Two years ago, I replaced my laptop with an Android-based desktop, and for most of the time since, I’ve used Samsung DeX whenever I needed to do something the internal screen on my Galaxy Z Fold 6 couldn’t handle. That worked out surprisingly well for me, but I’ve since decided to fall back into the familiar arms of Linux regardless, and Samsung isn’t entirely to blame.
The best games don’t come to mobile
Surprisingly, most of them are now playable on Linux
I was pretty happy getting by without a PC, but my brother-in-law recently upgraded his graphics card, and he was willing to give me his old one for free. An NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super is hardly a top-of-the-line card anymore, but it’s more power than I’ve ever had. I’m surprised to see that it can run every game in my Steam library, and it can do so with the games running just shy of 4K. Games look better on this old card than they do on my Nintendo Switch 2.
To take advantage of this gift, I had to build up a PC around the graphics card. That, admittedly, wasn’t cheap, but it pained me to see this perfectly good graphics card go to waste. And if I’m going to build a PC, well, I refuse to use Windows. I’d much rather stick with DeX on a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold.
Some apps don’t have mobile alternatives
I choose to purchase MP3s rather than stream music via Spotify, and I’m the same way with books. I prefer to purchase eBooks that aren’t locked down, but when there is a book that I can’t buy from a DRM-free source, then that’s where Calibre comes in. I want to own my books and have the freedom to read them on whichever device (such as a BOOX Go 10.3) or app (like Moon+ Reader) I want. Likewise, I want to build my own home media library, but I can’t install Handbrake and digitize my DVD collection on an Android phone.
Calibre and Handbrake are both available for Linux, and they have been for years—many years. The last time I digitized this many DVDs, I was using Handbrake in college back in 2009. I personally found Calibre too dated looking to use as an ebook reader way back then, and it still looks the same, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a non-sketchy and free tutorial for stripping DRM from an eBook that doesn’t involve this app.
Android is not the ideal home server, either
A phone can be an occasional server, but it’s not meant for 24/7 uptime
There are ways to turn an old Android phone into a makeshift NAS, but there are many programs that you can’t run on Android without some degree of emulation. It’s not the intended way to run Nextcloud or replace Google Photos with Immich. This is the kind of software I had a growing interest in trying.
Admittedly, self-hosting all of my own data is harder than I realized, even with a dedicated desktop PC and an extra mini PC lying around. There is so much to learn and buy. If I’m going to go through this much effort, I want to do it on the intended hardware.
My mobile-first workflow is still possible
I can still rely heavily on both voice-to-text and handwriting transcription
When I say I did all of my work from my phone, many people picture me tapping away at a virtual keyboard. Yes, I did type this way in short bursts, but I relied more often on Samsung’s S Pen. I would gesture swipe across the keyboard and even occasionally write longhand, then use Galaxy AI to convert it to text.
Sometimes I wrote first drafts while going for a walk, talking to my phone and allowing it to transcribe my words. I used my phone’s built-in microphone most of the time, but I more recently learned about Wispr Flow, and it’s a far better tool for the job.
While I currently do much of my work from a Linux desktop, I still haven’t stopped using Android for initial drafts. I can speak the entire draft in to my phone, then use QuickShare to send the text to my PC, where I edit it using Apostrophe. When I don’t feel like talking, I can still use a stylus with a writing tablet, convert those words into text, and share them to my PC in the same way.
I do miss the degree of freedom and flexibility I had from being able to work from anywhere using my phone, but it also meant that I was pulling out my phone all the time, both for leisure and for entertainment. I’ve come to appreciate the difference it makes to have different places, and different devices, for different types of work.
