You can.  There are however a couple of things that make it hard:<p>1. The Android kernel is essentially a fork of the Linux kernel with a bunch of non-upstream features and non-upstreamable crapware drivers written by the phone&#x2F;tablet vendors.  By and large mainstream Linux distros are only happy to ship upstream kernels.  This means you&#x27;d need to run a hybrid distro userspace + Android kernel, which sucks because of missing kernel features, lack of integration with distro packaging, and lack of security updates for the kernel (unless you apply them by hand each time yourself).<p>2. Mainstream Linux desktops suck without a mouse and don&#x27;t have any multitouch features -- despite groups like GNOME fetishizing iOS, they haven&#x27;t &quot;got&quot; what makes it good nor provided a competent replacement.  Also the form-factor of a phone or tablet is quite different from a laptop or desktop and so requires somewhat special GUI software - single app at a time, on screen keyboard, larger text, page-sized forms without decorations and so on.<p>Anyway, you can look at Ubuntu Phone as a good place to start.