My wife has asked me not to turn the house into a tech junkyard.

  • ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    I have 3 old cellphones that for the life of me, no matter how hard I tried - couldn’t install an alt android OS on it

    One device was compatible - but I couldn’t unlock the boot loader

    One device was never tested against any alt OSes

    One device was carrier locked.

    I also have one old Galaxy Tab that I spent weeks trying to flash another ROM to it - and it fails every time.

    I’m 0/4 on trying to reanimate old android hardware - it’s just too difficult and too much hoops to go through.

    At least I’m fairly capable with installing Linux on old laptops - and given that a new wave of Win11 compatible laptops is coming - I’ll get to do it more frequently soon.

    I haven’t tried to do LUKS yet, and I’m dying to get my hands on a Yubikey and learn what I can make it do.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      12 hours ago

      Mobile device flashing is a fucking alien world. Samsung products are not good for it, especially in the US.

      The alt OS’s are mainly built against ancient hardware, and the SKUs that work are so limited that they’re not particularly cheap on the used market.

      The best thing you can do is go fairphone or pixel and specifically get one of the models that is directly claimed as supported.

      If you can’t get it to work, find the OS forums and hop in, someone will bend over backward to help you out if you’re nice about it.