Questions about rooting

[Macnerd]

I know that Android is based on Linux.

If one roots a tablet to install Linux & then later wants to reinstall Android, is it possible? Can a tablet be unrooted?

Is it possible to have BOTH Linux & Android on the same tablet & dual-boot?

A tablet has, say, 64 GB of RAM. I'm confused. Desktop PCs have both RAM & hard drive space but they are separate. Is Android the same? Or are both RAM & "hard drive" space combined?

I have a 9-year old HP netbook that had Windows XP on it. I installed Linux Mint on it to try it out. The installer divided the hard drive into 3 partitions - root, home & swap. Will the same thing happen if Linux is installed on an Android tablet?

 

[Hadron]

Android is based on a fork of the Linux kernel (there were moves to bring it back into the mainstream, I can't recall whether that's happened yet). But that's where the similarity with desktop Linux ends. And even then a binary distribution would be no use because the architecture of an Android device is very different from a PC. There are projects to install Linux on Android devices, but I've not looked into them to see what's involved or how wide their device support is (often these things work on just some devices). So my first question is, have you done your homework on this, selected a project, understood the installation procedures and checked, as well as you can, whether it will be compatible with your device? That's the stuff I don't know well enough to answer for you, other than to say that it's not the same as installing a desktop distro on a PC.

An Android device does indeed have separate RAM and storage. If the device says 64GB (and I can't think offhand what tablet has that much) it's talking about the flash storage - effectively your "hard drive". The RAM is likely to be 2-4GB for a modern device. Although you may find the storage technology referred to as "Flash RAM", which may be where your confusion came from, it is not at all the same as RAM, closer to a SSD (but with a different storage controller). .

As long as you don't do something terminal like corrupt the bootloader (not easy to do accidentally) you can always return a rooted Android device to its original state by just completely reflashing the device with stock firmware. Availability of the stock firmware, and the tools you use to do this, depends on the device & manufacturer. Best to find out whether this is available for your device before you start fiddling.

I think the rest of your questions are based on a misconception that you can download your favourite Linux distro and just install it on the tablet as if it were a PC. This is not the case.

 

[Macnerd]

I know very little about Linux. I know that there's Linux for embedded devices which is what an ARM processor is, right?

I'm just wondering what my options are. I can install Linux on an Android tablet or on a Chromebook. I'm probably better off repurposing a Windows-based laptop or desktop.

I've had Windows computers since Windows 3.1. I now have 2 macs because I tried out Windows 8 & didn't like it at all.

I installed Linux Mint XFCE on my 9-year-old HP mini 110 netbook because I wanted to try out Linux.

Unfortunately, I can't walk into Best Buy & walk out with a laptop with Linux pre-installed.