Converting old laptop from Windows to Android.

Hasse12K · September 22, 2023

Didn't know if i shoud've posted this in the section about operating systems or in this one so i hope i'm in the right section.
I have this super old Lamina Windows 2 in 1 which is waaaaay to slow to use Windows on. Is it possible to install Android on it or is the cpu architecture too different?
It runs on a Intel Atom Z3735F @ 1.33 Ghz and it has 2 gb of ram. Is that enough to run Android on?

Eigenvektor · September 22, 2023

While there is an x86 branch of Android (for emulators), the issue is that Android does not contain any drivers for your hardware. There's also no one Android OS in the same way there's a singular Windows OS.

Every device manufacturer essentially has their own operating system, based on the Android open source project. They are allowed to brand it as Android, so long as they fulfill certain criteria set by Google.

There is no "The Android" that you can download. There's an Android for Google devices, Samsung devices, Nokia devices, … For example if you look on Google's firmware image page, you can see there's multiple firmware images and each one is for a specific Google Nexus/Pixel device only.

That being said, there are projects that aim to port Android to x86, like this one: https://www.android-x86.org/

Hasse12K · September 22, 2023

Thanks for the answer. I know there's not just one single version of Android but i was hoping that something would work. Didn't think about the drivers though. Seems like a waste to just throw it away as e-waste. I've never used Linux either and not really interested to get into that either to be honest. Is there a good, easy Linux distro for people like me that only has used Windows and Android?

Eigenvektor · September 22, 2023

1 hour ago, Hasse12K said:

Is there a good, easy Linux distro for people like me that only has used Windows and Android?

I would say if you're able to install Windows, you should be able to install and use pretty much any modern Linux distro that comes with a graphical installer. The go to for beginners is usually Ubuntu.

The problem would be that modern Linux generally wants similar hardware to Windows, in terms of performance, at least when using their default desktop environment (DE). For hardware as weak as this, you'll want to use a very lightweight DE.

There are derivatives of Ubuntu, such as Xubuntu or Lubuntu, that use more lightweight DEs such as XFCE or LXQt respectively. You might want to give either of those a try.

Most distros come with a live-USB image these days. That means you can flash it onto a USB drive, then boot from it, then try it out without having to install it first. Boot time will be higher than when installed on disk, but once booted you should get a good idea of how well it runs on your hardware before you can decide whether you want to install it or not.

These instructions are for Ubuntu, but they should also work for any of its derivatives, you'll just need to download a different ISO:

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop

For example the Xubuntu image from here (amd64 means x86_64, i.e. any 64-bit AMD or Intel CPU)

https://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/xubuntu/releases/23.04/release/xubuntu-23.04-desktop-amd64.iso