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Debian On The Android T-Mobile G1: Maybe One Day We Won't Have To Hack It

If you build it, they will hack. They hacked the iPhone, the PSP, the PlayStation 3, and just about every other "closed" piece of consumer electronics out there. Now we have a hack that lets you run Debian on the Android-powered T-Mobile G1. But if Android is getting a far less restrictive application store than the iPhone, does that mean this kind of reverse engineering is ultimately irrelevant?

The scoop: An iPhone tinkerer (sounds better than "hacker," really) named Jay Freeman published a set of instructions for installing Debian on the G1. It's nondestructive, meaning you can do this without trashing your existing Android setup, and allows root access and a better set of userland tools.

There's two main reasons why people hack any piece of hardware: 1) to add functionality that wasn't there before and which probably won't be added by the manufacturer anytime soon, and 2) to see what you can get away with and to have a good time. I'm familiar with both of these impulses. I've hacked my own Canon digital camera with custom firmware to add the ability to shoot RAW format images, and had great -- and nondestructive -- fun with that.

Since most of us aren't hardware hackers, I'd guess that reason No. 1 is the more valid of the two for the vast majority of people. If you spent good money on some device only to find out that it didn't do one very specific, trivial thing, you'd be right to be annoyed. And if you found out that someone else had a relatively simple way of unlocking that functionality, you'd be all over that. (I know I was.) It's the same thinking behind everything from the Tomato router firmware to the Android Debian hack.

Now: What if the manufacturer of a given device provides you with ways to expand its functionality without having to go through the trouble of something as extensive as a wholly new firmware or OS? There's nothing stopping Android from growing in that direction over time, especially if Google can figure out a way to allow user-written applications to do the sorts of things that normally require hackery to operate -- and without exposing the rest of the system to danger.

Even if they do such a thing, I doubt the truly dedicated Jay Freemans will stop trying to void their warranties. More power to 'em, I say. I'd just also like a little more power to all the rest of us, too.

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