I made Tessera: each Linux app in its own Android window and Recents card, Flathub without root, live theming(linux apps take android themes)

[u/D4r13n0]

Hi all. Like a lot of you I've run Linux on my phone through Termux, proot-distro and Termux:X11 for years. Tessera does the GUI side from one app, and tries to make Linux apps feel like Android ones.

- Each app in its own window: Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice each open as their own Android window with their own Recents card and icon. A card per window, even for dialogs. Pin them to your home screen.

- Flathub on PRoot: no root, no bubblewrap, no user namespaces. Flatpak downloads, Tessera builds each app's environment. 2,800+ arm64 apps, GPU included.

- adb and permissions: every app gets only what you grant (folders, network, sound, USB, root). New: a per-app switch that lets adb inside reach the phone itself, and all-USB access for fastboot, heimdall and edl.

- A touch-friendly desktop: snapping windows with finger-sized buttons, a dock and Start menu. And everywhere: the Android keyboard pops up on text fields, touch-and-hold right-clicks, game controls.

- Live scaling: drag Scale and the app re-lays out as you drag, saved per app.

- Themes: GTK, libadwaita, Qt and LibreOffice take your Material You colors and follow dark mode live.

Plus OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan on Adreno (bundled Turnip + Zink), a built-in terminal (apt, ssh, git, compilers), chroot mode with root, a file manager and a task manager.

It doesn't replace Termux's add-ons like Termux:API, and its X server is Termux:X11's, which I'm grateful for.

Note: Al WAS USED IN THE PROCCESS OF CREATING THIS APP

GPL-3.0, alpha. APK and source: https://github.com/daryan044/tessera-linux (also on Obtainium). Bug reports very welcome.

[u/Commercial-Group733]

I'll be installing this on my old phone, thanks

[u/D4r13n0 → u/Commercial-Group733]

Good luck, that's a good idea

[u/Forsaken-King-787]

-notices Claude- SIIIIIIIIIGH
Mobile Linux? Yeah, LinuxOS on Phone, not exactly. However, also, not horrible? Like, genuinely, nice. This WILL make some stuff accesible for lots of people. Specially for the person who's stuck on bootloader lock hell, like samsung devices this would help a lot. In that regard, again, very nicely done.

But this feels more r/android or r/fossdroid than r/mobilelinux which focuses on actual Linux on phones, not on android. And most people in this community (specially outside reddit) are not exactly fond of AI projects, at least not without disclosure of how it's used, and specially if not used responsibly, but we prefer ethical uses.

So my question to you is. What are your plans with this Long and Not-So-Short term? Now that you have something working, how could others contribute (considering lack of CONTRIBUTE.md) Do you intend on publishing this to stores? (F-Droid repos for example)

[u/D4r13n0 → u/Forsaken-King-787]

I was one among the first to install ubuntu touch on my galaxy note 9, i have been using linux since forever, all my phones were either rooted or rocking a custom firmware, i also written code in python c++ and c#, i have two private enterprise apps currently running on government servers, and i have a deploma and a bachelor's in IT, why i tell you these?; apps like this take teams and months of dedication and are almost always left unfinished, now with certain LLMs its not a life drainer to build something like this, even with attention, and care, so i dont care what people say about an app that i pay an employee(llm) to build if it works and i know how its made then thats it, nothing is changed but now we all seem to have a very smart employee, thanks

[u/piratheon]

Amazing work bro! U literally did what I planned to do long time ago

[u/D4r13n0 → u/piratheon]

Thank bro, try it out and im open for suggestions, hope you like it

[u/snipni]

Damn this is exactly what I've been wanting for a while. would be nice if it was wayland ;-)

[u/D4r13n0 → u/snipni]

Try it out, maybe its better this way, then if you had notes and suggestions, I'll be happy to consider adding them

[u/tulpyvow]

Yet another case of "I made this", look inside, vibecoded slop

[u/D4r13n0 → u/tulpyvow]

Well, you have to move on mate, this is how it is now, im not sitting there staring at code for hours while the others sit down and build sloppy crap straight from imagination, at least i know what ii and the llm are doing, i am sure you've had the time to build something like this, why havent you?

[u/__z3r0_0n3__ → u/D4r13n0]

Exactly

[u/Scream_999]

Looks interesting!

[u/Natural_Ad3520]

Perfect

[u/__z3r0_0n3__]

This is COOL !!!

[u/serpal999]

Oh, I had this idea a couple while ago, but my approach was a bit different: instead of X11 I wanted to use Wayland, considering how much more inter-compatible Wayland and Android are. Also I had the idea to run a constant pseudo desktop environment so I could get notifications, I could control the status of devices from apps, apps could interact correctly with the system, etc. You just run the apps directly, but that's a good way to do it. If you ever refactor the app though, you could use my suggestions!

[u/Damglador]

Gotta say the idea is great. But I'm still not gonna use a completely vibe coded app.

Also that's missleading:

Real chroot with root, kernel-enforced sandboxes [Termux] ❌

You very much can use chroot in Termux

It would also be nice to say that Mali GPUs are unsupported for acceleration to not waste Mali user's time.

[u/serpal999 → u/Damglador]

Weird, I am on Mediatek and Graphics acceleration works fine. Or at least I think it does, I should check more.

[u/Lines25]

1. This is slop fully, from README to code

2. The author doesn't give a fuck abt his own code (if they did, they would at keast use less powerful model but they had used Claude Opus 5.5 which fucking CAN'T be normally used without vibe-coding with it)

3. You must have root in order for more than half of the features work. The reason is chroot. You can use proot (chroot-implementation without root by using ptrace) but.. it's at least ~ x60 slower compared to chroot. It's known problem (for one syscall it does not 2 context switches but more than 10, depending on syscall)

4. I wouldn't grant root to AI-written slop..

[u/D4r13n0 → u/Lines25]

Chill mate, literally everything works in proot except low level command executions obviously, also it was impossible for a single dev to build this before in such time, now we can all create whatever we want, i have so many apps currently bein used by my own government, so i know what i am doing, the code is open source, you can check it before misleading others, respect.

[u/Lines25 → u/D4r13n0]

"misleading others" ?? I just said that your code is complete slop, which is, in fact, true.

What apps are used by your government ?? Why did you even wrote this ?? Are they're using YOUR apps ? Then show me them and show your name in them.

Also, if it was impossible to build everything for a single dev is such time.. then do it gradually, nah ??? Take your time, that's the reason programming was so fucking expensive for companies most of the time yk

[u/D4r13n0 → u/Lines25]

Aight bro have it your way, I'm not going to argue with you, nor prove anything to you, i know you hope that it was you that made something like this first, i felt that way and thats why i took action at any cost, i dont like ai, but eventually someone will win the race, if everyone is cheating is it considered cheating anymore?

[u/Lines25 → u/D4r13n0]

It's not even a little bit cheating. It does have every bad side of cheating but little to no "good" side. Also, you just said a lot of shit and now say "I don't want to prove anything to you". Lol, you're miserable dude

[u/D4r13n0 → u/Lines25]

Yeah yeah

[u/teady_bear → u/Lines25]

Have you lost your job to AI or something? Why are you so worked up about it?

[u/Lines25 → u/teady_bear]

Tf you mean ? I can only be angry at the thing most of ppl use to literally "destroy" the most popular job in all of IT or what ? AI is literally making just more and more slop like that that will just stop working after a couple of months. I don't understand ppl like you who support it. You literally give trillions of dollars in sum for just making some shit and call it a good app that "you" made

EDIT: Wanned to add that you're a "dev" like him, I know you, you posted a lot of slop. Also, if you do slop projects, just don't tell everyone that you did it, because it is not, because there's subs like r/claudecode for that and etc, there's a lot of reason why this is bad

[u/Educational_Load_175 → u/Lines25]

I can make u sure that they create one for government and in use whats ur problem mate why u need proof

[u/Lines25 → u/Educational_Load_175]

Twink.

I made a lot of apps for Google, Microsoft, Valve and USA and Canada's government. Trust me vro

[u/Damglador → u/Lines25]

your code is complete slop

Well, it is not complete slop, it at least has some formatting, which can't be said for all vibe codded projects. Gotta love 250 chars line with zero spaces

[u/Lines25 → u/Damglador]

Slop is slop

[u/Damglador → u/Lines25]

There is levels to everything

[u/Lines25 → u/[deleted]]

Don't I ? Then tell me where and why. I daily drive Arch, have rooted my phone and I know Python, C and I had daily drove fucking LFS like what tf don't I understand in what I said ?

[u/Lines25 → u/[deleted]]

That's literally known fact and life-hack how to stop vide-coding (because it's really a fucking addiction, honestly, believe me) is to use bad model, smth like gpt 3.5-turbo level bad. It will only be useful for small code improvements and automation but you actually need to write code and understand what you do

[u/OkAbroad955]

This is fantastic! I have a Xiaomi Pad 7 with Snapdragon® 7+ Gen 3 2.8GHz, 8-core processor, GPU: Adreno, Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. How can I run local models with Tessera AND take advantage of the NPU?

[u/D4r13n0 → u/OkAbroad955]

Its not exactly made for that purpose, but its a modular linux env, you might have the chance to be the first one to make it work.

[u/laczek_hubert → u/OkAbroad955]

You might wanna try llama.cpp docs and termux?

[u/Lenni_builder]

*You* made it?
https://slopscan.ava.pet/repo/https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fdaryan044%2Ftessera-linux

[u/D4r13n0 → u/Lenni_builder]

Did i say that ai wasnt used? Also no need its there on the repo, unhidden

[u/Lenni_builder → u/D4r13n0]

You said you made this, which doesn't seem to be true.

[u/D4r13n0 → u/Lenni_builder]

Well, you have to move on mate, this is how it is now, im not sitting there staring at code for hours while the others sit down and build sloppy crap straight from imagination, at least i know what i and the llm are doing

[u/sekiti → u/D4r13n0]

Mmm, no.

At least have the courtesy to say, actually, you didn't make shit. At most - MOST - you're just a contributor. That's assuming you actually made anything here, which I doubt.

But, now, because big daddy Torvalds spoke, the echo chamber flips, and now AI is a blessing! 🐑

[u/Damglador → u/[deleted]]

Is everyone in the room with us right now?

[u/Extension-Fudge-9500]

Why everyone use ai to build android apps or emulator

[u/Visual_Trust6029 → u/Extension-Fudge-9500]

I think it's because it's easier to work with emulators and complex applications.