Want to run Linux on your smartphone? Forget the experiments that never leave the hobbyist stage. Ubuntu Touch is the one Linux distro that actually works as a phone, with regular updates, real hardware support, and a polished interface.
Ubuntu Touch (Credits: How-To Geek)
Linux on phones has spent years as a curiosity, but one project has quietly matured into something you can install and use every day. Ubuntu Touch is not perfect, but according to How-To Geek, it balances polish, hardware support, and a steady update path better than any rival.
What Is Ubuntu Touch?
Ubuntu Touch is a mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel and an Ubuntu base, designed for phones and tablets rather than desktops. Canonical created it in the early 2010s as part of a push for convergence, the idea that one codebase could power a phone, a tablet, and a desktop. Canonical abandoned the project in 2017, but the community stepped in.
The UBports Foundation took over development and has kept the system alive ever since, shipping regular over-the-air updates known as OTAs through the phone’s System Settings screen, much like a conventional smartphone. Updates roll out gradually to limit the damage from any bugs.
Under the hood, the old Unity 8 interface was reworked into Lomiri, the shell that now defines how the phone looks and behaves. The base moved from Ubuntu 16.04, finished with OTA-25, to Ubuntu 20.04, and the project has since been migrating to 24.04, with Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.3 out by May 2026.
Which Phones Does Ubuntu Touch Support?
Hardware support relies on Halium, a layer that lets Linux reuse the Android drivers and kernel already present on a phone. That is how the project runs on commercial devices instead of only bespoke hardware.
Officially supported models include several Fairphones, a range of Xiaomi and OnePlus handsets, Google’s Pixel 3a, and even the Rabbit R1, which gained official support with OTA-10. The Pine64 PinePhone and PineTab follow their own update cadence.
Apps come from the OpenStore, the stock browser is Morph, and desktop applications can run through the Libertine container, where the old convergence idea still shows up. The result feels closer to a regular smartphone than most Linux alternatives, with a gesture-based interface and a consistent update path.
Should You Install Ubuntu Touch?
The strongest argument for Ubuntu Touch is that it works like a phone first and a Linux experiment second. It is, How-To Geek notes, as mature as a phone Linux project gets, and many phones have even launched commercially with Ubuntu Touch out of the box.
That said, it is still a community project. App selection is far smaller than Android or iOS, some features may lag behind mainstream phones, and installing it requires care. But if your goal is a genuinely usable Linux phone with real privacy and regular updates, Ubuntu Touch is currently the only serious answer.
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Source: How-To Geek — read the full story there.
