What does HackerNews think of proot-distro?

Nix-on-droid: Nix-enabled environment for your Android device (termux-based) | Apr 2023

There's proot-distro, which does the same thing but with conventional linux distributions like Debian and Arch.

Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app | Apr 2023

I think we fundamentally value different things from our mobile devices. Waydroid is a low level compatiblity layer, but that's still not native and not guaranteed compatibility. I want all social media apps to work, I don't want to ask others to change apps.

If you want full freedom from google, GrapheneOS feels like the best de-googled solution. In some ways, PRoot is to android what waydroid is to linux, except PRoot is way more capable. Google free AOSP, like GrapheneOS exists so it's not fair to say it's the same problem. I appreciate having access to things like Kali NetHunter and value that over being able to install and run a mainline kernel on bare hardware. I don't see a difference in installing a completely different OS vs PRoot, because I am focused on the functionality. I wouldn't be able to tell you a meaningful difference in function between iperf3 running on a Librem phone vs native termux vs PRoot.

Here's someone that's installed Termux on waydroid, installed on manjaro installed in Termux on an android phone. https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/y0kupg/termux_on_ma...

https://github.com/termux/proot-distro

Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app | Apr 2023

Folks who want a more traditional linux environment and libraries then what termux comes with might find proot-distro[1] to meet their needs. Basically it allows running an actual arm linux distro in a pseudo container created by (ab)using the ptrace syscall to emulate root privileges. This has a fairly big performance impact, but it works if you want to run arbitrary arm linux binaries.

[1] https://github.com/termux/proot-distro