saad.ftp.sh

In my last blog post, I talked about turning an Android phone into a Linux desktop using Termux but what if you wanted to do the inverse? What if you wanted to run Android on your laptop? Well, there's an Android distribution which targets the x86 architecture used in laptops and PCs, you can use this to install Android on your computer! The distro is called Android-x86, it is essentially a Linux distribution. You can also use software like QEMU, VMWare or VirtualBox to create Android virtual machines using this distro. With this distribution on your hard drive, you finally have the flexibility to run Android on devices other than mobile phones. All you need to do is download an image from SourceForge.

A couple of years ago, I rooted a Google Nexus 5 to install Ubuntu Touch on it. Maybe I'm remembering it with rose tinted glasses now but it was a great mobile Linux experience at the time (a used Nexus 5 is being shipped as we speak so that I can try it again). While it was a fun experience, I quickly realized that rooting a phone can be invasive... kind of like software surgery on a phone. Luckily, I recently discovered Termux, it makes the entire phone software surgery a little useless if you just want Linux running quickly and easily on an Android device. Though it requires a bit of tinkering to get a desktop environment running, the app is an amazing tool which lets you have the fun of running Linux on Android without invasively rooting your phone and disrupting the filesystem.

In theory, since Linux distributions contain open source software, anyone should be able to build custom distributions using the underlying code. In practice, that kind of customization can seem unattainable for individuals who don't have millions of dollars along with a team of experts but this doesn't have to be the case. Using some commonly available scripts and tools, anyone with some dedication can get started building custom barebones Linux distributions.

Gitea is a free and open source platform which provides all the features of Github but can be self-hosted. It is like having your own version of Github which is fine tuned for your use. It is one of the most useful pieces of software I started using this year and has become an essential part of my workflow, anyone who writes code would benefit from having a private Gitea server.

Well, underneath the hood it is really just an Icecast streaming server automated with some simple Liquidsoap scripts. It is also wrapped around a pretty looking interface and uses a reverse proxy with HTTPS enabled.

Over the course of my post-secondary education in Canada, I've been to both college and university. I've gotten a diploma from college and a degree from university. Let me say this definitely here: free education provided by platforms like edx and Coursera has ended up being more valuable than both university and college combined. These platforms give everyone access to leading institutions and experts for no (or very little) cost and they gave me an opportunity to develop a variety of academic interests on my own terms. I think it is fair to say these platforms were essential in nurturing my interest in software development. If it weren't for Coursera and edx, I probably wouldn't have a degree or diploma to begin with!

My blog script has gone through a long journey but I finally have a web server setup I'm comfortable with, let me tell you about it...