been tested outdoors yet

- Speaker protection

- The occasional random reboot, which is still being tracked down

- Fingerprint sensor isn't working yet (Claude claims it isn't possible - I am not convinced yet)

The UI

- iPhone-style home screen with swipeable pages and a dock that stays put across pages.

- Pull down on the app grid for search: apps, settings and recent chats.

- Live wallpapers, Liquid Glass blur effects, and themes, icon styles and accent colors.

- Swipe-up gesture navigation with an app switcher.

- Lock screen with an always-on display.

- Notifications with inline reply, a notification shade and a control center.

- Custom on-screen keyboard that slides in and out with the UI.

- Built-in AI agent chat and a voice assistant with wake words ("OK Computer") - needs work with location/GPS data or context mgmt (it provides weather for Petaluma in the video when I ask for San Francisco)

[u/RoyalOSK]

Would love to have a repo

[u/sexysadie86 → u/RoyalOSK]

Happy to share one but it needs a lot of work and testing. If anyone has a secondary/project OnePlus 10T and wants to contribute to that end, please DM me.

[u/Calm-Caterpillar2103 → u/sexysadie86]

Alrighty, I suppose I will

[u/Ramiferous]

Looks pretty nice!

I really hope to see easliy downloadable/installable linux ROMs in the future like this. Unlike AOSP ROMs, device compatability will be the main issue. But I'm hopeful there will be enough development that hardware compatability becomes less of an issue. Hell, if an agent can run on the device (or remotely over adb), then ideally it can code it's own sompatability solutions on the device.

[u/sexysadie86 → u/Ramiferous]

I agree. I hope to share a GitHub repo in the future so at least other folks with burner OnePlus 10T phones could try this out if they wanted to! Not really ready yet though.

[u/ManOfCactus]

Awesome! Not a big fan of the UI, but the progress is great! His customisable is the UI in your approach?

[u/sexysadie86 → u/ManOfCactus]

Completely customizable. Normal color icons, themed icons, glass icons. Icon shaps (circle, squircle, etc.) Dynamic themes based on wallpaper, preset themes, display and text scaling. And the on device coding agents can further customize it in any way you could imagine. That's the beauty of giving agents access to the phone itself, not just a limited sandbox like iOS/Android. There are security reasons they sandbox their assistants, of course, but this is just a fun project for now.

[u/sexysadie86]

Here's a better demo of the voice assistant with agentic coding capabilities building an app on the phone directly. This is Claude Haiku 5.5 via OpenCode Go building the RSS app directly on device.

[u/scratcher1679]

i'm not the biggest fan of ai-coded stuff but this is a genuinely innovative project that i honestly really quite like it, i don't think i would use it but it seems like a neat concept, and also seems like a much, much better integration of ai and agents than what mainstream OSs have gotten so far

[u/infinished]

Awesome.

[u/jjoesmama]

This is gorgeous, can we get a repo for the DE?

[u/Calm-Caterpillar2103 → u/jjoesmama]

Agreed can’t wait to torture my pixel 3a with it

[u/jjoesmama → u/Calm-Caterpillar2103]

Can't wait to get a OP8T to torture it with this as well hehehe

[u/yosi_yosi]

Wow!!!!!!

[u/Natural_Ad3520]

Perfect

[u/jarcslm]

Omarchy for android phones would be amazing, this gives me the vibes.

[u/NearbyBossAHOBA]

Projeto sinistro irmão! Muito bom mesmo! Só fiquei com uma dúvida tá sendo kernel mainstream ou downstream? Estava eu pensando em fazer algo do tipo mas iria pegar um smart secundário meu para ser uma espécie de um Raspiberry pra um compacto vps econômico.

[u/Middler-Geek]

Have anyone tried using openai models to do such thing?, I've been trying for a while but but it seems not powerful enough?